Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 37

Modern Art in Western India
Exhibition is one example—that is, to give an unbiassed opportunity of seeing what is being done in India at present and what has been done in the past. The two things are both important, and in referring to India's past I need hardly remind this audience of the work already done, and that still lies before the India Society, not only in studying the ancient sculpture, painting, crafts, literature, and music within her borders, but also in tracing the powerful influence she exerted through the centuries on the art of the other countries of Asia. It is quite right that to keep the living alive should be held an important thing ; but it is not worth keeping the living alive unless they live up to the highest traditions of the past and aim at greater achievement in the future.
I do not mean that in the slightest as an indication that one ought to go on imitating the past. On the contrary, I look upon tradition in contemporary art, not as an imitating of the past, but as a stepping on the shoulders of the past to reach to something higher. There are two methods by which people may differ from their predecessors. One is by standing on their shoulders, the other by treading on their toes, the former being clearly the most effective.
I feel that in the future the India Society's task will be to give a fair survey of what is best in Indian art, both in the past and in the present, and to leave India herself to hammer out what her artistic destiny is to be.
I do not believe that anybody can say whether the Bombay School, or the Bengal School, or any other School of Indian Art, has got hold of the right lines until you know what developments the future of India will bring to the whole outlook of its people. For art must be linked with the life of the people if it is to have any meaning at all. If art is anything at all, it is either the telling of stories or the making of statements and suggestions. Abstract art, the conception that one should go to a great deal of trouble to say nothing, is a thoroughly Western notion which has not yet polluted India.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is about as much as I can add to this discussion beyond saying how extremely grateful we are to Captain Gladstone Solomon not only for having come here to-night to give us this eloquent and lucid account of what he has tried to do for Indian art, but also for the work he has done out there.
I feel sure you will wish to pass a hearty vote of thanks to Captain Gladstone Solomon. (Applause.)
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