Page 41 - Eye of the beholder

nandalal boSe [1882-1966]
RUSTIC NATURALISM
Nandalal Bose is considered a leading artist of the 20th century, whose pioneering vision enhanced the visual ingredients of Modern Indian Art. He was not only an artist who practiced in a wide gamut of mediums from water colours, Chinese brush and ink drawings, Japanese wood cuts, dry point, lino-cut, lithography, drawings and sketching, but a pedagogue with innovative ideas in art and art education within the broad context of social concerns as well as a theorist. He was interested in the art for the community and collective of artists. His inspiration came from Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. The former was focused on cultural resurgence while the latter on the political and economic independence.
A student of Abanindranath Tagore belonging to the charmed inner circle of his group of students at the Calcutta School of Arts, Nandalal initially painted in the wash technique pioneered by his ‘master’ with themes derived from history and mythologies. But he realized by 1910 when he had left the Art School that the intimate style of his ‘master’s’ sensibility was not suitable to his temperament and he moved away to paint in his individual style. Thus the charisma of Nandalal’s style lay in his maintaining a link between the old ‘Indian art’ style inaugurated by his master and his digression to include spontaneity and vigour and boldness and colour. It is this approach that was the basis of his modernity.
At Jorasanko Nandalal had met Coomarswamy, Rabindranath Tagore and Sr. Nivedita. He was inspired by Coomarswamy’s perception of tradition. In 1912 he met Count Okakura from Japan who advised him to bring together elements of tradition, environment and individuality in his art. This precept became the guiding force of Nandalal’s life as an artist and a pedagogue. Among Abanindranath’s students the Poet Laureate had found Nandalal resourceful and responsive to his ideas. When Rabindranath decided to set up Kala Bhavan at Santiniketan in 1919 as part of Rabindra Viswabharati he invited Nandalal to take charge of Kala Bhavan.
It is important to emphasize that the art and pedagogy of Nandalal was conflated. As a teacher he put learning above teaching with a belief that student should strike out his individual path in his creative quest. The Swadeshi movement had foregrounded culture particularly of indigenous tradition that resided in the rural villages where according to Mahatma Gandhi the soul of the country resided. Hence moving away from literary ideal of naturalism that was impressed upon them by the ‘master’, Nandalal began to engage with is immediate environment of Santiniketan and in the realization of realistic images of the form be it humans, animals, landscape or trees. He also redefined the popular of folk art tradition to make it an important ingredient of India’s modernity. He thus connected the classic with the folk, the artists and the craftsman. This was an important approach that marked the saliency of his pedagogy, which reflected in his art too.
His connectivity to nature and its representation in his water colours, sketches and drawings was premised on his methodology of contemplating in the presence of nature a mnemonic exercise where he internalized the forms from nature and reduced them to visual codes which he could store in his memory and recall to produce it when required. This resulted in the
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