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| The elite A-school |
| Kishore Singh / New Delhi Jul 25, 2009, 00:42 IST |
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Customised courses in art education is what Osian’s is offering, writes Kishore Singh
Is art elitist? Historical proof seems to suggest it always has been, an activity engaged in by a few for a few, so much so that any platform that does not cede to this has been pushed to society’s fringes in the garb of “populist” or “folk” or “tribal” — genres that are fine for dissertations and for a certain mocking acceptance, but that have never been included in the realm of the classical mainstream. “We have lost that language,” artist A Ramachandran said recently, speaking of a continuous visual culture from the Indus Valley Civilisation to the start of colonialism when, because of a different system of education, “we began to lose the grammar of that visual language”.
In India, Osian’s, nine years ago, attempted to break down those barriers — with mixed success — in contextualising the popular with the classical, the film poster with the masterpiece, but though chairman Neville Tuli argues otherwise, the ambition to find place for a Japanese mask next to Western magic memorabilia cheek-by-jowl with a Ravi Varma oleograph has ended up with a mixed banquet where everything is excellent on its own, but you simply cannot have noodles with curry. “Our art,” explains Amitava Das, “developed through the forms of miniature painting, folk art, temple sculpture, not just through Western thought.”
These are interesting debates and will likely gather pace, for Tuli has announced Osian’s next venture, Osian’s Learning Experience (OLE), where participants can “customise courses” pretty much as they want them. In theory, therefore, if you want to study only Nandalal Bose’s linocuts in Santiniketan for a month, it should be possible. Possibly, they may feel the need for less specialisation, and Tuli says he’s aware this flexibility may attract “those with serious interests as much as dilettantes”, but that it’s the least that should be on offer if an education in the arts should prove to be “a liberator”.
On OLE’s syllabus are courses of a month, three months, six months and a year in Indian modern and contemporary art, Indian, Asian and world cinema, and cultural management studies. You could, thus, attend just a one-hour master class in a subject of your interest, though possibly this would be made available only to those taking other classes, to avoid the kind of crowded adulation that, say, a master class by Amitabh Bachchan might draw.
And yes, Tuli says some of the finest minds will teach the courses, senior artists and filmmakers and practioners included. The problem is not that the platform itself is elitist but that the course fees makes the participants elitist as well. Course fees are based on an hourly structure. The fee has been computed at Rs 2,000 per hour, and typically a participant might take 16 hours a month, paying a monthly fee of Rs 32,000. Any more intensive, or any longer, and it couldn’t be any more elitist.
Tuli says the auction house has cross-subsidised all other work at Osian’s so far, and that it requires revenue-led rather than philanthropy-led models to survive and grow in the future. The art community’s Vivan Sundaram, Geeta Kapur and Anjolie Ela Menon appear expectedly unhappy with the approach, but with courses set to begin from five locations in New Delhi and Mumbai from October onwards, that hurdle has already been crossed.
Now do the math. With 5,000 students paying Rs 32,000 a month, the year’s revenues could touch Rs 16 crore. Tuli says he will pay his faculty “very well” — that’s gain number one — and use the revenue to subsidise ongoing art dissemination and documentation developments that will be easily accessible to everyone from to students to the aam aadmi — that’s gain number two. If it happens, the elite model might prove to be right, after all: the classes (pun intended) subsidising the masses.
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