Forthcoming Issues

  March, April & May  2012 

Protest Art

Protest art aims at engaging the attention of the public and provoke a reaction. Ever since art became the vehicle of individual self-expression it has been there throughout the history of social movements, wars and revolutions. Modern protest art was initiated probably by the Dada artists who used art as the weapon to criticize the irrational brutality of the World War I. Now protest art encompasses race, gender, colour and caste issues, neo-capitalism, political beliefs, social hierarchy or any kind of brutality towards human and nature.
 
Protest art means questioning the authority and thus it is subversive, anti-institutional and often a form of counter culture. Its mediums are diverse that include demonstrations, marches, signs, posters, banners, performances, installations, music, songs, literature, comics, theatres, paintings, graffiti, photographs, video art etc. With the advent of new media, both printed and virtual, protest has ceased to be localized that targeted a comparatively small circle of audience. Transcending geographical boundaries, social classes, language barriers and the white cube of a gallery space its voice is universal and all-encompassing.
 
‘Protest artist’ is not a generic term. Any artist, as a socially conscious being, can be infuriated by any event, any injustice and express his/her anger through his/her chosen medium. There are many politically charged pieces of fine art - such as Picasso’s Guernica, some of Norman Carlberg's Vietnam war -era work, or Susan Crile's images of torture at Abu Ghraib and among Indians Husain’s Safdar Hashmi, Bikash’s Naxal Period, Shuvaprasanna’s Change, and works of Frida Kahlo, Goya, Andy Warhol, Dali, Van Gogh to Mona Hatoum, Ai Weiwei, Larissa Sansour, Banksy among others. For example Willie Bester is one of South Africa's most well known artists who originally began as a resistance artist. His works commented on important black South African figures and aspects important to his community. Another artist, Jane Alexander, has dealt with the atrocities of apartheid from a white perspective. Her resistance art deals with the unhealthy society that continues in post-apartheid South Africa.

Guerilla Girls is feminist group who has been fighting gender discrimination in the fine arts world since the group’s formation in 1985. It began with the exhibition titled "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture" hosted by the Museum of Modern Art where out of 169 artists only 17 were women. Later their area of protest included women artists of colour as well. The group, working internationally, arranged for protest marches, surveys and used mass advertising media such as posters, stickers, billboards, slogans etc. The members of the group, once they joined, took up pseudonyms preferably of dead women artists and to remain totally anonymous, they wore gorilla masks. In 2011, the group split into three independent organization as the original group ceased to exist.
 
Object Orange (formerly Detroit. Demolition. Disneyland.) is an artistic project in Detroit, Michigan which seeks to draw attention to dilapidated buildings by painting them orange. The project is composed of local artists, who go by their first names only (Christian, Jacques, Greg, Mike and Andy) for fear of prosecution. James Canning, communications coordinator for the Mayor's office of Detroit, views the artists' actions as unlawful and vandalism, stating that any demolitions which took place following the project's painting expeditions have been coincidental. The artists chose the colour "Tiggerific Orange" from the Disney paint catalogue by Behr for its similarity to traffic cones and the safety orange worn by hunters.
 
Graffiti has long appeared on railroad boxcars and subways. The one with the longest history, dating back to the 1920s and continuing into the present day, is Texino.

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and its filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives". The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchist, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counter-revolutionary") expressed in painted graffiti, poster art, and stencil art. In the U.S. at the time other political phrases (such as "Free Huey" about Black Panther Huey Newton) became briefly popular as graffiti in limited areas, only to be forgotten. A popular graffito of the 1970s was the legend "Dick Nixon Before He Dicks You", reflecting the hostility of the youth culture to that U.S. president. A Documentary Film, Radioactivists: Protest in Japan in Fukushima, is taken under by two German Filmmakers, Julia Leser and Clarissa Seidel. This film is about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident which happened on 11th March, 2011.
 
Peredvizhniki (Russian: often called The Wanderers or The Itinerants in English, were a group of Russian realist artists who in protest at academic restrictions formed an artists' cooperative; it evolved into the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions in 1870.
 
In the forthcoming March, April and May issue we shall deal with the varied kinds of protest art we have come across whether it is an individual protest or through a movement. The writers will be focusing on violent protestations in the History as well as recent, ‘Middle East’, ‘Arab Spring’, 'Animal Rights Organization Anima Naturalis',  ‘Occupy Wall Street’, 'Beijing's Artist Village Gallery', ‘Nandigram’, etc.

  January & February  2012 

Bombay Progressive Artists Group
Guest Editor : Ratan Parimoo

The formation of Progressive Artists Group in Bombay in 1947, was the symptom of a ‘Spirit’ or ‘Zeitgeist’ of Modern Indian Art during the few years before and after the Independence which we achieved during the same year. I am thankful to the ARTETC, NEWS & VIEWS, to invite me to be the Guest Editor of two forthcoming special issues on the Progressive Artists Group in Bombay. Having joined as an art student at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, in 1951, almost from its inception that is as an art student of the early 1950s, I have been a spectator-participant of the contemporary Indian art phenomena of the last 60 years.

It was during the 1990s as India was celebrating the 50 years of Independence that many of us realized the significance of the Artists groups formed during 1940s and 1950s. I call it the ‘Spirit’ of the era in the life of our culture, which struck many creative minds and spread in many parts of the country. This undoubtedly cries to be recognized as a most significant turning point in the development of modern Indian art.

