To Master ‘Moshai’, With Love
- Vimala Soundarapandiyan
In the wake of the colonial upheaval and the nationalist movement, a group of young minds worked to revive and preserve Modern Indian Art in the country. Shantiniketan – the birthplace of the Bengal School of Art – was bustling with ideas and activities. Rabindranath Tagore along with his nephew, Abanindranath Tagore was in the process of reviving Modern Indian Art and releasing it from the prison of Western ideas. The Bengal School of Art flourished under such thriving conditions.
Amid such high spirits landed a young boy in Shantiniketan to pursue his passion for art. His hands spoke more eloquently than his tongue, and he went on to become the pioneer of Modern Indian Art and an icon of contextual modernism. The ‘artist laureate of India’ Nandalal Bose, was the disciple of Abanindranath Tagore. The prized protégé of Tagore was deeply influenced by the very ideas and concepts that constituted his consciousness. Understanding the immediacy of visual art, he realised art to be his totem of nationalist sentiment.
The idiosyncratic nature of the artist towards art was not epiphanic, but a careful curation. He relished the taste of art at a very young age, watching his mother Khetramoni Devi’s interest in decorating and ornating puja toys and pandals. Another aspect that only increased the young boy’s enthusiasm was travel. The multifaceted artist has travelled throughout the country to broaden his selfhood and to contribute towards his philosophy of ‘Indianness’. This philosophy of Indianness rooted him in indigenous subjects though he embraced diverse Western techniques.
Nandalal Bose’s guild with his master Abanindranath Tagore, Shantiniketan, and the murals and paintings in Ajanta rousted his dedication towards classical and folk art with a nationalistic consciousness. Bose understood that the ethos of art played prominent roles – life-enhancing and world-shaping. This eclectic artist was an amalgamation of Tagore’s cultural regeneration of India and Gandhi’s political and economic ideologies.
Throughout his artistic endeavour, he deftly emulated different styles from the Indian subcontinent. He employed Mughal art, Rajput miniatures, watercolour and tempera. His paintings boasted of being both cosmopolitan and Indian. Critic and art historian R. Sivakumar, quoted, “Nandalal Bose looked at cultural idioms and the fabric of the common man when he created images of musicians, blacksmiths, tailors, esraj player, a veena player, or women doing their chores. One of the finest among them is the ‘Bull Fighter’. The vigour and tenacity of the man and the bull are shown through strong, gestural lines and swaths of bright, bold colours. It was prominently displayed on the Haripura conference ground.” He further added, “Deceptively simple in appearance and invoking the flavour of folk painting, the Haripura posters are an amalgamation of the decorative and calligraphic art with a rare ingenuity and personal insignia.”
The infamous Haripura paintings are said to be one of Bose’s thoughtful ideas. He used the available native materials to decorate the meeting areas and walls reflecting the artist’s love for indigeneity and sentiment for his homeland. The Haripura paintings mirrored the country’s rural life exploring the robust and rustic essence of villages. The subjects portray the characters of the rural people; for instance, hunters, musicians, bull handlers, carpenters, and many more.
With his atelier, Bose remains the craftsman behind the Constitution of India’s manuscript design. The illustrations in the Constitution represent India’s journey and heritage, the graceful illumination of India’s core philosophy of secularism. Bose used illustrations from every religion in the country to manifest this idea. The Constitution consists of twenty-two carefully selected images that depict India’s historical and cultural heritage, building a narrative. The art embraces every part of the India of yore – history, culture, geography and tradition – in a chronology.
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