Indian Art for Centuries, Philosophers

Indian Art For centuries, philosophers have puzzled the human condition. Questions abound about why humans act the way they do, why they form groups, what role cultural and social norms have for learning, how societies form, the nature of society, social change, and the way integration and alienation fit in with modern societies. In particular, the changes in urbanization and technology, and access to other cultures, spurred even more study of what it means to be human.

Together, these paradigms form a notion of human history in which theories have tried to explain different aspects of human behavior and interaction. One way of looking at a particular issue on the human condition is through art. We ask ourselves, then, what is it we can learn from art that may enhance or become more experiential than literature.

In the most basic sense, we learn to benefit from the insight of others and to open our minds to new ways of thinking, of the ambiguities of meaning, and of different interpretations that come into our own tool box of life. Art is a part of the extreme and most availably knowledge about humanity. Even simple sketches contain our overall beliefs about ourselves and the universe, our assumptions about the world, and how we found ways to understand and live to the next generation.

Art forces us to pause a bit and think about what we see and feel; we can visualize it on the surface, or we can look for deeper meaning and ask, "what is the artist telling us?" Of course, we know that life is not simple and cannot always be expressed in simple terms. This is a powerful way to introduce some of the material from post-colonial India. K.S. Kulkarni, (1916-1994), for instance, lived during a time of turbulence and change for India.

He was born while the Raj still controlled almost every aspect of Indian life, during the transfer of power and the initial conflict between Hinduism and Islam, the assassination of Gandhi and the formation of a new democracy, and even into the post-Cold War India in which the tenets of globalism began to drastically change Indian Society. Krishna Kulkarni studied art in Bombay and had his first one-man show in 1945 when he was almost 30.

In 1948 he founded the Triveni Kala Sangam and served as the director of the Art Department for the next 20 years. In the mid-1950s, he began to travel throughout Central and South America, and was heavily influenced by both the Mayan and Incan artistic expression (Kulkarni -- Profile, 2012). Kulkarni focused primarily on the form of art -- and thought that art could hold meaning and emotion in a way that literature could not.

In his artwork, this comes through in the manner in which his images have no real cultural context -- they can be peasants in India, Mexico, or Guatemala; and the dwellings and views of the micro can be almost anyplace and anytime. It seemed, in fact, that Kulkarni wanted to dialog with his audience, to experiment with form in a way that would challenge the traditional Indian, but also take a theme a mutate it through both the imperialistic and post-colonial world.

Sometimes his critics found that because Kulkarni's art was so multi-cultural and chronological vague, that it had no real redeeming features for modern India. Kulkarni wrote a defense of this statement by noting, "If art was an effective means of solving our problems -- and how I wish it were so -- wars would have ceased as a terrible human activity after Goya, Rouault and Picasso. To our horror it is still there and more terrible than ever before.

I cannot see that we can assign a larger role to art today" that at other times in history (Datta, 2006). Looking at one of Kulkarni's pieces, a Peasant in the City, oil on canvas done sometime in the 1960s, we see a trend in modern Indian art in which the protagonist is featured as a part of an abstract background. Literally, the piece is a snapshot of a man and a beast, at night in a large urban area. The man is downcast, downtrodden, with no discernible ethnicity or age.

He is a mixture of gray, and his elongated facial features suggest that he is, or has been, weeping. The single animal by his side could be a dog, a cow, or a representation of simply an "animal." The animal's front leg is extended, ostensibly onto the fence in which the man is leaning. The houses are abstract, made up of geometric lines and some color, designed it seems to indicate that they are lit.

The moon is full, but there is a strange shadow appearing on the inside of the mood, one in which we are not really certain if a large tree or mountain is blocking our view, or if some figure is walking towards us. The blues in the sky, swirling outward, are somewhat reminiscent of Van Gough's Starry Night. The city is somewhat of a study in cubism, broken angles fading in and out of focus.

One of the striking interpretive issues of the piece is actually not the focal point, but the background. The way the city is portrayed seems to be a bit of a commentary on modern urbanism -- crowded tenements hastily put together, the individuality completely absent, and the lack of much color or decoration suggesting abject poverty, a coldness and futility. This is certainly enhanced when we move to the man and his companion.

In a sense, a Peasant in the City is defined by its title, and while we know it was painted by an Indian, it could be any peasant in any city. However, perhaps Kulkarni was also reacting to post-colonial India and what had become of the ordered and very European life of the earlier century. One theme that is rife within literature in the post-colonial period is that of the dehumanization of.