LOCAL NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Need to strive for better infrastructure

Nepal — the Himalayan Kingdom sandwiched between the two great nations—China and India— is a country rich in traditional arts, culture, and heritage. It is the land of heady mixture of unique and rich cultures in scenic nature. It is a pleasant country where foreigners can revitalise their mind, body and soul amidst beautiful scenery.

Experiencing Nepali culture, festival and arts could be the highlight of a visit to Nepal — the land of vivid colour, dances, thousands of gods and goddesses and the lively pleasure of festivals.
The peaceful coexistence of multi-religious system and the age-old tradition are unique among the cultures of the world.

Nepal’s culture, festivals, art and so many other traditional rich artistic objects are dynamic, enthralling events for every foreigner. The influx of new sights and sounds are full of energy and life, and rich with genuine excitement.

Nepal’s wonderful cultural heritage is an invaluable resource, one which the Nepalese are striving to preserve.

As Nepal was opened to the outer world only from 1950 onwards, unlike other areas, Nepalese art flourished in the decade of sixties. Since then, Nepalese art has become much popular in most of the nooks and corners of the world. It has been able to make its way to Sotheby and Christies — both the world’s auction houses— which have so far auctioned many Nepalese sculptures, thankas, traditional and contemporary art works.

Over the past two decades, the Nepalese art world has seen many ups and downs. It was possible due to the onerous efforts of all the art related people to give a filing to the publicity campaign with a deluge of new ideas and artistic commitments.

But there still exists the dearth of books published on traditional or contemporary Nepalese art. The bitter reality is that the art market mechanism is still in an incipient stage. Hence the need of the hour is to strive for a better infrastructure and mechanism to develop the art market.

There is the lack of documentation and Nepalese criticism of art works is still very weak. Compared to the past, the Nepalese seem to be taking more interest in buying the art works. The general public has a penchant to contemporary paintings. Thus, the sales of contemporary art artists who could be leveled up to the artists from other Asian, European and North as well as South American countries. Thus, in Nepal also it has become necessary to fix standards for pricing of the art works. Nepal should have some institution where art critics, historians and other experts could be built. Research in art must be encouraged. The lack of basic knowledge of art in general is a difficult issue that is being faced by the Nepalese art field. The collectors are looking for solid information on art and artists. As there are no journals and newspapers highlighting art works, people at refined culture with concentration of religious monuments unequalled in the world, we have many arts, music, cultural talents from all over Nepal who have achieved global acclaim and opened up new horizons for the country’s art and cultural development while being based in Europe or in the home too
In fact, art and culture should be recognised as one of the most important factors of the country’s development which determines a country’s quality of life as well as one of the strategic elements for encouraging creativity and enhancing economic value added.

The government’s vision of knowledge on arts and culture is both meaningful and refreshing. But such an ambitious vision requires effective implementation to realise these lofty goals. For this, there needs a visionary leader to expose Nepal’s rich cultural heritage and inspire the artists to create worthy pieces to the world stage.

Thus, time has come to make timely changes and rectify the lapses by inspiring the people to develop the art into an industry as practiced in the West.

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