The independence in 1947 was a “moment” of continued nationalist fervor combined with a fresh nationwide excitement and optimism, inspite of the heavy suffering due to the partition of the sub-continent. Calcutta during the mid 1940s had witnessed artists like Somanath Hore and Chitta Prasad among others who responded to the Bengal Famine. Those who gathered courage to move away from the Bengal School set up the Calcutta group in 1943. The participants in their first group exhibition held in 1945, were Prodosh Das Gupta, Kamala Das Gupta, Gopal Ghosh, Paritosh Sen, Nirode Majumdar, Subho Tagore, Rathin Maitra and Prankrishna Pal. Indeed it can be claimed that it is the formation of the Calcutta group and the exhibition of Jaimini Roy’s work in Mumbai during the late 1940s (with a record of press reviews), which were among the sources of inspiration to artists in Western India. Another impressionable exhibition held in 1947 in Mumbai was that of the Sri Lankan genius, George Keyt. However, chronologically followed the Shilpi Chakra Group formed in Delhi in 1947, which included the refugee artists arriving from Lahore, viz., B.C. Sanyal, Dhanraj Bhagat, Prannath Mago and artists who had already settled in Delhi during the 1940s such as Dinkar Kowshik, Sailoz Mukherjee and K.S. Kulkarni.

While the Bombay Progressive Group of Artists was formed in 1947, their historic Group exhibition was held in 1949. This represented the works of six artists, some of whom had already held their own solo exhibitions. The six artists were: i) Francis Newton Souza, ii) Maqbul Fida Husain, iii) Krishnaji H. Ara, iv) Sayyed Haidar Raza, v) Hari A. Gade and vi) Sadanand Bakre. While Bakre was the only sculptor among them, the other five were painters. It can be observed that their works were definitely more ‘advanced’ at that point of time in terms of style and expressive quality in comparison with the works shown in the exhibitions held in Calcutta and Delhi. With the exception of S.H. Raza, rest of the five artists have died.

As the World War II ended in 1945, travelling to Europe and the U.S.A. became relatively easier and several Indian artists ventured to travel to western countries resulting in direct exposure to the new trends in modern western art. Souza’s departure for London in 1949, was followed by Bakre where as Raza preferred to go to Paris. Husain began travelling frequently and shuttling between Mumbai and Delhi. Thus, the group got dispersed. Significantly, the artists remained focused and kept returning to the motherland and exhibiting at intervals in Mumbai and Delhi. So also those, who remained behind like Husain, Ara and Gade. Their periodic exhibitions often received wide publicity in Mumbai and Delhi, especially those of Husain, Raza and Souza. However, Souza’s exhibitions were much noticed because of their boldness and his own provocative statements and writings.

The Austrian born Rudy Van Leyden was perhaps the first ever art critic in Bombay who was able to influence opinion in favour of modern art with his regular writings especially through 1940s. He had enthusiastically reviewed the first exhibition of Jamini Roy in Mumbai in 1942, hailing him as a modern master. He reviewed the exhibition of the Calcutta Group in 1945. He reviewed the exhibition of the first modern Sri Lankan painter George Keyt, held in 1947. Before the PAG’s 1949 exhibition, Leyden had reviewed solo exhibitions held by Ara, Raza and Souza as well. That is how while reviewing the historic Group show, Leyden observed that those who had followed the works of the PAG artists over the past years would know of the struggle, the experiments, the trials, that lie behind the considerable achievement which this exhibition represented. These artists had demonstrated that they were not satisfied with readymade conventions of either the academic western or the academic traditional. However, neither had they simply exchanged the conventions of the old schools in favour of obscure codes of modern paintings. Leyden had realized the future potential of these artists when he observed that those who want painting to be the expression of the deeper emotions and striving of a generations, will be satisfied with progressive offerings of these artists. These were reasons enough to hail them as welcome ‘rebels’. Among the supporters of modernity at that point of time in Bombay were the other two émigré Germans, the artist-advertiser W. Langhammer and the Company Director, Schlesinger, besides the distinguished novelist and art critic Mulk Raj Anand.

With the passing of decades and decades we are now realizing that modernity in India was carried over after Independence by the maturing artists of the 1950s, who consolidated it. The critical discussion was carried forward and kept alive by critics in the 1950s, who wrote about pre-independence pioneers of modern Indian art. Later in 1960s, they analyzed the new experiments and languages created by artists who had worked through the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. Supportive critical writing alongside the ongoing developments in Contemporary Indian art, is an important component of the times, which offers insightful reconstruction of the process of the Indian modernity.

During the last two decades with many Art galleries actively involved with promotion of Contemporary Indian art through small and large group shows, solo shows and retrospective shows of the senior artists, has brought us to the realization of the tremendous significance of the artists who emerged during 1940s and 1950s. Many of them have been responsible for bringing the creative developments in India parallel to International modern art. Among other aspects they revolutionized the pictorial language in India by their innovative experiments in lines, colours, space, pictorial structures, imageries and how the society looks at the works of art. The distinctness in their creative works as both individualistic at one level and also representing Indian sensibility at another level is so very patent. Quite rightly many of them are now being acknowledged as ‘Masters’.

The two issues of ARTETC NEWS & VIEWS will explore the entire phenomena of the dramatic ‘moment’ of modernity in western India in a series of essays, some of them will be devoted to defining the trajectories that each of these artists took in their creative work as they grew and reached maturity.