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Kathmandu Sunday December 30, 2001 Paush 15, 2058.
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A Hiatus in History
By Ajit Baral
It was probably Narabhaktasingh Tulachan who
first started writing on art. His slim book on art
that was published in Banaras was reviewed in Gorakhapatra in 2015 BS by Narayan Bahadur
Singh. Assuming that Tulachan wrote the book three or four years before it was reviewed,
we are nearing the fifty-years of Nepali art writing. This is an opportune moment to take
stock of Nepali art writing. For the stock-taking I have selected three art writings:
Sosanne Von der Heide’s "From British Naturalism to Modern Abstract Paintings in
Nepal," which was published in the book Anthropology of Tibet and the High Himalaya
in 1993; Manuj Babu Mishra’s "Contemporary Art in Nepal," which was
published in the catalogue of the 1989 Fukuoka Biennale; and, Abhi Subedi’s
"Nepali Art: Nepali Utopia," which was published in Contribution to Nepalese
Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2 (July 1995). I have reviewed Heide’s article to assess the
foreign scholarly work on Nepali art; Mishra’s and Subedi’s, to find out what
the leading Nepali art writers have been writing on art. The cursory review of these three
articles, written in different points in time, will not give an objective picture of
Nepali art writing. However, it will help us to give a fair representation of what is
happening in Nepali art writing.
Anthropology and sociology have been favoured
fields of study on Nepal; whereas Nepali art has been a relative area of neglect,
especially by foreigners. While there have been few studies on sculpture and traditional
painting; there is little on art that comes under the rubric of modernism. Why such a
dearth of foreign scholarships on Nepali art, particularly on the modern epoch of Nepali
art? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Nepali art is not progressively good. Leave
aside western scholarship, even our art, which shares so much with Indian art, has not
merited studies from Indian art scholars.
In her article, Heide purportedly explains how
Nepali art moved from the influence of British Naturalism to abstraction. That is a
perfectly valid subject of study. While the beginning of British Naturalism in Nepal has
been explained, the characteristics of British Naturalism and when and how abstract
painting began to manifest itself have been overlooked. Hiede has not even explained the
qualities that epitomize abstract painting. What she has in the article is two or three
short biographic sketches of artists. Surprisingly this incomplete article merited its
inclusion in an academic book of some worth.
There are few Nepalis who can match the
understanding of world art that Manuj Babu Mishra has. He is au fait with everything-
primitive art, Greek art, Egyptian art, European art, American art, and art theories. But
Mishra does not bring his vast repertoire of knowledge of world art to bear on the
interpretation of Nepali art. We do not find him exploring aspects like the creative
preoccupation of artists, trends manifesting in Nepali art or, social-cultural reflection
in paintings. He is prone to excessively dwelling on traditional art of which there is a
fair amount of record, but not contemporary art. In "Contemporary Art in Nepal"
the author does not sketch the then contemporary art scene. He writes, "... attempts
have been made through different media to give expression to the powerful feelings of the
mind" without mentioning what the "different media" are and what the
"powerful feelings of the mind" are. This sort of vagueness is not uncommon in
his writings.
Abhi Subdi is one of the few writers who have
been giving continuity to art writing. He brings his understanding of literary criticism
in art writing, gets in touch with most of the artists and sees how they work. So he is in
a position to reflect on the creative preoccupation of artists, what they are trying to
achieve and how they play with different media. This, he has done in the second part of
"Nepali Art: Nepali Utopia" which deals exclusively with modernism in Nepali
art. But Subedi tends to go into the thematic aspects of the painting rather than the
process, and the overall effect and subtleties of the painting. As a result, his writings
seem more like thematic exposition or literary imposition rather than aesthetic
interpretation. And he at times relapses into vague expressions like "visible and
invisible lines" and "vertical painting". Another example is: "The
paper gives the artist an opportunity to create a dialogue not only between the form and
the subject matter, but also between the canvas and the other media–colour and
lines." These relapses make his writings abstruse.
In the article Abhi Subedi has sketched the
history of Nepali art since the Lichhavi period. In the historical sketch, one would
expect the recordings of every departure made by Nepali art and the circumstances and
conditions that facilitated the departure. But he has given short shrift to the
explanation of how the transition to modernity was made. Modernism in India came as a
reaction against stultifying nature of nationalist art and it reached its zenith in 1940s
when it got ideological colour. Modernism in Nepal also may have come as a reaction to
something. Or, it may have come because of internal compulsions or the desire to move
ahead with the changing time. None of these possibilities is explored in an effort to
explain the shift in style.
Granted that Nepali art writing was in an
inchoate stage when modernism began and no one wrote about how, why and when modernism
came into Nepal. But there should have been at least some writing on the contemporary art.
Existing art writing is confined to art criticism, which is shallow, uninformed and as the
Indian artist Prakash Chandwadkar said, mainly biographic. This lack of informed studies
and art writings has cr1eated a void in art history. There is an urgent need to fill this
gap to avert the possibility of Nepali art history being irretrievably lost in the warp of
time. Anyone listening?
(A. Baral occasionally writes on art)
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