Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Giving a fillip to folk arts

Traditional art should develop in a contemporary context, says Jyotindra Jain, chairman, National Folklore Support Centre

PHOTO: S. THANTHONI

PASSION FOR TRIBAL ART Jyotindra Jain

He has brought unknown facets of Indian folk arts and tribal practices to light. Art historian and anthropologist Jyotindra Jain, through his books, pays tribute to folk artists and their many-splendoured work — whether it is the painted myths of creation of the Rathva tribe of Gujarat; tradition and the creative idiom in the Mithila painting of Bihar; "the images of a changing world" in the Kalighat painting of Calcutta, or the humble objects of daily use imbued with beauty by the anonymous craftsmen.

The chairman of the National Folklore Support Centre, Chennai, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Aesthetics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, has done extensive field work with the tribal communities in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa, and curated numerous exhibitions that showcased their work.

Sensitivity and empathy mark his approach. Not for him the confining of the creativity of the folk artist to the tag of "the traditional."

"A time will come when nobody will touch Indian folk art or craft. It will have no value," Jain says. "Every government emporium tells the folk artist `Traditional banao.' Do we tell modern artists, `Be Indian'? Repetitiveness can come out of a traditional idiom. Traditional art should develop in a contemporary context. Then it will not stagnate (as it is doing now)."

Handlooms and handicrafts

In the past, he points out, each piece of craft was unique because it came out of a genuine context of use. Now it is all mass produced. "The handloom textiles sector has fared better than the handicrafts because it has seen changes in its design vocabulary and colour palette. This is because saris and fabrics are still made for use, while handicrafts are produced merely for decoration and display. So they have lost touch with life. As a boy, Jain who lived in Mumbai, would often visit Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where his parents came from. "Since our home was near tribal habitations, I felt attracted to their way of life, customs and art," he says. "Later, my doctoral thesis was on the `Religious practices of the Meenas', the ex-`criminal' tribe of Rajasthan. During the British period, forest produce was lost to these tribals who were food gatherers and hunters. Driven to starvation, they started thieving. I stayed with one tribal group for six months, documented their songs and ways of worship."

After obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, Jain got the job of setting up the Shreyas Museum — of the folk and tribal arts of Gujarat — at Ahmedabad.

"I travelled from village to village for six years gathering information and objects. The Homi Bhaba fellowship resulted in the book on the painted myths of creation."

It was as director of the Crafts Museum in Delhi that he became interested in the work of Ganga Devi from Mithila who was discarded by her husband and co-wife and found solace in art. "She was so creative she became internationally known," he says proudly.

New direction

"My book on her opened a new direction in Indian art research — to recognise an individual out of a collective tradition. When we speak of traditional art, we refer to it as say, Madhubani, but we don't recognise individual artists. We think only modern art is innovative. But when Ganga Devi returned after a visit to attend a festival in the U.S., she brought back fresh ideas and scenes and put them to pen and paper. If an artist brings a response to contemporary times, he or she becomes a contemporary artist."

That led the art historian to organise a major exhibition `The Other Masters' was on five tribal artists who brought a contemporary perspective to their work. Jain, the recipient of international awards for his scholarship and initiatives in the field of cultural heritage, finds the government approach to tribals lacking in sensitivity. His interest today is in mass produced, urban, popular cultural objects — calendars, hoardings — in "how visual imagery plays a major role in cultural identity and how `visuality' is being used for social representation and political manipulation."

His fascinating lecture in the city on "Indian popular culture: the conquest of the world as a picture" covered a wide arc — the eclectic influences on popular printed images in the country, the role played by Ravi Varma, product marketing during the Colonial period by using Hindu images and the `essentialising' and exploitation of the tribals in cinema and calendars.

KAUSALYA SANTHANAM

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail