The Flipside of Euphoria: Local Art Colleges
While the urban centric art academies shine in fame and glory of the contemporary art boom, the small town fine arts colleges get a step motherly treatment. The problems that these regional fine arts colleges face are multifarious. From infrastructural deficiencies to linguistic inferiority, problems are aplenty. JohnyML finds out what ails these small town academies.
Sanjoy Manu Bhai Patel (30) looks cool with his ponytail, T-shirt and bell-bottom trousers. From 9.30 AM to 4 PM he works in a private company that makes ball bearings and other machine parts. After the duty hours he comes in front of BA Mehta Kala Mahavidyala, Amalsad, Valsad District, Navsari, Gujarat, and opens his omelet and tea stall. He holds a Graduate Diploma in Commercial Arts from the BA Mehta College. Besides, Patel is a 2002 batch Post Graduate in Applied Arts from the illustrious Fine Arts Faculty, MS University, Baroda. “My earning from the factory is not sufficient. So in the free hours I run an omelet shop,” says Patel. His specialization is in illustration.
This man’s ironic story of failure (?) somehow illustrates the lives of thousands of fine art diploma holders who pass out every year from the small town fine art colleges in India. Handicapped with infrastructural deficiencies, stringent rules of administration, linguistic barriers, lack of funds, inefficient guidance these colleges portray the other side of the euphoric contemporary Indian art scene. While the cash rich galleries, art consultants, buyers and collectors religiously go to see the annual shows of the mainstream art colleges in India for spotting young talents, they don’t even know the existence of the small town fine arts colleges that too aspire for a space in the sun.
What has gone wrong with the small town fine arts colleges in our country? Take BA Mehta Kala Mahavidyalay in South Gujarat as the point of departure to find out what ails these colleges, which in every year painfully fail to produce a few good students who are capable enough to get admission in the mainstream art colleges for pursuing higher studies and establishing themselves as successful artists. BA Mehta Kala Mahavidyalay was established in 1963 with the relentless efforts of a pious art teacher Jazu Bhai Nayak Its primary aim was to prepare art teachers through a course called Art Teaching Diploma (ATD). After a few years Commercial Art Section was opened and in 1987 Drawing and Painting Department was also established. Even after forty five years of its existence (and twenty years of its painting department), this college still remains as a laid back institution.
Approximately five hundred students study in BA Mehta College. Till recently the Applied Art Section was preparing students in the now defunct rotary printing press technology. Two years back, the authorities granted funds for buying computers and now the students and teachers are happy for they could catch up with a fast changing world, within the given limitations. Diploma in Art Teaching is a two year course while the Drawing and Painting Department offers a five year course. Here the students are taught in ‘styles’ like academic, life study, landscapes, creative painting, abstract painting and modern painting. Where do they go after spending five years in this academy? “Art Teaching diploma holders aspire to get jobs in government run schools. Most of the Commercial Art and, Drawing and Painting students join the textile industry in Surat District as designers,” says a teacher.
Limited hopes and limited scope; are these factors hold the students back from dreaming a bit more? “Most of the students come from middle, lower middle class background. Tenth standard is the basic qualification for joining any of these three courses. At the age of fifteen, they are really immature and most of them do not know how to engage with art, art history and the contemporary art practices. They imbibe art as a mechanical process and aim at technical perfection. The teachers too are bound by the syllabus and they cannot do anything more. Deviation from the syllabus often results in the administrative interventions,” says a teacher.
Interestingly, these small town fine art colleges are not under any university, though the diplomas they give away are approved by the mainstream universities. They come under the Examination Board of the Education Department of the respective states. In Gujarat itself there are around sixteen such colleges and the admission process is done centrally. The teachers do not have any hold on the students’ admission. “Every year we are given a few hundred students by the examination board. We don’t know their talents and even if we come to know in due course of time the facilities are so limited. So we end up in preparing them as good ‘hands’.” To make matters worse, the Gujarat government is said to be contemplating on establishing another sixteen Fine Arts Degree colleges in the state.
