Art Institutions in India

In this feature Kolkata based art historian and critic Oindrilla Maity makes a survey of Indian Art Institutions where quality art education is imparted to the aspiring students.
MS University Of Baroda
Most art institutions in India have a colonial past. They were founded either during the colonial times by the Indians themselves who were chiefly reformers or by the British rulers, with an eye primarily on commercial purposes. Here is a glimpse on them and the courses they offer today
The Creative-i College is one of India's leading places for the study, practice and development of the Arts & Design.Located in Pune, Maharashtra, it provides a vibrant, innovative and accomplished environment, one focused on collaboration and community. Creative-i College has taken a creative approach in adapting to the winds of change in university education, leading to an intellectual adventure. The faculty, facilities and technology help them acquire valuable job skills as well as increase their knowledge, analytical skills, and expand their imagination to meet the challenges of a global community. The college offers Bachelor's Degree Courses in: Product Design (Industrial Design), Fine Arts (Painting), Applied Arts (Commercial Art), Digital Arts (Multimedia & Animation), Mass Communication (Print / Electronic), Fashion Design, Interior Design, Performing Arts (Dance / Drama / Music)
Address:College of Creative Arts Ganga Dham Comm.Phase I,Sr. No. 612 - 615, Lullanagar Bibwewadi Road, Market Yard, Pune 411 037.Website: http://www.creativei.info/ Institution Details:Tel. No.: 020-24209166 / 77 / 88 / 99

Ever since its inception, the Apeejay College of Fine Arts, Jalandhar, has progressed by leaps and bounds. Affiliated to the Guru Nanak Dev University, it was established in 1975 under the aegis of Apeejay Education Society, New Delhi under the Chairmanship of Seth Satya Paul Ji. Primarily set with the objective of promoting the art and culture of India, the college now offers courses in Management, Commerce, Multi-media, Information Technology, Computer Science and Design.
Address:Apeejay College Of Fine Arts, (Guru Nanak Dev University) Jalandhar,Punjab

The idea of establishing a University at Baroda had engaged the attention of the Government of the former State of Baroda and its educational advisers long before the question of regional universities and decentralisation, reorganisation and reconditioning of higher education to suit the cultural educational needs of particular areas had taken root in the country. The concept was first visualized by Dr. Jackson, when, as Principal of the Baroda College in the 1908, he advocated the establishment of a Science Institute at Baroda on an improved and independent basis. It was a consistent policy of the Government of Baroda to subject its educational system to periodical inquiries of a searching nature by educational experts of international fame additional chairs in new branches of knowledge.
Address:Faculty Of Fine Arts, MS University Of Baroda, BarodaCourse(s) Offered:BFA in PaintingDuration: 4 year Eligibility: Higher secondary exam of the Gujarat stateDiploma in PaintingDuration: 2 year Eligibility: Intermediate

The Indian College of Arts & Draftsmanship is one of the oldest surviving art institutions in India. Formerly known as Indian Art School, it was established in 1893 by the late Babu Monmathanath., He was associated with the national Education movement of 1905 that was mobilized in view of the Partition of Bengal. The college inherits such glorious historical background. Monmathanath secured endowments and liberal partronage from the then Indian native states as well as the Corporation of Kolkata . The School also received benevolent support from the public. In 1966 the institution was granted affiliation by the Rabindra Bharati University. From 1996 onwards the university introduced degree course.
Address:Indian College of Arts & Draftsmanship, 77, Dum Dum Road, Kolkata,West Bengal
Course(s) Offered: 4 years integrated bachelors degree course with affiliation to the Rabindra Bharati University.

Kala Bhavana, the department of visual arts in the Visva Bharati university, is well-known as a distinguished centre for Visual Art practice and research in India. The institute that gave the Indian culture modernist ideas initiated by Rabindranath Tagore,who founded it. This legacy was carried forward by the by the pioneers of modern art in India, such as Nandalal Bose, Benodebehari Mukhopadhyay, Ramkinkar Baij and their contemporaries.At present several eminent artists and scholars attached to Kala Bhavana have been keeping the tradition alive by their personal visual experience, fresh exposure and openness for experiment. It offers Under-graduate course, leading to Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Art , (Print-making), Design and History of Art, Diploma course leading to Diploma in Fine Art in Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Art and Design; Post-graduate course leading to Master of Fine Art degree in Painting (Painting/Mural), Sculpture, Printmaking, Design (Textile/Ceramic) and History of Art; Advance-Diploma course leading to Advance-Diploma in Painting Painting/Mural), Sculpture, Printmaking and Design (Textile/ Ceramic); One year Bridge course in History of Art; Certificate Course in Design; Foreign Casual Course in Indian Art.Address:Kala Bhawan, College of Fine Arts & Craft,P.O Santiniketan, Distt. Birbhum, West

