Art and Craft in Colonial and PostColonial India

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Art and Craft in Colonial and Post-Colonial India
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Contrast art and craft

• Consider the differences in American culture
• Think about the production of art in India
  historically, and what that tells us...

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From Becker (1982)

• ART
• Low utility
• Unique
• Valuable
• Display/appreciation
• Skill?
• Artist (who pleases him/herself)

• Craft
• High utility
• Some standardization
• Function
• Customer satisfaction
• Skill/virtuosity
• Artisan (making a living)

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Artist craftsman

• Beauty becomes important goal
• Collectible/valuable
• More orientation toward fine arts

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Colonial impact on craft/art

• Breaks patronage ties
• Introduces new ideas of artistic worth and value
• Commercialization of crafts

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Indian response

• How to create an Indian art
• that is part of a new, international art scene?
• Influence of western, modern art
• primitivism
• arts and crafts movements

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Primitivism

• Shift from realism as goal
• Art influenced by
• ideas of the unconscious mind
• questioning of the rational and orderly
• crisis of industrialization
• ethnographic collections of the art of
  small-scale societies
  

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Primitive/tribal societies

• Seem closer to nature
• Experience more authentic emotions and impulses
  than civilized people
  
• art expresses this

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Folk art

• Not quite the power and allure of primitive
  societies
  
• closer to nature
• simple
• uncorrupted by civilization

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Rediscover indigenous crafts

• Authentic
• Pure/untainted
• implications about makers
• simple
• unreflective
• repetitive production
• NOT artists

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Craft becomes art

• Few artisans achieve artist status
• Mithila painting
• Bowa Devi, Ganga Devi
• Wall painting transposed to paper
• portable/ exhibit-friendly/ alienable

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Meaning of paintings..

• Wall decorations for rites of passage
• pleasant space for deity
• jyonti in center contains ritual image (may
  include Devi, Ganesh, sun and moon, etc)
  
• geometric designs surround jyonti
• darsan
• impermanent (on walls)

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