Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 36

Modern Art in Western India
Another matter which interested me was the discussion about mural paintings. I seem to have heard about mural paintings at Viceregal Lodge and at India House. I wonder if one bears sufficiently in mind that all those mural paintings have been carried out by students, by young men who, if they live a bit longer and go on working, will do better, and if much longer might conceivably do very much better, and whether we ought not to follow the method of the Italian authorities in providing fresh opportunities.
When I visited the Milan Exhibition last year, I saw gigantic wall surfaces smothered with wall paintings. One of the Italian authorities asked me whether I liked them. Having looked at his face, I felt I could safely say I did not. He said, “Well; they are by our best budding artists."
I asked, “What will you do with them?"
He replied, “I do not know what we shall do with the artists, but we have given them a marvellous opportunity, and before the next Exhibition comes on we shall probably whitewash these walls and give them another chance!"
It seems a very good plan to give the same men or better men a chance of using the same wall surfaces, until something so good is produced that everybody raises his hands in horror at the thought of wiping it out. I believe that an occasional coat of whitewash over the work of young men would be extremely helpful to spur them to greater achievement.
Without wishing to make this a recommendation to the Government of India, I would ask those interested in wall surfaces to place them at the disposal of young artists, subject to their right to whitewash them after a few years if they feel so disposed.
Captain Gladstone Solomon referred to the India Society and its policy. I do not want to say anything about that excepting on one matter. The India Society is twenty-five years old. That represents almost a generation; so whatever the Society is to-day, it is not what it was when it started. The justification is no longer the same. Whether we have carried out our task with more or less success is for you to say, but that the task we are aiming to fulfil to-day is a different one from that with which we were concerned at the start is a fact.
The foundation of the India Society was due to the remarks of an eminent gentleman who referred to Indian art as a contradiction in terms: it was either Indian or art, but it could not be both. That was a good justific for starting the Society, but it no longer applies.
What we have to do in the future is to be of use to India, as well as to the large number of English people in this country who are interested in that great part of the British Empire, by doing the kind of work of which this 114