At its inception during1962, the Rabindra Bharati University, in Kolkata occupied the former home of Rabindranath Tagore. While two of the three faculties of the University, those of Fine Arts and Visual Arts, are still located there, when the Faculty of Arts was founded in 1976, it was located on a new campus at 56A, B. T. Road, Kolkata-50. The new campus was on the grounds of the "Emerald Bower," a mansion built by Harakumar Tagore, the poet's uncle. The mansion and its perfectly manicured gardens later acquired by the Government of West Bengal, became a complex of academic institutions among which this University has the central and larger share. The main administrative office is housed at the Emerald Bower Campus. The Rabindra Bharati Act, 1981, reconstituted the university in 1981.
Address:Rabindra Bharati University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Emerald Bower Campus, 56/A, B.T. Road, Kolkata 700050

The Banaras Hindu University is an internationally acclaimed institution, founded by the nationalist leader, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, in1916 with Dr Annie Besant, as the University of India. It played a stellar role in the independence movement and has developed into the greatest center of learning in India. It has produced numerous freedom fighters and has immensely contributed to the progress of the nation through a large number of renowned scholars, artists, scientists and technologists. The Air Field of the campus was started for military training for flying during the Second World War.
Address: Banaras Hindu University, Faculty of Arts & Faculty of Social Sciences, Varanasi 221005Institution Details: Ph: 316801E-mail: hgautam@banaras.ernet.in
Course(s) Offered: B.A PaintingDuration: 3 years Eligibility: Intermediate exam with 45% marks in aggregate of Board of High School & Intermediate Education, UP Allahabad or its equivalentBFA in PaintingDuration: 4 year Eligibility: Inter exam with 45% marks in aggregate Candidate must have passed the Entrance testMFA in PaintingDuration: 2 year Eligibility: BFA and viva test

The Sir J. J. School of Art has existed since was originally started with donation from Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy in 1857. And has imparted quality education of fine arts in India for over one and a half century. In 1935 the JJ School of Art started a new department, called the Commercial Art Section (CAS), with an objective to impart all of the necessary training in art to its students, but with an eye to exploit this training for commercial purposes. A direct contribution of this section was to aid the war-process for the government by designing its propaganda and public awareness posters. As a consequence, the government finally decided to scrap its idea of shutting down the institution. The students trained at the CAS soon found that they had a considerable demand from the commercial industries of Mumbai (then Bombay), to design publicity material for selling their products and services. Also, the fledgling advertising industry lapped up talent from the CAS, creating a set of people who would end up being counted amongst the fathers of Indian advertising.
An ornate metal plaque at the entrance of this house proclaims, "Rudyard Kipling, son of Lockwood Kipling, first principal of Sir JJ School of Art, was born here on 30.12.1865." It offers degree courses in Bachelors and masters in fine arts, architecture along with two PG courses and government diploma in commercial art.
Address: 78/3, Dr. D.N. Road, Fort, Mumbai-400001Programmes offered by college are B. Arch, BFA and other design Courses. The details of courses can be had from the office

The following are a few other significant ones:College of Art, New Delhi
Address : 20-22, Tilak Marg, New Delhi-110001The four years full time Degree Course is divided into two partsa] A one year Foundation Course is common to all students.b] A three year Specialisation Course in Painting ,Sculpture and Applied ArtThese courses provide intensive and advance training in theory and practice.The total number of seats in the Foundation course is 108 available to the three specialisation as under:-Painting 30 seatsSculpture 10 seatsApplied Art 60 seatsDeaf & Dumb 3 seatsForeign Nationals 5 seatsThere will be entrance examination in the month of June on two subjects [a] General Knowledge related to Art & Culture of India [b] Creative Test. The Final selection is based on merit.
Jamia Milia Islamia University
Address : Jamia Nagar, New Delhi -110 025The University Offers the same course as offered by the College of Art, New Delhi. The Entrance test pattern is the same as conducted by the College Art, New Delhi. The entrance test is held in June.

