Problems and possibilities of Museumisation and Art Pedagogy:
Chitrakala Parishath-50

H. A. Anil Kumar

In one of his later Kannada films ‘Dhruvathaare’, released in the late 1980s, the protagonist Rajkumar happens to be a painter, whose father was a farmer. He acts as a painter for the fi rst time in his lengthy career of 40 years. Th e father bribes an art critic to give bad reviews to the solo show held by his son at Chitrakala Parishath gallery (in Bengaluru) so that he would come back to farming and taking up a more mundane and prosperous profession— anything but visual arts. Resultantly, the published criticism led the artist to burn all his paintings. Eventually, he becomes a lawer.
The exhibition and the consequent art-burning sequence in the fi lm was shot at Chitrakala Parishath gallery and the artworks on display, allegedly, were bought from one of the teaching staff of the College of Fine Arts (CFA) run by Parishath. In reality, the owner of the paintings, the faculty, was furious and was considering fi ling a case against the fi lm makers in court. However , nothing happened. Unlike a literary or filmy controversy, a possible visual art controversy was next to impossible in Karnataka then, as it is now.*1*As a rule, CFA of Parishath is formalistic and mediatic, while attitude wise it is liberal enough to allow an intervention into the clarity of its own structure.