The artists of Karnataka are part of the heterogeneity of a plural India. There has been every social thought and political stance that has not been articulated here. There are no art movements or manifestos but creative individuals and small groups who have passionately adapted to the movements in Modern Indian art A land that has been open to influences from outside and retained its multiple and plural vision, and has a vital connection with the culture, its land and people.
The trajectory of Karnataka regional Modernism criss crosses these historical points of references with a few distinctive local variations like the patronage of the Mysore royalty and the presence of local regional icon paintings. The dominant presence of Ravi Varma at the court Chamarajendra Wodeyar and his aesthetic, this became the norm for court artists to emulate with common subjective preoccupations of portraiture and re-imaging of Mysore as a royal city and the progressive contextual Modernity of Mysore.
We see multiple trajectories of Modernity in the centres at Mumbai, Delhi and Santiniketan/Kolkata dominate the cultural landscape of India. In Southern India. the regional Modern in Madras/Chennai was established with colonial syllabi from Britain by James Hunter in 1850 that nurtured and encouraged indigenous crafts. Later on, the advent of Deviprasad Chowdhry and his emphasis on a fine arts education in 1929-1958 became a significant shift in art pedagogy. The prominent presence of K.C.S Panicker from the late 1950's and his quest for native identity with linearity as a significant preoccupation inaugurated a regional modernism.
The influence of the J.J. School known for its British pedagogical exercises ushered the influence of Academic realism was dominant in the state. In another context in Mysore the iconic artist Ravi Varma was a significant aesthetic choice of the Mysore court. The Moderns from the Bombay Progressives artist group asserted the elemental and eternal laws of aesthetic order ushered in international modern became a style rather than an ideology for a regional adaptation in Karnataka. A special emphasis on Landscape painting that looked at the nature through a romantic lens and celebrated the abundance and diversity of an ideal land. The state of Karnataka was seen as site to inscribe the modernity through spatial engagement with historic locations, architecture and landscape gardening.
The unification of Kannada speaking people and renaming of Karnataka in 1957 became a significant social and political context to reimaging a new state and the quest for regional identity and the language of Kannada. The dominant influence of J J School was visible in the state in the art colleges and had inaugurated a British academic pedagogy with local contexts. Many significant artists in North Karnataka like Shantalingappa Patil, Dandavathi Mutt, D B Badiger continued the colonial ways of seeing the standard landscape, portrait and still life in an academic style. And simultaneously we see the Swadeshi/Nationalism and a quest for Indian identity was a prominent call against the trend.
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