The Sambalpur University Act was passed by the Orissa Legislature on 10th December, 1966 to fulfill long cherished dream of the people of Western Orissa for establishment of a University.Address:Sambalpur University, Faculty of Arts, Jyoti Vihar, Burla, Sambalpur 768019Course(s) Offered: B.A (Visual Art / Music / Dance & Drama)Duration: 5 years Eligibility: Matric

University Of Jammu, Jammu (Tawi) Address:University Of Jammu, Faculty of Music & Fine Arts, Baba Saheb Ambedkar Road, New Campus, Jammu (Tawi) 180006(E-Mail Address Not Available)Institution Details:Ph: 453588, 435259Course(s) Offered:BFA in PaintingDuration: 3 year Eligibility: Preparatory course of the University or its equivalentBFA in SculptureDuration: 3 year Eligibility: Preparatory course of the University or its equivalent

Govt. College Of Music & Fine Arts, SrinagarAddress:Govt. College Of Music & Fine Arts, Jawaharnagar, Srinagar (E-Mail Address Not Available)Course(s) Offered:Information Not Available

University Of Rajasthan, JaipurAddress: University Of Rajasthan, Faculties of Arts, Fine Arts, Music & Drama & Social Sciences, Gandhi Nagar, Jaipur 302004Institution Details: Ph: 511070Course(s) Offered: BFA in PaintingDuration: 4 years Eligibility: 12 year Sr. Sec. exam with 45% marksBFA in SculptureDuration: 4 year Eligibility: 12 year Sr. Sec. exam with 45% marks College Of Arts & Craft, Lucknow, Uttar PradeshAddress:College Of Arts & Craft, Lucknow 226001

College Of Arts & Crafts, Chennai College Of Arts & Crafts, Periyamedu, Chennai 600003Course(s) Offered:BFA in PaintingDuration: 5 years, Eligibility: 10+2

College Of Fine Arts, Mysore Address:College Of Fine Arts, Manasgangothri, Mysore 570006Course(s) Offered:Information Not Available

Berhampur University, OrissaAddress: Berhampur University, Faculty Of Arts, Bhanja Bihar, Berhampur, Dt. Ganjam 760001 (E-Mail Address Not Available)Course(s) Offered:BFA in PaintingCourse in Oil Painting & Indian Painting Duration: 5 year Eligibility: HSC exam of Board of Secondary Education Orissa or its equivalentBFA in SculptureDuration: 5 year Eligibility: HSC exam of Board of Secondary Education, Orissa or its equivalent

The other important art institutions are
BK College of Art, Orissa
SN School of Art, Hyderabad,
Chitrakala Parishad, Bangalore,
CAVA, Mysore
Trivandrum Fine Arts College
Kerala, Fine Arts College, Mavelikkara
Fine Arts College, Trissur RLV Fine Arts College, Trippoonithura.

