Introduction text by Dr. Sanjoy Kumar Mallik
The Calcutta Group was an artist’s collective that came together in 1943. As one of the first among such attempts, from the early phase of the modern in Indian art, this collective with a decade-long life, was involved in negotiating the issue of identifying a visual language (mostly in formal/stylistic terms) that would neither succumb to the art school brand academism nor the prevalent alternative of the so-called ‘Bengal School’ patterns. The initial eight members of the group were Prodosh Das Gupta, Kamala Das Gupta (T.C. Kamala), Gopal Ghosh, Paritosh Sen, Nirode Mazumdar, Shubho Tagore, Rathin Maitra, and Prankrishna Pal. They were later joined at various dates by Abani Sen, Govardhan Ash, Sunil Madhav Sen and Hemanta Misra.
Contemporary literature reflecting upon immediate developments in cultural practice are fascinating source material as proximate index to prevalent critical perspectives.
Such a text in the context of the Calcutta Group was Klaus Fischer’s essay in Marg of 1953. Incidentally, 1953 happens to be the date of the final exhibition of collective.
In a note written in the so-called Calcutta Group ‘handbook’, presumably published to accompany this exhibition, the collective identified its ideals thus:
“… The guiding motto of our Group is best expressed in the slogan “Art should be international and interdependent”. In other words, our art cannot progress or develop if we always look back to our past glories and cling to our old traditions at all cost. The vast new world of art, rich and infinitely varied, created by Masters the world over in all ages, beckons us. … our art has stood still since the seventeenth century. But during the past three hundred years the world outside of India has made vast strides in art, has evolved epoch-making discoveries in forms and techniques. It is absolutely necessary for us to close this hiatus by taking advantage of these developments in the Western world.”
Implicit within the proclaimed ideal of the group is a preferential leaning towards the art of the West, with a regenerative intention of infusing vitality and new life into the dissipated vigour of the then contemporary Indian art, through the invention of a visual language suitably modern (equated with “international”) and therefore capable of being the vehicle for expression of the diverse nuances of transformed experience of a new time.
Formations of artists’ collectives with a faith in the developments in European art and a pro-European leaning in terms of linguistic choice have had a prehistory before the coming together of the Calcutta Group. The differences emerge through the historic moment of its inception — the manmade famine of 1942/43, the World War, the Quit India movement and popular upsurge, form the backdrop against which the artists of the Calcutta Group would like us to view the functioning of the collective.
Unlike another set of artists engaged in formulating an iconography of the famine, thereby a direct thematic response to contemporary socio-political developments, the Calcutta Group attempted to define its modernist slant devoid of any political connotations of the “progressive”. The stress was predominantly on form and notions of style.
Given the paucity of documentary evidence, Klaus Fischer’s 1953 essay in the Marg is an invaluable source, for the images that accompany the text as illustrations are irrefutable evidences of period activity. But it is his text that is of art historical/art critical concern here. The essay oscillates between dual concerns — defining the alchemy of artistic image-formation, and the proclamation of a globally common, international language in visual art — around which the author attempts to define the collective as a phenomenal instance.
In the text, there are obvious conflations equating the “East” and the “West”; there also exist a slippery transition of a well intended demystification of the artistic genius that lapses back into the “anima” factor. But amidst such ‘flaws’, Klaus Fischer perceptively observes how the “artists of the Calcutta Group acknowledge that the Paris of Sartre, Stravinsky and Picasso is the art centre of our days”. He is also perceptive enough to identify that the collective does not desire to stress a singular stylistic conformity, that “the artists of the Calcutta Group have not fixed themselves to one style or ‘ism’ and that individual quest is driven forward by the will to transcend “narrow limits of tradition and prejudice”.
