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Art and the Middle Class! (Part 6)
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 sixth part of the article, he discusses the art education in Maharashtra and the painters who influenced the artistic culture of Maharashtra.
This deficiency in our education policy of Maharashtra reflected on the entire education system. And the sense of art was blunted. That’s why in Maharashtra today thousands of flats are being built, bungalows are being built, five-star offices are being built, but due to the lack of sense of beauty required to decorate it, it is considered satisfactory to decorate the house by putting up third or fourth grade posters. This is a fact. Thousands of towers were erected in metropolises like Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nashik. The new rich class started living in millions of apartments. But has this had any effect on art or the artists? No! The answer to this question is completely negative. The painters have yet to experience any good effect of this monstrous growth. The root cause of this lies in our education system.
In foreign countries, children are trained to view paintings right from the time they are in school. They are familiarized with space, shape, color, texture right in childhood itself. Discipline is an integral part of it. So, standing in a queue, even small children quietly enjoy the art. But here we are led to believe that the silence of a gallery or a museum is meant to be disturbed. Even the teachers don’t want to control them, and tell them to view and experience art calmly. This is the fundamental difference between ours and foreign education system. Unless and until this is changed, we will continue to be backward in the subject of art for years to come.
Fortunately, art has been given a very respectable place in the newly implemented National Education Policy. It is a very important thing in my view that art education will continue to support the student until the end of the education, instead of it coming to an end in the fifth grade. However, several questions are still unanswered, such as, when will this new policy be implemented? How will it happen? What will happen if the government changes?
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I fully agree that the tone of this whole write-up is somewhat negative. I tried my best to change this situation. Not a little bit, but for forty to forty-two years. This year is the forty-third year. It was while studying at JJ that I got a break in mainstream journalism. I used it to study art, but gradually I turned to writing about art. It was my effort that the common readers should also get information about the subject of art in the same way that the general readers keep getting information about the subjects of drama, film, literature, and music. Whether it was successful or not would be the subject of a long article. It may even be guilty of self-congratulation. So I am avoiding that temptation keenly. But I constantly tried to experiment and introduce new topics and ideas through ‘Chinha’. Even today it continues in the form of ‘Chinha Art News’. Those who want to know more about it should contact the chinha.in link given at the end of the article.
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Even though I have said in the above paragraph that the tone of my entire writing is negative, but this article won’t be complete without writing the positive part of it. Once upon a time in Maharashtra, Raja Ravi Varma did a great job of spreading art through his religious paintings. Those paintings were put up in every household. Religious sentiments were the major factor behind it. The art part was added unknowingly / incidentally. After Raja Ravi Varma, Raghuveer Mulgaonkar and Dinanath Dalal did a great job of spreading art in Maharashtra. After globalization, however, all of this diminished. But through all this downfall, the prices of not only the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma, but also the prices of his Oleographs and Lithographs skyrocketed. The prices of Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings at Indian or global auctions have consistently increased to a great extent. Individual prints produced in his press are sold for high prices till today. Not only Indian but also Western art lovers compete to buy it.
It is a fact that this could not happen in the case of Mulgaonkar and Dalal. This is because both these painters were engulfed in commercial work. It is not that Dalal did not paint canvases to some extent but the fact that Dalal could not show the consistency in canvas painting that Raja Ravi Varma could show. But it can be said for sure that Dalal and Mulgaonkar did a valuable job of spreading art in the Marathi community. Both of them published Diwali special issues. There is no doubt that Dalal’s ‘Deepawali’ and Mulgaonkar’s ‘Ratnadeep’ Diwali issues also brought great awakening in the art world. The articles or interviews of famous painters published in both these issues are still very readable even today. The only reason for this is the great love of art that both Mulgaonkar and Dalal had. It is a fact that the famous painter Vasudeo Gaitonde’s article on Modern art which was published in the 1961 Diwali issue of ‘Ratnadeep’ still makes the student of modern art think. This only shows that there was once a close relationship between Marathi middle class culture and painting. It got gradually destroyed over time. Today we are seeing its repercussions in different ways.
(To be continued)
Satish Naik
Editor, Chinha Art News
Prior publication: ‘Samatawadi MuktSanvad Patrika’ Monthly, September 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
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