My Art Gallery Collections

Indan Arts
For the first time in France, a contemporary art exhibition “!NDIA!” at Gallery Hélène Lamarque is offering a talli of 8 Indian artists in a group show from 27 April to July 2007. The delicately balanced feast of painting, photographic, performance and installation works unveils the richness in variety of media, messages, styles and origins from the subcontinent too long neglected by the Parisian art gallery scene.
The artists, themselves, reflect a kaleidoscope of both formal approaches and ethnic roots: First, there are those born in Kerala but working in Mumbai like Bose Krisnamachari who also curates shows for the ‘Bombay Boys’ like Riyas Komu whose leftist political undertones make l’art pour l’art sound sadly narcissist. Also in Mumbai is the renowned art professor, Prabhakar Kolte, whose intuitive compositions make pictorial spaces materialize as epiphanies. Then, there are the diasporas like John Tun Sein (a Burmese-Indian working in Germany) whose sublime is not "out there" in some landscape, but "in here" within the artist, and, Debesh Goswami (a Calcutta native with a doctorate from Rennes University) whose installation props alternate between Banares cinders and Brittany cider. Origins blur further with artists like Anish Kapoor who grew up in Bombay with his Iraqi Jewish mother and Hindu father but has been London-based since the 1970s where he got together with the British Buddhist sculptors. Or, Vivan Sundaram, born in Himachal Pradesh with diplomas from the University of Baroda, Gujarat and the Slade School, London who is now living in New Delhi. His photography series reworks his Hungarian/Sikh family album featuring his aunt Amrita Sherghil, a painter in Paris in the1920s. A contemporary Indian woman artist, Anju Chaudhuri, who came to the French capital, has several paintings in this show. Raised in an intellectual Bengali family, she has been nurtured on Hindu mythology and returns annually to India. Her work has already been presented by Gallery Hélène Lamarque in an international group show, “Landscapes of the Mind”, with Zao Wou Ki and F. X. Fagniez. Although the horizons of these 8 Indian artists are ever expanding, Nature is well rooted in their work.
The gallery floor comes alive, literally, with a Bed of Roses, Debesh’s Goswami’s installation piece that perfumes the atmosphere. (Rose petals have been spread along the sidewalk in front of the gallery to announce the opening.) On the walls, large format photographs of the artist’s performance piece show Goswami in a fetal position with baby bottle nipples clinging to acupuncture points all over his body. His yoga postures and references to (sacred cow’s?) milk demonstrate a corporal sensitivity that eclipses conscious focus to attain a higher state of spiritual grace. Going beyond empirical observation, he may even search for a subject’s essence through its deconstruction. One of Goswami’s earlier installations had revealed the imprint of a human presence through a stenciled silhouette powdered with cremation ashes. In Asia, empty space is as much a basic element as water or fire. The five elements trace endless change. Goswami plays with the totality of a subject’s different states, metamorphose and transmission of like-characteristics onto new life in order to unearth its true identity.
The landscape artist, Anju Chaudhuri, paints mindscapes with multiple viewpoints where vegetal is spiritual. Luminous aquamarines splashing against obtruding, rugged browns make Landscape, 2006 a refreshingly direct experience of the elements and forces in Nature recalling her native land. Colors gently pass from blue to turquoise to green, never dull, dirty or indistinct. The lyrical forms without fixed horizons make us feel absorbed within a nourishing Mother Earth, slowly respiring, vibrating, palpable, alive.
John Tun Sein’s oil canvases distill nature into abstraction. A posed tranquility is found in the generous dripped and smeared residue of spicy hues. In larger zones, rollers have met with uneven board supports depositing textured accidents. Nonetheless, colors are judiciously juxtaposed with vertical and horizontal junctions. Form is reduced to a patchwork of interwoven shapes marking a visual itinerary of remembered journeys. The artist seeks minimal symbolism –geometric yet fluid - that evokes ritual usage - perhaps a shaman’s path. For Tun Sien, the sublime is not in some pleine aire landscape but experienced within. Here, impressionism becomes ‘introspectionism’. Tun Sien strides softly along the edge separating conceptual reason and contemplative intuition.
Another painter in the show, Prabhakar Kolte, translates the beauty of Nature in abstract expressionist visual rhythms through inner geometries. Generous zones of gray offer a soothing, neutral ground between contrasts of light and dark. Otherwise, his pigments are unmixed. Their glossy crispness mould grid-like layers of figure and ground alternations. His compositions turn the ephemeral into tangible energy with runny, dripping paint. Instead of imitating nature, he simulates its spirit. However, he rejects claims to coherency with the external world preferring his imagery to be, as he puts it, tethered in his subconscious. "I paint first and see later, rather than see first and paint later."