Establishing of new fine arts degree colleges for the feel good purpose obviously is a Tuglaqian move from the government’s part. Improving the facilities of the existing diploma colleges and upgrading them gradually could be a feasible and viable alternative. However, even the upgrading of small town colleges in different states of India is done arbitrarily. With this the conceptual faculties of students remain dormant and they end up as ‘good hands’. Going by the BA Mehta College example, one could see easily that the urgent attention should fall on updating of libraries, establishing of IT facilities and induction of efficient teachers. In small town art colleges, the teachers are automatically recruited from amongst the ex-students and one can imagine how they would facilitate changes even if they want.
Complaints, complacency and moral agitation are palpable amongst the teachers as they shuttle between their towns and urban art centers to see art exhibitions. “In someway we are connected to the art happenings in urban centers. But each visit make us feel depressed as we are not able to inculcate the same spirit in this college,” says Akshyay Nayak, a senior lecturer in BA Mehta College. Study tours are an unheard of thing in these colleges. As trained in certain ways, when they get new catalogues or refer to art historical books and monographs, the students look for ‘styles’ and ‘composition’. “We are not able to communicate and we are not able to talk. If we teachers feel this, what would be the condition of the students?” asks Akshay.
Silence, silenced articulations, class and linguistic prejudice- Akshay has touched the nerve center of the issue. Just hark back to our failed hero Sanjoy Manu Bhai Patel. Why did he leave the lucrative advertising field and opted to work in a factory and an omelet shop? The answer is class and language. “I don’t speak much of Hindi or English. In the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, I could make friends only with an Assamese boy who was trying his level best to tackle this language problem by persistently speaking in Hindi. I found a kinder soul in him and my language too improved a bit. However, I remained ill confident through out. After my post graduation, I worked in an advertising agency as an illustrator for six months. Thanks to my language handicap, soon I realized that none would give me a salary hike or a better job opportunity. The issue of money was haunting me always. Money, Money, Money. My insecurities grew as I couldn’t talk either English or Hindi. Finally I decided to come back and work in a factory and run an omelet shop as these demanded less of linguistic skills,” Sanjoy says.
Thousands of fine art students in small towns suffer from this inferiority complex imposed on them by language. English being the ‘common language’ in the art scene or Hindi being a ‘connecting link’, those who don’t have proficiency in these opt to take a back seat and the questions that churn their minds remain unarticulated. “If at all they go for admissions in mainstream colleges, they fail to perform in interviews. They are a muted lot. They feel that their mother tongues (regional languages other than Hindi and English) are incapable of articulating artistic ideas. Or even they feel that if they talk in their mother tongue, people would laugh at them,” observes Ramesh Bhai, a retired art teacher from BA Mehta Kala Mahavidyalay.
Students of these colleges carry a guilt; a nonsensical guilt of linguistic superiority and inferiority. Who imposed this guilt on them? Does our art education system need to do some rethinking on this linguistic problem? It is high time that the educationists in this country address these issues. The guilty feeling should be erased from the minds of students by counseling them to believe that their mother tongue is not lesser than English or Hindi. Also, as English has become an essential medium to orally communicate, experts should come forward to design effective communication courses specially for the art students not only in the small town art colleges but also in the mainstream fine arts colleges.
Though administrative apathy that considers art as something nonsensical is a major reason for the lackluster performances of these colleges, the students also should be held responsible at times. “Once you come out of the college, nothing is there to bind you. One has to take the courage to explore the world. Also one has to make a choice, whether he or she wants to be an artist. The students in these colleges look at the famous artists as ‘gods’. But they should understand that there is a ‘god’ in them too,” observes Somu Desai, an alumnus of BA Mehta Kala Mahavidyalay. Realization of god in you comes with a price and one has to be ready to pay it. In this case, the price has to be borne not only by the students but all those who think about Indian contemporary art.
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