From darkness to light: In conversation with Ambassador of rural art Haku Shah
Rarely is the private collection of an art personality seen by the public. It reveals the tastes and commitment of the artists, his creative inclinations and the sort of message he responds to on a subconscious level. In the case of Haku Shah, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) was able to do just that: a vast array of paintings, terracotta sculptures, textile scrolls, books, journals and periodicals. There were works from several series, some of which were exhibited for the first time—for example, a collaboration with the singer Shubha Mudgal. Titled Iss Ghat Antar Baag Bagiche, the show had around 80 pieces.
The soft-spoken, khadi-wearing Gandhian artist and Padma Shri-awardee was born in 1934 in Valod, in Gujarat. He is remembered as a painter, photographer and crafts archivist whose collection of artefacts were chosen from villages in Gujarat and the tribal areas of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The retrospective of the painter’s own genius and interests as a collector reflects the concerns and conflicts of the age he lived in. Some pieces in the collection were from a travelling terracotta exhibition—Forms of Mother Clay—first curated for the Crafts Museum, Delhi. Shah was also part of the Weavers’ Service Centre established by Pupul Jayakar near the Opera House, Mumbai, which was a gathering spot of sorts for the high council of art: Prabhakar Barwe, Jeram Patel, Jogen Chowdhury, Himmat Shah, Gautam Vaghela, Bhaskar Kulkarni, Amrut Patel, Manu Parekh, scenographers Rajeev Sethi and Martand Singh, and KG Subramanyan. His mentors were Subramanyan, Sankho Chaudhuri and NS Bendre who taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda.
Recognition of his philosophy came when Shah was invited by art historian Dr Stella Kramrisch—who impressed Rabindranath Tagore to the extent that he invited her to teach at Santiniketan—to curate the widely eclectic Unknown India show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Then, collectors and galleries plumped for the random tribal sketch or motif as affirmative action. But Shah was already collecting and exhibiting rural artists. He was known to say that “it is important to understand the importance of the local in the development of different art traditions in India”. The NGMA retrospective is a mirror to this synthesis. Shah sought and found the harmonious relationship between object, technique and concept. The catalogue quotes him saying, “Simply because an object is common in the social sense, it does not mean that it is ordinary, not worth placing in an exhibition or museum.”
The exhibition tells inspirational stories: a woman purveying clay toys arriving at his doorstep; another making quilts with tribal art. His works reflected experiences and encounters with the rural gestalt. Like all artists, he too explored different mediums, but there was special place for the hand-spun yarn. Like Jaykar, he connected elitism with folk art and subaltern tribal expressions. As he would say, “A large part of our heritage exists in ordinary people whom we consider backward or uneducated.” The KNMA has brought them to the forefront with the aim of removing such prejudice, which ironically is nudging heritage art into modern collections. Why should Shah care? His desires have been fulfilled.