Bose Krishnamachari’s sumptuous Stretched Bodies paintings are a delight for the eye. Pure, luminous, flat colors sing in rainbow bands shooting off in all directions. Light is everywhere, even in the blacks. Bose explained to a major Indian auction house: “I refine my color to brightness. I have learnt this usage from the alternately subdued and lavish color codes of Indian ceremonies and ritual performances; the costumes, the gestures of enactment...” Detailed zones reveal a delicate, buoyant technique, which swirls distinct stripes of colors into tiny moiré patterns, abruptly scaling down the motifs’ normal sweeping span. The overall composition is cropped from a shifting network of modern Mumbai’s neon signs with their own ever-expanding logic. His handling of formal elements undermines the standard connection between signifier and signified. Meaning from image is elastic. Coined as mediatic realism, an emerging trend in Indian contemporary art consists of transforming the media’s “reality” images into unreal painterly ones. In the opposite direction, photo-journalism offers an alternative landscape conveying an anthropological impulse for Riyas Komu, son of Indian trade union leader in Kerala. When he came to Bombay in the early 1990s, like so many other youths in search of a career, he witnessed the riots and bombings. The birth of the art scene in Bombay coincided with political unrest. His randomly chosen subjects to photograph are charged with significance of political disquiet and social commitment. This spring he highlighted the inauguration of London’s new Aicon Gallery (a venture of Arts India already established in New York and California) with a sculpted airplane piece inscribed with Islamic prayers. It is placed along side the paintings of a U.S. artist and friend, Peter Drake, showing tanks invading middleclass, suburban America. Komu’s other visual puns include an installation piece named “Faith accompli”. The Karachi Series are black and white images of cemeteries in Pakistan. They portray the marks of natural forces - time and weather - which, due to human neglect, have broken down the dignity of the burial grounds. In a photograph of a flooded Islamic cemetery, tombstones along with uprooted trees ironically float past. Another image, this time an abandoned Christian cemetery, depicts an isolated, erect angel seen from the back hovering, in a cross-like contradiction, perpendicularly to the tombstones fallen in ruin. The series treats various religions through the optic of Heraclitus' philosophy (uncannily echoing that of the Buddha) encapsulated in the words ‘Panta Rei’ that all is just a river of constant change ultimately swept away as time flows and ever renewed. Komu’s graveyard theme hints at Shiva, the Destroyer, in its understanding of obliteration as opening possibilities for fresh futures. Komu quite enjoys seeing his work presented at the former Victoria Memorial Hall, whose stranded, late-Raj Imperial kitsch now seems a powerful anti-colonial statement. He has been elected by Robert Storr to participate in the 2007 Venice Biennale.
Another artist of the Paris exhibition Anish Kapoor, won the coveted Turner Prize in 1991. His large installation sculptures play with dualities (earth/sky, conscious/unconscious, body/mind, etc.). Their mirror distortions and sculptural voids construct gaps that tease our perception. A womb suggests the edge between this world and some other, traditionally located in the heavens. He turns Plato’s cave - and Western civilization – inside out: “One of the things that I’m proposing or looking for or working towards in some dark sort of way is a space that is sort of inside out, that is the opposite of progress, the back of the cave and not the light of the front of the cave, the darkness of the back of the cave. It is a condition of seeing that I feel as being akin to the space, if you like, of the Internet which is, you know, how do we define that space? And yet, it is there.” (Kapoor, BBC News interview on Hardtalk extra, broadcast November 10th, 2006).
His painting, Untitled, lets an expansive red dot invade the deep blue space. Such non-figurative work renders theology minimalist through a single gaze into a void. His colors are as pure as the mounds powdered pigments in markets and temples. They seem to have been wished upon the canvas as blown stardust. His blood reds normally dim into a rich darkness evoking a cavern’s depths. Yet here, the scarlet shines outward at the viewer toward a reversed vanishing point, which Anish finds mystical. His organic forms, intuitive colors and sensual materials reveal the sublime. Thoughts are set aside. The impact of his works awakens a memory found in your stomach instead of your head.
Vivan Sundaram’s Remembering the Past, Looking to the Future, focuses on his glamorous aunt posed next to her Sikh father, Umrao Singh Sher-gil, a Punjab chieftain, for a family portrait in their opulent, cosmopolitan residence. It is one of his series of digital photomontages featured this spring in the monograph show, “Re-take of Amrita”, at the Tate Modern. The images, whether seamless or contrived, make viewers aware of the fictional documentaries and time overlaps in which telescoped multiple selves, like Russian dolls, act out their various roles in society. The elegant young lady artist, Amrita Sher-gil, had initially been subject matter for her father’s photography as were her paintings hung on the walls and other portraits framed and propped up on side tables. Her early death and immortalized presence in this series evoke themes of rites honoring the dead and an afterlife fraught with uncertainties. Vivan’s grandfather’s album reworked as modern photomontages, seductive and haunting, crosses all boundaries. The Indian family is literally recomposed in our times of high technology.
The exhibition at Gallery Hélène Lamarque shows the Paris art world what India does best: Contradict the idea of a singular truth by bringing about a reconciliation between opposites without dogmatism, prejudice or the tyranny of majority rule, yet, with sincere social, political and spiritual engagement. The 8 artists show how national identity can transcend ethnic traditions, play with western influences, confront western peers and even jumble plural-identities while remaining truly Indian, that is to say, indefinable. l’Inde infinie!