No products in the cart.
Art and the Middle Class! (Part 2)
Through this article series, Satish Naik, Editor of Chinha Art News takes an overview of the changing art scenario in Maharashtra and India with a special reference to the artistic taste of the middle class. This insightful series offers glimpses of various transformative phases of the art world through the past decades till today. In this second part, the devaluation of art education in Maharashtra in the last few decades has been reviewed.
Globalization devalued many sectors. It happened to journalism too. Money power started deciding who will survive! This led to “Marathi Manus” slowly and steadily being distanced by the media, which had a cascading effect on the artists in Maharashtra. They too were being sidelined. That’s when Delhi overtook Mumbai and gained the number one position in the field of Art.
After Baburao Sadwelkar retired from the post of Art Director in 1986, the Directorate of Art and art education in Maharashtra began to see a downfall. Now the situation has come to such a passe that Directorate of Art seems to be on its death bed. After the retirement of Sadwelkar, Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) installed “Rubber Stamp” persons on the post of Director of Art, which further led to the decline of the Directorate of Art. After the demise of the veteran painters Satwalekar and Baburao Sadwelkar, the Ministry of Higher and Technical Education in the last thirty-five years, further added to the vows of Art education in Maharashtra including the primary, secondary, and higher education in art. There has been no control on the quality of candidates who were appointed as Art Director. As a result, the entire art education system fell in the trap of corruption.
It was because of JJ’s good fortune that the agitation for taking JJ and other two colleges out of the ongoing mess that now it seems that art education in Maharashtra will at least have a future. But there is no doubt that the fate of other unaided or earlier aided art colleges, which were created during the reign of corrupt art directors like Muralidhar Nangre, is now completely in jeopardy. It won’t be surprising if such colleges close completely in the coming years.
All this has happened due to the mismanagement of the Maharashtra government. And the person responsible for the state of art education and art circles in Maharashtra is the then Education Minister of the state who was in office for two terms. He had the audacity to ask, “Who’s going to be affected if JJ School of Art is closed?”. Thirty-five years is a long time to destroy an organization or a department. Maharashtra’s loss turned out to be others’ gain. States and Union Territories like Delhi, Chandigarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh etc. have left behind Maharashtra in the field of art.
The issue of Lalit Kala Akademi’s regional center in Maharashtra has become like the Belgaum border issue, lingering on for the last 40-45 years. Several smaller states including Odisha have already got a regional center of the Academi. But Mumbai, which was an important place from the beginning in terms of visual arts, never got one. When senior artist, painter K K Hebbar was the chairman of the Academi, seven and a half acres of land was allotted for it at Goregaon film city. But it was due to the connivance of corrupt rulers and even more corrupt artists that the land was given away to the filmmakers. Following which the painters of Maharashtra now go to the well-equipped studios set up in Bhopal, Delhi, Chennai, Ahmedabad etc. like beggars. Of late, news was doing rounds that a regional centre would soon be opened in Mumbai, but it soon died away and everything is back to square one.
In other words, it would have been surprising if the apathy towards such a mismanaged Art field had not permeated to the common art lovers. Today, Marathi artist is lagging in the field of visual arts at all levels. He is not valued in his home state, which was one of the pioneering states in visual arts. He is ridiculed for being an artist. And despite this, if he can overcome all odds and survive, there are people and organizations in art field of state who are always ready to bring him down.
I had the opportunity to read 100-150-year-old documents on the curriculum of J J School of Art. The documents clearly stated that JJ’s objective was not to create good artists, but the aim is to create good art lovers. But how many artists from JJ or other art colleges regularly visit exhibitions in art galleries? How many of them read articles, news, interviews, etc. published in art magazines or newspapers? This number is miniscule. One can understand that earlier there weren’t many ways in which one could access art around himself or the other world. But, in the world of computers and mobiles today, when every piece of information is available at the click of a button, why are artists so disinterested? This itself is a topic worth researching.
If this is the condition of the artists who have completed five-year courses in art college, then how will more artist lovers be born? How will art spread? It is not that artists studying in art colleges in the eighties did not try to write about painting. But their numbers were very less, and they could not demonstrate much consistency. This could also be due to the meager remuneration they received from newspapers (that too irregularly). That’s the reason very few made a career out of it.
Another very important reason may be that these writings were not widely read by the common readers of that time. Not only that, but the artists would also not read beyond what had been written about their own exhibitions. This was the biggest flaw in the traditional art education system.
(To be continued)
****
Satish Naik
Editor, Chinha Art News
Prior publication: ‘Samatawadi MuktSanvad Patrika’ Monthly, August 2023.
Re-published in ‘Chinha Art News’ with prior consent of the editor.
Click on the link given below, to view Art Education Panel Discussion organized by Chinha.
कलाशिक्षण महाचर्चा | Panel Discussion About Art Education
Please login to join discussion