The author addresses the heart of the tradition modern debate from a balanced position, analysing how the then present era had lost a valid perspective on artistic merit, “otherwise we would not be misled into appreciating something just because it is ancient (or is a good copy of an ancient work) and to discard something which is not traditional. On the other hand, not every sculpture or painting of the contemporaries is a perfect work of art, and no member of the Calcutta Group will claim to do one masterpiece after another … they prefer a failure in experiment to successful imitation”. Despite the prescriptive in the tone, Klaus Fischer advocates with a certain degree of acuity, that artists can “best serve his country” by “entirely devoting himself to art for art’s sake, by developing his forms as best as possible and even by departing from the contemporaries’ demands … artists are not passive members of society, who merely execute what the incalculable mind of people demands … they do not imitate meaningless traditions, but they create new ideas”.
The voice of modernism is heard clear when he claims the contemporary artist to be “a member of the mechanical age” to whom we “owe the awareness of the fact that beauty is possible even in factories, in dam projects, in airplanes and in our daily life”. Despite its obvious limitations from our present-day vantage point, the Klaus Fischer essay is a testimony to the kind of critical thought that permeated and constituted art-historical perspectives of the early 1950s.
Klaus Fischer: ‘The Calcutta Group’
Marg Vol. VI, No. 4, Deepavali 1953, pg. 53–72
- Art and Nature in past and present
Although we have learnt so many things in science, psychology, sociology and philosophy, the creative moment in the sphere of art still remains a secret. Before we try to add some new (and, necessary subjectly) conjectures about the meaning of contemporary Indian art, represented here by the nine members of the Calcutta Group, we must review the Eastern and Western background with its reciprocity of imagination and imitation.
Those two main sources inspire the artists to render their inner visions by means of what visible nature had offered them as models. Some schools of art keep close to realistic observations: others abstract from nature’s eternal forms. Certain art movements lead from naturalism to abstraction (Spanish cave painting, Cretan art, Ajanta. Occidental ornament, Picasso, Keyl); others develop typical and abstract schemes into figures of naturalistic observation (Egypt under Akhenaton, classic Greek art, Chinese art between Han and Tang Period, Gothic and Picasso during the last decade). Both ancient Indian and the Occident up to the Gothic period preferred a fixed iconography with idealised and schematised types; nature was well known to these masters who expressed their ideas in naturalistic abstractions. Indian (Rajput) painting continued to represent most themes in an idealistic and abstract manner: after the period of English realism, the Indian revivalists imitated Gupta sculpture and Rajput painting. This was more a political act rather than a mere artistic creation; painters and sculpture did not study nature as their ancestors did, but they restricted themselves in copying the art-forms of those ancestors; even today they satisfy their public by empty imitations – in “impressionistic” manner by rendering crude nature like a photographer or in “traditional Indian” style by copying images of the past. Unfortunately, paintings and sculpture of that kind used to represent “Modern Indian art” abroad till now: even in recent exhibitions credulous European and American people content themselves with sweetish pictures corresponding to their romantic view of an India which, perhaps never existed.
During the same half millenary, Europeans art started to discover the nature of man and world. Lorenzelli, Parler, Eyck, Masaccio, Donatello, Leonardo, Durer, Michelangelo, Greco, Rubens, Rembrandt, Goya, Renoir – to name only a few- contributed to the subjects of landscape, interior, genre, portrait, representation of the Saints, and to forms of perspective, descriptive realism, supranaturalistic High Renaissance style, impressionism, expressionism not as individual artistic experiments, but as new and better means of worshipping the invisible by pictures of appearances. When nature was intensively studied and wholly discovered, “modern” artists like Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, Mare, Barlach, Klee, Lehmbruck, Moore, Malare etc, abstracted from her; returning to ideal, expressionistic and abstract forms once common in the East and West. Regardless of specific natural forms, regardless of particular iconography of the various countries and continents, religions and doctrines, true artists today are able to render their ideas in forms intelligible for the whole of mankind. The artist may be literally isolated from the sources of historical and holy books; but as far as pure artistic expression is concerned, they are important links in one unbroken chain of world ideas.
