HSO- 150: Indian Folk and Tribal Art Practices: The Contemporary in the Vernacular (One credit course) by Professor Jyotindra Jain

  • Course: HSO-150 Indian Folk and Tribal Art Practices: The Contemporary in the Vernacular

    Course credits- 1 credit course(15 hours)

    Course Instructor: Professor Jyotindra Jain

     JAIN (1)

     

    Jyotindra Jain Visiting Professor at Mario Miranda Chair in Fine Art/Painting/Illustrative Cartooning, etc., GoaUniversity will be conducting a course Indian Folk and Tribal Art Practices: The Contemporary in the Vernacular at Seminar Hall, Faculty Block–B, Goa University from 7th January to 17th January 2014 (for details please visit www.unigoa.ac.in/vrpp)

    CLICK HERE FOR ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM  

     

     

    The objective of the Course is to step out of the orthodox art-historical notion that the folk and tribal arts of India are repetitive, magical, bound to inherited monolithic traditions, which define their authenticity. The Course will also question the notion that the folk and tribal artistic traditions are rooted in collective expression and that there is no place therein for individuality. The Course will take up trajectories of several folk and tribal individual artists to show that they assertively respond to their contemporary social and political predicaments in their artistic expression, and for this reason they are celebrated as contemporary individual artists. The Course will follow up such case studies, based on field-work, and negotiate the notions of ‘classical’, ‘folk’, ‘tribal’, ‘modern’, ‘contemporary’, ‘collective’ or ‘individualistic’ in the light of new material and critical interpretations.

     

    Jyotindra Jain is an Indian art and cultural historian and museologist. A scholar on folk and ritual arts of India, he was the Director of the National Crafts Museum, New Delhi, Member Secretary and Professor (Cultural Archives), at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi, and also Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. His teaching and research encompass the entire breadth of folk and tribal art, Indian popular visual culture, ritual dynamics and cultural institutions of the 19th and 20th centuries.  He has published a number of books on Indian folk art, including, Ganga Devi: Tradition and Expression in Mithila Painting, Other Masters: Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India and Kalighat Painting: Images from a Changing World.

    He has been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, a Homi Bhabha Fellow and a visiting Professor at the Center for the Study for World Religions, Harvard University, USA, and was awarded the Prince Claus Awards in 1998.

     

    HSO- 150: Indian Folk and Tribal Art Practices:

    The Contemporary in the Vernacular

    (One credit course)

     

    Course Instructor: Jyotindra Jain, Mario Miranda Chair in Art/Fine Art, Goa University; Former Professor of Arts & Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University; Visiting Professor at the Centre for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University; Rudolf Arnheim-Visiting Professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.

     

     

     

    Objective: The objective of the Course is to step out of the orthodox art-historical notion that the folk and tribal arts of India are repetitive, magical, bound to inherited monolithic traditions, which define their authenticity. The Course will also question the notion that the folk and tribal artistic traditions are rooted in collective expression and that there is no place therein for individuality. The Course will take up trajectories of several folk and tribal individual artists to show that they assertively respond to their contemporary social and political predicaments in their artistic expression, and for this reason they are celebrated as contemporary individual artists. The Course will follow up such case studies, based on field-work, and negotiate the notions of ‘classical’, ‘folk’, ‘tribal’, ‘modern’, ‘contemporary’, ‘collective’ or ‘individualistic’ in the light of new material and critical interpretations.

     

     

    Date and time of sessions Session title Recommended Reading
    1) Wednesday, 7th January 2015, Tradition and Expression in the vernacular and the question of innovation (I):Lives and works of three rebel women artists: Ganga Devi, the Mithila artist; Neelamani Devi, the potter from Manipur; and Sonabai of Chhattisgarh –        Shah, Shampa: “Neelamani Devi”, in: Jain, Jyotindra (ed.) Other Masters. Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India (Crafts Museum, New Delhi, 1998)-        Jain, Jyotindra: Ganga Devi. Tradition and Expression in Mithila Painting (Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 1997)-        Jain, Jyotindra: “Sonabai”, in: Jain, Jyotindra (ed.) Other Masters. Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India (Crafts Museum, New Delhi, 1998)
    2) Friday, 9th January 2015, Tradition and Expression in the vernacular arts and the question of innovation (II):Two tribal artists, Jangarhsingh Shyam of Mandla, M.P., and Jivya Soma Mashe of Dahanu, Maharashtra. Amazing journeys of two tribal artists through the complex web of creativity, response to new materials such as paper and poster colours, their role in charging their entire community into creative expressions, dealing with the exploitative art market and rising to international fame. –        Dalmia, Yashodhara: The Painted World of the Warlis. Art and Ritual of the Warli Tribes of Maharashtra (Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi 1988)-        Jain, Jyotindra (ed.) Other Masters. Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India (Crafts Museum, New Delhi, 1998)
    3) Saturday, 10th January 2015, Picture Showmen: Traditions of intinerant audio-visual picture showmen in ancient and medieval India and their contemporary avatars.The living traditions of Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. –        Jain, Jyotindra (ed): Picture Showmen. Insights into the Narrative Tradition in Indian Art (MARG publications, Mumbai, 1998)-        Chatterji, Roma: Speaking With Pictures. Folk Art and the Narrative Tradition in India (Routledge, 2012)-        Chatterji, Roma: “Global Events and Local Narratives: 9/11 and the Picture Storytellers of Bengal.” Indian Folklore Research Journal (9) 1-26 December 2009
    4) Monday, 12th January, 2015, Living Traditions of Votive Terracotta art of India (with special reference to Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal and Tamilnadu: their techniques, iconographies, rituals and mythology –        Huyler, Stephen: Gifts of the Earth. Terracottas & Clay Sculptures of India (Grantha Corporation, Middletown/MAPIN, Ahmedabad, 1996)-        Jain, Jyotindra: ‘Shadow Corresponds to Relief’: The Clay Gods of Molela”, in: Joanna Williams (ed) Kingdom of the Sun, (Asian Art Museum – Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 2007)-        Perrymen, Joan: Traditional Pottery of India (A&C Black Publishers, London, 2000)-        Shah, Haku: Forms and Many Forms of Mother Clay (Crafts Museum, New Delhi, 1985)
    5) Wednesday, 14th January, 2015, The Goddess and the Buffalo: Art, mythology and rituals of the goddess worship in Western India. Comparative analysis of the Goddess myth in Sanskrit Devi Mahatmya and the regional versions of the story and their visual representations in art –        Fischer, Eberhard, Jyotindra Jain and Haku ShahTemple Tent for Goddesses in Gujarat, India (Niyogi Publishers, New Delhi, 2014)-        Jain, Jyotindra: “The Implicit and the Manifest in Indian Folk and Mythology”, in: Nora Fisher (ed). Mud, Mirror and Thread. Folk Traditions of Rural India (Ahmedabad, Santa Fe, 1993)
    6) Friday, 16th January, 2015, Surabhi: Popular Theatre of Andhra Pradesh in the genre of Parsee Theatre. This amazing story of a family-based folk theatre company will be told through a video film (tentative) –         “Optics for the Stage: Curtains of the Surabhi Company”, in: Jyotindra Jain: India’s Popular Culture. Iconic Spaces and Fluid Images (MARG publications, Mumbai, 2007), pp. 45-59-        Sarma, Nagabhusana: The Surabhai Theatre of Andhra (Hyderabad, 2009)
    7) Saturday, 17th  January, Written exam