 "The demise of the artist-teacher")
With the death of K G Subramanyan and the retirement of great pedagogues like Gulammohammed Sheikh and Jyoti Bhatt, the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, once the home of some significant artist groups of India such as Group 1890 and the Baroda Group, is left with only a few known practising artists like B V Suresh, Vijay Bagodi and Vasudevan Akkitham.
This is not the only place that has lost the tradition of artist-teachers. When Rabindranath Tagore started Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan in 1921, using the award money he'd received with the Nobel Prize, he created Kala Bhavana, the fine arts faculty, to reflect the central role of art and music in his educational philosophy. Nandalal Bose took over in 1923. He also took charge of art exhibitions at the yearly sessions of the Indian National Congress at Lucknow, Faizpur and Haripura during the 1930s. He designed the emblems for government awards, including the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Shri, and, along with his students, beautified the original manuscript of the Constitution of India.
During the course of the 20th century, influenced by this strong mix of politics and art, the tradition of artists teaching at Kala Bhavana continued. Ramkinkar Baij joined Kala Bhavana as a student in 1923. Four years later, he became a teacher here. Benode Behari Mukherjee followed suit in 1925. Their students included painters, activists and art pedagogues like A Ramachandran, Subramanyan and Devi Prasad.
This isn't necessarily a problem limited to India. Thanks to escalating tuition fee, cuts in university budgets, the creeping neo-liberalisation of education and frustration with overstretched tutors, internationally, too, there has been a shift towards self-organised night schools, free-to-attend lecture programmes and artist-run art academies. But these haven't really started in India yet, although online art courses and residencies are popular.
As a result, both artists and art students turn to popular events like the Kochi Biennale, which contemporary artist Jitish Kallat describes as an adda, that provide the rare platform for the two to come together.
"I wasn't drawn to the idea of a set course structure in art or design. I highly doubt it if there is any solid critique happening in art schools," says UBIK, a self-taught, Dubai-based artist whose works can be found in private and public Arab contemporary art collections. "If there was, we would have some pretty interesting art coming out of the younger generation, wouldn't we? I prefer residencies."
So, is this paucity of practitioners a bad thing for the universities and young artists?
Tsering Motup, a young student who has come to study at the Shiv Nadar University in Noida after a bachelor of fine arts from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, says the importance of artist-teachers cannot be emphasised enough. "The art practitioners teaching at the Shiv Nadar University encourage the students to think outside the box and grow into their ideas."
The rub-off on students, who are already familiar with the artist's work, can be very productive.
Bhavna Kakar, the owner-founder of gallery Latitude 28 in Delhi who studied at Vadodara, feels that while practising artists have a better understanding of the art scene, sometimes their influence ruins the student-artist's prospects of developing his own language. And since art is all about an individual voice, its uniqueness can get affected. Art teacher and practising artist Suresh, too, feels that in art there should be no tradition of faculty. "Although there was a time when the artist-practitioners got highlighted in MS University, the school has to keep changing. Teachers today should be open-minded and encourage a student's sense of liberty and expression."
Not everyone agrees though. "In modern art, most artists emphasise the original, which also allows for mediocrity to be acceptable," counters Ramachandran. "I personally think art is a continuum and we learn from the philosophy and thought process that developed over time. And, while my output in the 20 years since my retirement has been almost double that of the 30 years I taught, I enjoyed those years."
There are, however, still artists willing to teach, mostly because they too studied under practitioners. Sharmila Samant is one of them. She can, however, not teach at her alma mater, Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai because she doesn't have a master's degree in fine arts. So, she, Tushar Joag and Atul Bhalla, along with some other artists, moved to Delhi to formulate the art programme at the privately-owned Shiv Nadar University. They held curriculum development seminars before deciding the course and now maintain a steadfast visiting faculty as well as a cross-disciplinary approach. They also try to address the common complaint of students that art is taught in silos, without a crossover between disciplines and that the emphasis in schools is on perfecting theory at the cost of shaping artistic ability.
It's not an easy issue for artists either. Naman Ahuja, the professor of Indian art and architecture at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi is returning to practising art after 20 years of teaching critical theory. "There's a reason that musicians and dancers never take students till they are older," he says. "As an artist, you have to tear apart pedagogies and hang on to your personal space. But as an academic, you need to go by the book and be patient. I used to exhibit a fair amount of my work but it began to take a back seat as academia took precedence. Now I have to re-establish my voice and find the infrastructure to maintain both worlds."
Driven by purely altruistic reasons, some artists like Sudhir Patwardhan and Bose Krishnamachari are happy to open their studios to students and artists. Krishnamachari, one of the founders of the Kochi Biennale, says, "I taught for one year at the JJ School of Art because I won a Bombay University fellowship. But I wasn't interested in going through books - not the way universities teach. I don't want my students to study like that. I'd rather they learn practical work from artist studios."
So, artists are showing a need for collective spaces and learning. And, they are making their own makeshift arrangements to teach and learn. But this allows art to be squeezed into alternative spaces today and for both artists and academia to opt out of any responsibility towards passing on their knowledge and experience -the way Tagore, Nandlal Bose, Baij and Subramanyan did.