To understand the creative moment of imagination, one must be an artist oneself. This does not mean that one have to paint or to write verses, but one must be sensitive to values. Modern psychology and biology explain this fact; basically everybody is an artist as “child artist’ demonstrates. This skill gets lost or is not sufficiently developed: but still everyone is known to possess certain creative equipment enabling him to perceive art, literature and music. The difference between the artist and the contemplator is quantitative rather than qualitative. This relation exists between man and woman; human beings are composed of male and female elements, and the quantity of sex chromosomes determines which genus one belongs to. The other components, however, are still effective in the modes of human behaviour, and have been explained as “anima” or “animus”. While most men are so-called “normal mixtures” the opposite component prevails in the artists. The facts common in all countries and ages connect artists and art lovers, and separate these men from the ordinary people who reveal less of artistic sensibility.
Simple imitations are easily acceptable to the common public possessing only few elements of imaginative and creative mind and biological substance opposite to their proper nature. Artists and art lovers have often to bear emotions and passions and sufferings due to their complex equipment; but they are able to create and to understand sublime imaginations independent of this daily life. Each day reminds the artist of his dependence upon materialistic conditions. As regards the contents, society tries to control him and to induce him to confine himself to morals and religion; but the artist being aware of superstition and hypocrisy exerts himself to render more than transitory values. And the forms models supplied by nature seem to him incomplete and defective, and he longs to go far beyond fortuitousness in order to reach perfection. Our century of scientific progress puts the question to every citizen; which freedom is he willing or able to practice towards nature and society? The coming of political freedom to Asian countries involves this problem then; where will Asian artists looks for inspiration? Will they partake of Western thoughts and achieve in synthesis?
Some contemporary Indian artists, following the fifty year-old history of imitating and reviving Ajanta forms boast of following the traditional Indian style of idealisation and abstraction, without being aware of creative Western abstraction owing to the crossing of imagination and imitation. Other artists, however, realise the fact that in the history of art and literature leading people supersede each other; that once the so called Orientalising style in Greek vase painting displayed the importance of the East for the West; that afterwards Greek sculpture inspired Indian artists, that the latter have influenced Indonesia, Nepal and China in theme and form or that modern western painting of the 19th century was intensively explored in Japan, that the Japanese colour prints were admired by Whistler and became models for European impressionism.
The Calcutta Group
The artists of the Calcutta group acknowledge that the Paris of Sartre, Stravinsky and Picasso is the art centre of our days and that, perhaps in the near future, Italians, Mexicans or Russians may point out new trends but for the moment, painters and sculpture of West Europe are developing forms of international understanding. As modern biology explains how man repeats in a concentrated from the evolution of mankind in the course of his individual growth the history of arts reports how very often famous artist express in their lifeworks the way of generations. The Chinese painter, Wu Tao-lzu, in the beginning of the 8th century A.D., is said to have imitated at first Ku-Kai-chih in every subtle detail. Later on, his expression became bolder and he discovered the pure ink painting. So he represents the way from the Han period to the Tang period. In the same manner, Leonardo has revealed in his personal work the change from early to High Renaissance, as Michelangelo, that from Renaissance to Baroque, Matisse, Picasso, Moore have studied nature as intensively as generations before them: in their education, they repeat the development of their precursors and acquire all realistic knowledge in order to go far beyond and deeply beneath nature in their individual visions. Today, true artists are bound neither to empty imitation of nature nor to forms of traditional imagination; inspired by individual imagination they are able to render artistic ideas by means of ever new imitations of natural, folkloristic or metaphysical models such as they consciously select.
- The Ten Years Work of the Calcutta Group
The artists of the Calcutta Group are fully aware that they belong to a scientific age. They know that divine and human images are no longer to be shaped in traditional forms but, they know too, that ‘humanism’ is still the main appeal of art. Although sculptors and painters of the Calcutta Group do not make a business of their art by producing gods and goddesses imitating subjects of the Hindu or any other Pantheon in Ajanta – Renaissance or other forms familiar to the public- still they believe in the divinity of their own elaboration. They realise, however, that the mechanical age must find other forms than that of cathedrals, temples or mosque. The Human and the Divine are valuable contents, and the artist of the Calcutta Group serve them best by rejecting traditional forms and by finding new forms.
