Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 26

Modern Art in Western India filling and design to the decoration of buildings; and the class is based both on the study of the past triumphs in Indian art in this direction, and the urge of modern requirements.
All methods of instruction in art in Western India are greatly facilitated by the fact that the greatest monuments of Indian sculpture and painting are to be found in the Bombay Presidency or the adjoining Indian State of Hyderabad. Unrivalled shrines of Indian art-the Ajanta, the Ellora and the Elephanta Caves—are all within easy distance of Bombay and frequently visited, of course, by our students. For a practical rather than a literary note has always characterized art in Western India. These local advantages bring us to a point which should not be lost sight of while we are considering the subject which is often too summarily described as "Indian” art-namely, the vast size of India, the great distances, and the divergence of manners, customs, languages and methods of artistic expression between far-separated districts. You cannot correctly speak of Indian art as split into the two camps of Calcutta and Bombay, as Mr. Havell does; for art is split into a thousand camps in India, and this fact is at once the artistic strength and fascination of the country at the present time. I have seen no country which can compare with India for the diversity of its peoples and the protean aspects of their art, in the widest sense of the term ; and any attempt to make Indian artists as a whole conform to the style of any artist or school, however interesting, is fantastic and out-of-place. India, in fact, should be visualized as an inexhaustible mine of art and Western India as but one of its richest veins. In that part of the country the craftsmen, though extremely poor and dis organized, are still producing their beautiful things, such as cotton-weaving, carpets, calico-printing, pottery and tiles, embroidery of many kinds, inlaid work, ivory, and wood-carving, cabinet-making, lacquer, metal, jewellery, stone. cutting, etc. The people's talent for craftsmanship is the foundation on which the Bombay School of Art has been erected, and in that school the sons of the craftsmen take their training, being taught to work not only from a model, but also from drawings, which is an advantage they do not secure outside the School of Art.
I have indicated that the present system of training in the Bombay School dates from the reawakening of public interest some fifteen years ago, since when the idea of absolute freedom for Indian art students in India, so far as art education is concerned, has been strongly advocated through this movement. The reproach that everything done to bring India into closer touch with world opportunities is de-Orientalizing Indian art; that, however good our students' work is, it must not be classed as Indian because certain protagonists of the New Bengal School choose to interpret the word in a very 104