Monica Arora
Art historian, curator and art critic R Siva Kumar understands and explains the vocabulary of art history in his unique, inimitable style. Be it his erudite narratives as a critic or his meticulous manner of teaching at Santiniketan’s Kala Bhavana, which has completed a century of existence, R Siva Kumar’s tool of ‘contextual modernism’ has enabled scholars to study post-colonial Indian art history with more efficacy.
How is Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University’s institute of fine arts in Santiniketan, celebrating its centenary?
The centenary celebration was inaugurated on December 1, 2018. It began with an exhibition of its early teachers and students and was followed by a major exhibition of Benode Behari. There will be several others, including an exhibition covering its 100 years. We have already had a number of workshops, artist visits, and theatre and film events.
Its founder, Rabindranath Tagore, was not very fond of the formal system of schooling. What modes of teaching art are deployed here to not let students feel a sense of confinement?
Today we are a central university, thus guided by what the UGC and the HRD Ministry recommends. Tagore’s ideas on education have been pushed to the background or to the margins where we still have some freedom. It survives to an extent in the school attached to the varsity, especially the primary school, and to an extent in Kala Bhavana. He wished to turn education into an individual-centred self-discovery and self-learning; the role of the teachers and the institution was to provide the right environment for this, not handing over a predetermined package of knowledge or skills. Today, the emphasis is on uniformity, on the measurable and deliverables, not on self-empowerment through self-exploration.
What are your views on Tagore, the artist, who started painting in his Sixties?
He started painting only in 1928, but was interested in it from his youth. In the late 19th and early 20th century, painting was still considered a product of representational skill, or at least primarily of representational skill. As he began to travel and closely observe the ancient arts of the East, the modern arts of the West, and ‘primitive’ art from across the world, he realised that art need not be based on representational skills alone. In fact, much of world art was based on imagination and a range of different skills, including that of rhythmic articulation that he possessed as a poet, a musician, and a calligrapher of sorts. This unconsciously fed his doodles. This began to engage him intensely around 1924 and eventually led him to become a painter.
As a painter, we cannot claim that he possessed the versatility he demonstrated as a writer, but he displayed great imagination, and taught us that the freedom to imagine and exercising good judgment were at least as important as skills. Indian artists, who came after him, found this liberating.
How has the culturally rich ambience at Santiniketan coloured the nuances of your personality and writing?
Having trained in Santiniketan, I imbibed some of the values the institution and the early artists who worked there stood for. As an art historian, I felt that the history of this phase of Indian art had not received enough attention and needs to be better known. I worked on it. That many of these artists held a broader view of art, I believe, has also helped me develop a broader perspective than I would have otherwise had.
What according to you are the essential characteristics of a responsible art historian? Any writing tips?
I am not sure if there are or can be any essential characteristics. A responsible art historian, I suppose, has to be true to oneself, to his or her understanding of things and be open to other views as much as possible. Beyond that, it would be presumptuous of me to offer any tips.
As an art historian and art critic, which artist(s) have influenced your writings?
Art historians are primarily influenced by other art historians and art writers. They tend to write on artists who they find engaging in light of their own ideological or aesthetic interests. The art historian’s interests influence his choice of artists rather than the other way round. However, I was trained under some of the artists I have written on, especially KG Subramanyan. By training, I and the artists I write on belong to Santiniketan. So, there is an overlap. In that sense, their work has had an influence on me. But this is not usual as most art historians are not trained under artist-writers. I have also benefited from the work of those who do not belong to this school. In that sense, I also bring an outside perspective to my discussions of their work.
In 1997, you wrote Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism. What is the connotation of the phrase ‘contextual modernism’, particularly in the context of critiquing modern Indian art?
Modernism was considered a monolithic international phenomenon for a long while. Simultaneously, Western modernism was considered its only authentic expression; modern art elsewhere, including India, was considered derivative. This contributed to essentialist reading of modernism. While modernism owes much to the cross-cultural contacts that happened on a global scale due to colonialism, it was also shaped by local histories and cultures. Modernism is, thus, an attitude than a style or group of styles, and it is differently grounded within different cultures. The Santiniketan artists took such a view of modernism, and I tried to point out their position through the words ‘contextual modernism.’
During a discussion at a critical art writing workshop at the Ceramics Triennial at Jaipur, you stated that you write only about artists who interest you rather than commercially viable ones.
It was in response to an issue someone had raised about the need for art writers to recognise that they too are part of the art market. Art historians do not have a live link with the art market. Occasionally, by bringing a less noticed artist into critical focus, they may contribute to the demand for his/her work, but this is incidental. A historian’s work can also destroy the market value of a work, as the Rembrandt project did by re-attributing many paintings which were earlier attributed to the master. However, destroying the value of paintings in public museums, and thus not for sale, was not the primary goal of the project. It was more like bringing out a critical edition of a text by identifying the interpolations and separating it from the original text.
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