Indian Institue of Management 2000 M.B.A CAT - Question Paper

that the practice of abstractionism has failed to engage creatively with the radical change in human experience in latest decades.
It has, seemingly, been unwilling to re-invent itself in relation to the systems of artistic expression and viewers' expectations that
have developed under the impact of the mass media.
The judgment that abstractionism has slipped into 'inertia gear' is gaining endorsement, not only among discerning viewers and
practitioners of other art forms, but also among abstract painters themselves. Like their companions elsewhere in the world,
abstractionists in India are asking themselves an overwhelming ques. today : Does abstractionism have a future? The major crisis
that abstractionist face is that of revitalising their picture surface; few have improvised any solutions beyond the ones that were
exhausted by the 1970s. Like all revolutions, whether in politics or in art, abstractionism must now confront its moment of truth:
having begun life as a new and radical pictorial approach to experience, it has become an entrenched orthodoxy itself. Indeed, when
viewed against a historical situation in which a variety of subversive, interactive and richly hybrid forms are available to the art
practitioner, abstractionism assumes the remote and defiant air of an aristocracy that has outlived its age: trammelled by formulaic
conventions yet buttressed by a rhetoric of sacred mystery, it seems condemned to being the last citadel of the self-regarding 'fine
art' tradition, the last hurrah of painting for painting's sake.
The situation is further complicated in India by the circumstances in which an indigenous abstractionism came into prominence here
during the 1960s. From the beginning it was propelled by the dialectic ranging from 2 motives, 1 revolutionary and the other
conservative-it was inaugurated as an act of emancipation from the dogmas of the nascent Indian nation state, when art was
officially viewed as an indulgence at worst, and at best, as an instrument for the celebration of the republic's hopes and aspirations.
Having rejected these dogmas, the pioneering abstractionists also went on to reject the different figurative styles associated with the
Shantiniketan circle and others. In such a situation, abstractionism was a revolutionary move. It led art towards the exploration of
the subconscious mind, the spiritual quest and the possible expansion of consciousness. Indian painting entered into a phase of selfinquiry,
a meditative inner space where cosmic symbols and non-representational images ruled. Often, the transition from figurative

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