The very existence of the Group proves the spiritual meaning of contemporary art. The Calcutta Group was established in 1943 when Bengal was oppressed by famine and pestilence. In those dark days when the Eastern as well as the Western world seemed to be abandoned by the gods, some sculptors and printers assembled in order to demonstrate that MAN was still alive and was to dominate the Fine Arts which had flourished inspite of social disruption. Thus one of the first few Asian groups of modern art was started; no particular programme was proclaimed except to march ahead and to find new ways. Later on, progressive artists in other provinces of India, in Ceylon and other Asian countries formed themselves into new groups.
At present only few members of the group work in Calcutta itself; they have come from, and have gone different places; but they work with the full and firm conviction that all art is interdependent. Sculptors and painters of quite different origins, temperaments and education have met. Some of them have been pupils of Indian Art schools, others have been abroad to complete their studies, and a few self-taught painters. Artists like Prodosh Das Gupta or Gobardhan Ash were trained in ‘realistic’ or ‘naturalistic’ work. Prankrishna Pal and Nirode Mazumdar had first practiced in the so-called “Indian style”; all of them have discarded those imitative studies in order to render their proper imaginations in an abstract approach. But in all their works, we feel that they know nature and that they are Indians. During the years of training, they absorbed all naturalistic and artistic lessons of their precursors and contemporaries.
They studied prehistoric art and folklore as well as ancient Indian and modern Western schools. Archetypes common to all great civilisation of the past and present are to be found in their works; not in the unconscious manner of primitive culture, but with the full consciousness which is the destiny of our age.
They choose and imitate ‘naturalistic’ models like plants, animals, or human beings where they consider them useful and they rejected any ‘realistic similarity’ which does not agree with the images in their mind. One may compare those principles with aesthetic theories of ancient Indian when the precepts taught the artist first to observe nature exactly, and to shape the proper image from memory, with closed eyes and relying upon the inner view. In the present year, for example, Sunil Madhav Sen and Prodosh Das Gupta modify freely natural forms while Hemanta Mishra or Rathin Mitra keep close to the world of appearances. In the next period, the artist may absolutely change their style, when they find some other natural for worthy of re-creation, or when they conceive ideas impossible to express except in an abstract way. Man devoted to a spiritual task must free himself from the bondage of society, even from the love of a woman, but he needs very often return to the woman to search for new inspiration. The artist aiming at self-expression, who seeks to express moods of common understanding, must first trust his own imagination but from time to time he will return to nature admiring the endless variations of her forms.
Unlike other modernists imitating the inventions of one leading master, the artists of the Calcutta Group have not fixed themselves to one style or ‘ism’ and they have not exchanged the slavery of society or nature with that of fashion or business. Every member has full scope to develop himself and so look forward and beyond the narrow limits of tradition and prejudice. Whoever knows the social conflicts of modern artists in East and West will wonder who guarantees this freedom to those Calcutta artists. The answer is simple; they themselves by trying to be good citizens. They earn their livelihood as art teacher, museum artists, gallery keepers, staff artists or lawyers. They are not forced to ‘produce’ work of art for pleasing the public and selling them at any price, especially at the cost of good taste.
The sculptors and painters of the Calcutta Group agree in their obvious preoccupation with formal problems. While ignorant art critics reproach them with following extravagant ways, they find themselves, as a matter of fact, in the neighbourhood of two splendid traditions. In ancient Indian sculptor and painting we witness the same religious contents modified by endless and always beautiful formal variations; the ‘artisans’ serving different employers seem to have found a high formal pleasure in their tasks. Both ancient and modern poetry and music in East and West are basically variations on given subjects. In medieval Western art too, the stone-mason, bound to the cultural background of the age of cathedrals, devoted himself very often to works of “L’ art pour l’ art”. During the last generations masters and schools of the West have drawn the conclusion and struggled for acknowledge of “pure heart”. Contemporary Indian artists take over modern international forms to render ancient Indian ideas.
