The Awaiting Shabhari*: Cholamandal Artists’ Village
(or , expectations for theoretical specifications )

H.A. Anil Kumar

It is (beyond) a high time that the centenary celebration of artist/tutor K.C.S. Panikkar (1911-1976), the founder spirit behind Cholamanadal art village, is overdue. The reason as to why such a contemplative attitude is absent from such an agency which is still alive also reflects upon, ironically, the strength of Cholamandal art village itself! It was a group initiated by someone, but never treated as a mentor, like say, Rabindranath Tagore or even Nandalal Bose. Panikkar wanted it to be a village without an ideology or an open ended art community’s activity center. The decision and desire to
be democratic itself has led them to give an image as if they are ashtray, in front of the overwhelming presence of formulated/institutionalized groups like the one at Kala Bhavana. This should be perceived in the background of the fact that modern Indian art history (taught and institutionalized) has been partial to clarity at the cost of being frozen. The artists spent just Rs.4000 per acre in 1960s to purchase ten acres of land, while most of them were from the College of Art, Madras. They wanted to stay, work and make a living out of it (whatever and whichever way and direction it took), like the medieval Charvaakas, who would call a spade a spade and be terminated by the followers of Pandavas for the same reason, after their victory at war.

A ‘strong ideological base’ is what they lacked, since such bases were perceived as a necessity, after Cholamandal! Interestingly, Santiniketan art movement or the Bengal Renaissance was ‘framed’ or addressed within theoretic positions only as an afterthought. Did/does Cholamandal art movement lack someone who could frame it within a rigorous theoretical premise or does it in itself refute such a position; and is there a difference in between at all!? Panikkar’s idea was to make ‘modernist’-thinking artists stay at a place, earn through the craft of their art and undertake artistic ventures of modernist kind, letting ideology take its own course of action, subsequently, though some were nostalgic of not modernity but modernity-at-Paris a century ago!*1* The then village rugged pathway to the artistic village has now become a busy national highway; and yet refuses to lead those artworks produced by them, ideologically to anywhere, though they have succeeded in generating in a ‘Cholamandal style’ of sort.