This is not the only place that has lost the tradition of artist-teachers. When Rabindranath Tagore started Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan in 1921, using the award money he'd received with the Nobel Prize, he created Kala Bhavana, the fine arts faculty, to reflect the central role of art and music in his educational philosophy. Nandalal Bose took over in 1923. He also took charge of art exhibitions at the yearly sessions of the Indian National Congress at Lucknow, Faizpur and Haripura during the 1930s. He designed the emblems for government awards, including the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Shri, and, along with his students, beautified the original manuscript of the Constitution of India.
During the course of the 20th century, influenced by this strong mix of politics and art, the tradition of artists teaching at Kala Bhavana continued. Ramkinkar Baij joined Kala Bhavana as a student in 1923. Four years later, he became a teacher here. Benode Behari Mukherjee followed suit in 1925. Their students included painters, activists and art pedagogues like A Ramachandran, Subramanyan and Devi Prasad.
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Over time, however, the list of famous artist-teachers has shrunk - for various reasons. One reason is the straitjacketed academic structure. "Indian universities," says Sheikh, "are not concerned with liberal arts." The University Grants Commission (UGC) has decreed that professors must have a PhD. "I didn't have one. KG (Subramanyan) didn't have one. Even artists already teaching find it difficult to publish papers," he says, adding that as long as B N Goswamy was on the UGC board, he understood that field qualifications were important and that judgments on this should be made by experts. "But we also know that malpractices are now rife. PhDs at some universities are bought and dissertations are only a formality," he adds. As a result, a practising artist of merit might end up at a lower grade and with no option to grow. "You're lucky now if a good art teacher appears on the scene," Sheikh says.
This isn't necessarily a problem limited to India. Thanks to escalating tuition fee, cuts in university budgets, the creeping neo-liberalisation of education and frustration with overstretched tutors, internationally, too, there has been a shift towards self-organised night schools, free-to-attend lecture programmes and artist-run art academies. But these haven't really started in India yet, although online art courses and residencies are popular.
As a result, both artists and art students turn to popular events like the Kochi Biennale, which contemporary artist Jitish Kallat describes as an adda, that provide the rare platform for the two to come together.
"I wasn't drawn to the idea of a set course structure in art or design. I highly doubt it if there is any solid critique happening in art schools," says UBIK, a self-taught, Dubai-based artist whose works can be found in private and public Arab contemporary art collections. "If there was, we would have some pretty interesting art coming out of the younger generation, wouldn't we? I prefer residencies."
So, is this paucity of practitioners a bad thing for the universities and young artists?
Tsering Motup, a young student who has come to study at the Shiv Nadar University in Noida after a bachelor of fine arts from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, says the importance of artist-teachers cannot be emphasised enough. "The art practitioners teaching at the Shiv Nadar University encourage the students to think outside the box and grow into their ideas."
The rub-off on students, who are already familiar with the artist's work, can be very productive.
Bhavna Kakar, the owner-founder of gallery Latitude 28 in Delhi who studied at Vadodara, feels that while practising artists have a better understanding of the art scene, sometimes their influence ruins the student-artist's prospects of developing his own language. And since art is all about an individual voice, its uniqueness can get affected. Art teacher and practising artist Suresh, too, feels that in art there should be no tradition of faculty. "Although there was a time when the artist-practitioners got highlighted in MS University, the school has to keep changing. Teachers today should be open-minded and encourage a student's sense of liberty and expression."
Not everyone agrees though. "In modern art, most artists emphasise the original, which also allows for mediocrity to be acceptable," counters Ramachandran. "I personally think art is a continuum and we learn from the philosophy and thought process that developed over time. And, while my output in the 20 years since my retirement has been almost double that of the 30 years I taught, I enjoyed those years."
There are, however, still artists willing to teach, mostly because they too studied under practitioners. Sharmila Samant is one of them. She can, however, not teach at her alma mater, Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai because she doesn't have a master's degree in fine arts. So, she, Tushar Joag and Atul Bhalla, along with some other artists, moved to Delhi to formulate the art programme at the privately-owned Shiv Nadar University. They held curriculum development seminars before deciding the course and now maintain a steadfast visiting faculty as well as a cross-disciplinary approach. They also try to address the common complaint of students that art is taught in silos, without a crossover between disciplines and that the emphasis in schools is on perfecting theory at the cost of shaping artistic ability.
It's not an easy issue for artists either. Naman Ahuja, the professor of Indian art and architecture at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi is returning to practising art after 20 years of teaching critical theory. "There's a reason that musicians and dancers never take students till they are older," he says. "As an artist, you have to tear apart pedagogies and hang on to your personal space. But as an academic, you need to go by the book and be patient. I used to exhibit a fair amount of my work but it began to take a back seat as academia took precedence. Now I have to re-establish my voice and find the infrastructure to maintain both worlds."
Driven by purely altruistic reasons, some artists like Sudhir Patwardhan and Bose Krishnamachari are happy to open their studios to students and artists. Krishnamachari, one of the founders of the Kochi Biennale, says, "I taught for one year at the JJ School of Art because I won a Bombay University fellowship. But I wasn't interested in going through books - not the way universities teach. I don't want my students to study like that. I'd rather they learn practical work from artist studios."
So, artists are showing a need for collective spaces and learning. And, they are making their own makeshift arrangements to teach and learn. But this allows art to be squeezed into alternative spaces today and for both artists and academia to opt out of any responsibility towards passing on their knowledge and experience -the way Tagore, Nandlal Bose, Baij and Subramanyan did.