But the artists of the Calcutta Group do not blindly follow Western trends; for they remember that some cultural impacts of the West were and are detrimental to India (realistic acedamism of the 19th century, historism in architecture, puritanism, Hollywood movies etc.). They realise that the present situation of standing with one foot in the East and with the other in the West may involve discrepancies; but they do not despair and try to make the best use of certain undeniable facts.
The subjects in the exhibit of the Calcutta artist are of less importance. Indian nature are of man, folklore of the different tribes from the Eastern and Northern regions of India, social subjects, (especially 1943-44, when they were ‘urgent’) are only starting point of their artistic ideas. One point, however, to which they return very often, as all artist did before and will continue to do as long as art is to exist, deserves special mention; woman. We see imitations of the single woman; we find several women together; the woman worshipping, the woman dancing, the woman completing the man: we see the woman nude, and the woman clothed. But always we recognise the woman naked and isolated – as she lives in the imagination of artists and aesthetes. The women herself as nature is uninteresting, a necessary and beloved evil; she, who tries to avert the man’s mind from his work. She, to whom we succumb in life is conquered by art. As vehicle of their artistic expressions, painters and sculptors imitate the variety of female beings. And they find the image of the woman as anima of man and the world.
The artist of the Calcutta Group feel that the heritage of East and trends of the West interdependent and they ignore any critic who misrepresents these two intellectual forces. In 1954, they will exhibit a selection of their first decade’s work in Europe and America; The Calcutta Group being one of the first Asian group of progressive art, is to be a pioneer in representing modern India abroad by an unitary collective show. This tour may become an occasion for creative criticism and self- criticism. Western friends of art will see Asian artists striving for common ideals of art without having been trained in Western technique and without having seen Western originals. Indian artists will look round and see if they can conquer more fertile fields of inspirations.
III. Art and life in East and West.
Since man has a predilection for tradition, he finds it difficult to accept any new trends in arts. The late Donatello, Michelangelo or Rembrandt or the newly started Impressionists, Expressionists, or Abstracts, surprised, disappointed and frightened their contemporaries by not repeating familiar types, and by finding new forms and contents. But the history of culture teaches us that great individuals often anticipate future developments. Sometimes, they create works to be understood only much later. Like Rembrandt transforming early naturalistic observations into impressionistic visions; at other times, they point the direction for the very next generation as did Cezanne or Amrita Sher-Gil.
Expressionism and abstraction are neither quite new nor are they typically Western products. The ‘style’ do not follow one after another, but the ‘archaic’ and the ‘classic’ the ‘naturalistic’ and the ‘surrealistic’ and the ‘abstract’ are present, possible and even necessary everywhere and always. But, sometimes, one of those trends becomes predominant and significant for a decade or a century. Since 1900, expressionism and abstraction, developed in French and German schools, are the ruling forms which render subjects common to the whole of mankind.
The public understands comparatively easily, ‘realistic’ and ‘classic’ art forms which obviously imitate things to be seen and recognised in nature; in former times, people were able also to participate in the splendid imaginations of creative genius. Today, however, we face a decay of the taste of the people who appreciate only empty imitations because of the rigors of the machine age with deadening of the sensibility which it brings. The purchaser prefers a traditional imitation of Ajanta or Rajput style or copies after ancient Chinese patterns (in Europe, Gothic or classicistic revivalism) effective even nowadays. After World War II, people like photographic imitations of pure nature: they admire pure copies of folkloric patterns. But the Indian public and art critic are not willing to feel the true meaning of the classical heritage, the artistic appeal of nature, the strength of folklore – all being great powers which are to be transformed by modern ways. Modifying a saying of a famous German thinker one can suggest: if people do not understand their contemporary artists, it is not the fault of the artist.
