K.K. Hebbar’s mentoring role in institution building, not just in Mumbai, but also in Vadodara, made him a very different figure from the stereotype of the lone artist who might think that talking too much about art destroys the purity of the experience. Indeed, painter K.G. Subramanyam has spoken of how Hebbar felt it necessary to write and talk about the diversity of experience available in India, for only then could one formulate a resolute and kinetic artistic vista.
Hebbar, whose 20th death anniversary is this year, actively encouraged younger artists and students, always trying to find scholarships for them. So, it is fitting that his family recently donated around 25 artworks (including a sculpture) to Manipal University. It is doubly heartening because although Hebbar studied and spent his life in Mumbai, he came from the Tulu-Malabar region, whose arts such as Yakshagana and Nagamandala were central to his sense of colour, form and dynamic lineation.
The grant of his works to a university is appropriate also because Hebbar was convinced that conversations with other arts such as literature and dance were essential for visual art to flourish and evolve. Hebbar himself took Kathak classes to experience a certain synaesthesia, and Gyanpeeth awardee Shivarama Karanth was a close friend. Perhaps it was this intersensory acuity that endowed Hebbar’s works with that mysterious, lush electricity of colour that he is so famous for.
It would do universities in India a world of good if more such art centres were created by endowments. At a time when campuses are smouldering and there is all-round student alienation and mental distress, spaces for art can play a vital role (of course, alongside traditional and formalised interventions like health centres) in mitigating student fear and apathy.
Art has always had the power to take you out of yourself, and plunge you into a more universal feeling. Unlike a consumable, commercial object, art ideally reawakens a deeper connection with both the cosmic as well as the social milieu. Given the frenetic pace with which ever newer colleges sprout and grow, surely some money and thought might go towards securing support for credible spaces and outreach for art. Perhaps it is not just political parties but artists too who should hover around universities, looking for converts and cadres.
While on the one hand, art centres can serve as spots for quiet contemplation, especially when they are surrounded by natural beauty, they also make invaluable space for camps, discussions and workshops, even residencies, where artists can live on campus, reach out to students and staff, and create site-specific work that reflects the university, region, or artisanal tradition.
At Manipal University, a doctoral candidate in art theory curates the Hebbar collection and helps design meaningful events around it both for outreach as well as to deepen the impact of art in the university’s intellectual culture. Much more than standalone museums and galleries, campus art centres will benefit from the large student population and the energy that universities provide, while adding to the intellectual ecology of the place.
Such museums or cultural centres have been central to the history of the more celebrated international universities — one thinks of Harvard and the Peabody, Oxford and Bodleian, and Stanford with its central square of Rodin sculptures. The arts and sciences can mutually reflect each other and grow into each other for the better health of both. Indeed, there is no university abroad worth the name that does not have a strong art presence.
Such centres have both dimensions — on one side is the canon: already famous artists, who are central to a notion of civilisational heritage, beyond the narrow instrumentality of universities as job-training centres; on the other side is the dimension of a live and vibrant centre that continually runs events and programmes, keeping alive the flame of a creative, cultural citizenship.
There were many times when Hebbar was frustrated by the lack of resources, of young, culturally literate aides to help carry out his vision. It would be a happy conclusion if now, years after his death, his work speaks again to students, who may make their way to the horizon he glimpsed.
Nikhil Govind is the head of the Manipal Center for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal University.