Since the 19th century, we have studied ethnology, history and archaeology of all civilisation. Authors in East and West have interpreted typical trends in the development of any kind of art; reciprocity between naturalistic observation and artistic abstraction; transformation of one style by the impact of foreign influences, retarding of cultural progress by useless traditionalism, overwhelming power of new artistic ideas; struggle between artist and society; importance of one leading master for contemporary and following schools, etc.. But nobody dare apply this knowledge for our present time, and the arguments of reactionary Indian art critics resemble those of the last generation in the West, and essentially, they reflect contradictions once advanced by the contemporaries of Phidias or Rembrandt. For example, all art historians praise Leonardo for having created the art of the High Renaissance and they appreciate Durer as the artist who brought the new style to the Northern countries. But only a few admit that Picasso points out artistic ideals of our countries and that Keyl spreads them to the East.
Today, much misunderstanding may occur between the artist and the public. Once long ago, when the employers “ordered” works in hierarchic or secular buildings nobody intended consciously to “produce art” whilst now sculptors and painters have become responsible for their ideas. In former times people were satisfied to find familiar contents in the usual places – today, the onlooker must possess certain feeling to judge former values. We have gained knowledge of the history of art, but have lost correct understanding of the artistic quality, otherwise we would not be misled into appreciating something just because it is ancient (or is a good copy of an ancient work) and to discard something which is not traditional. On the other hand, not every sculpture or painting of the contemporaries is a perfect work of art, and no member of the Calcutta Group will claim to do one masterpiece after another, but all artist of like this Group and other like-minded contemporaries agree about just principles, they prepare a failure in experiment to successful imitation. Such an attitude will provoke the opposition of the Eastern public for the traditional Oriental theory of aesthetics involves the principle that the beautiful consists in correct rendering of well known and familiar subjects. And modern minded Indian painters who seek for truth and freedom must risk the adventure of deviating not only from traditional subjects but from canonical beauty. In the International Art exhibition, opened in Delhi in May 1953, we learnt that nearly all Asian countries reflect the influence of modern Western art.
How can contemporary express the Eastern mind? Not by imitating Ajanta, Sigiriya, Borobodur and other glories of the past but by adding new moderns. For comparison, we quote the “reconstruction” of two medieval cities of the West which were of great historical and archeological importance and heavily damaged during World War II: Cologne and Conventry. The architect rejected the idea of copying the old plans and facades, they erected new buildings which are both useful and beautiful and worthy to stand besides the remains of ancient greatness. But many conservative movements in East as well as in the West refuse to admit of any change of customs and habits which were valid a thousand years ago, uncertain of being entitled to preserve the present state of living they hide themselves behind the “holy past” or “ancient heritage”.
How can the contemporary artists best serves his country? Not by producing obtrusive works of religious or social contents, but by entirely developing himself to art for art’s sake, by developing his forms as best as possible even by departing from the contemporaries demands, always following his own views and ideas. After all artists and friends of art are social beings. Aware or unaware they take part in the peculiarities and changes of economic condition, political states and spiritual perceptions. In contrast to politicians and businessmen, the artist is not passive members of society who merely execute what the incalculable mind of people demands. By their spiritual activity artists inspire and change society. They do not imitate meaningless traditions, but they create new ideas. And they feel responsible for the results of their works, as everybody should who is the instrumental of a powerful imagination. Today the artist is more necessary than ever. It is obvious that he was indispensable in the past, in the days of temples and palaces; but as a member of the mechanical age, it is to him that we owe the awareness of the fact that beauty is possible even in factories, in dam projects, in airplanes and in our daily life.
The artists of the Calcutta Group, participants in the Indian, complex, creative expression, as well as of the international community struggle with form. They refuse the easy way of imitating the old culture of their country, and strive to create something new and original that shall render beautiful the lives of men.
NOTE: The images are not part of the above mentioned exhibition and are only used to illustrate the article.
