The missing artist in Indian city!

A member of the French Chamber of Deputies once observed “A work of art does not always involve a canvas or a block of marble. A great city can be a work of art, a collective and complex art, but a superior art”. Are Indian cities aesthetically appealing? A look within…

World over most modern cities are seen as artifacts. Take Paris or Prague; Shanghai or Sydney; Melbourne or Milan you would be amazed to see the range of art works there. A person of limited exposure to the world of fine arts would also notice the vibrant character of the city, thanks to use of art in public places, besides the very elementary designs of building architecture. From huge metallic or stone sculptures on streets or parks to large murals, eye-catching paintings in fabulous colours by little-known painters as street art, to the works of renowned painters, we get to see everything there in abundance. The eye-soothing artifacts do have their positive psychological impact on individuals.

European cities traditionally used artists to beautify their cities in more ways than one. American ones too did not lag behind and later, some Asian cities followed suit. But not India.

I remember having seen many years ago, an old short Portuguese documentary “The Artist and the City”. It was an impression of the artist Antorio Cruz who portrayed the city using water colours. Cruz’s paintings spoke about the city as he looked from an artist’s perspective. So there was a city and there was an artist. Of course, the film did not much speak about artists’ involvement in making the city beautiful. A look at Goa, ruled for many years by the Portuguese, provides some glimpse of artistic life styles of the locals even today, compared to the urban facade of say, Kanpur or Patna.

Many urban planners in the West, since time immemorial, used the services of prominent artists of their time to help city look up, provide them work place and help break the monotony of buildings, small and big. And this was other than building museums and art galleries in cities across the world. A museum, they say, is but a reflection of the city’s love for art and culture.

Alas, in India, this is not the case. In the Indian style of urban planning, erecting sky scrapers and creation of public places, the desired involvement of well-trained, exposed and experienced artists has been woefully missing. Have our foreign-returned bureaucrats or urban planners ever thought about it?

In the Indian style of urban planning, erecting sky scrapers and creation of public places, the desired involvement of well-trained, exposed and experienced artists has been woefully missing. Have our foreign-returned bureaucrats or urban planners ever thought about it?

In any city, western or Indian, the human fabric constantly changes and that’s quite a natural process with growing and shifting of populations for various social, political and demographic reasons. It is largely the stable architectural environment which gives the city its physical identity. Most architects used local and traditional designs to develop and design cities. Various influences may have shaped their minds but cities developed around 100 years ago or 150 years ago, hold testimony to the fact that art and architecture went hand in hand, mainly in European cities.

Paris, one of the most beautiful cities of the world for more reasons than one, is Paris because it looks like Paris and although it is frequently observed that a vital city cannot be a museum, the architectural innovation in the French capital has often been met with opposition because Paris has been regarded by some critics not merely as a city containing artifacts, but as a single artifact which must be preserved intact! Those of us who have been to Paris or seen and read about it, may never doubt this statement.
Why does Paris look like it looks for years together? There is a reason. In Paris, the uniformity and harmony within the city has been, in part, the result of strict regulations governing building height, roof profiles, and facade projections and about public places. For decades together these regulations,including say, the allowable dimensions of balconies, remained the same and continued to guide the architects.

But some people like architect Louis Boileau pointed out that “artists and men of taste complained of the lack of variety in buildings built in our (French) new streets and of their decorative insignificance”. He went on to praise the superior picturesqueness of cities such as Brussels or London. There were others who opposed the strong regulations about buildings and parks and other art objects, mainly of course buildings….and the debate went on for several decades. Yet, Paris remains the world’s most beautiful city ever. Urban aesthetics was quite debated in Paris and one commission (1923-1930) constituted to review urban regulations observed “In its physiognomy, the city of Paris must conserve its own character, its age-old discipline, its quality of order and measure. And so, without exception, building of excessive height, like those which provide the attraction of certain foreign cities, should be forbidden.”

Indian scenario

What is the Indian scenario about art and architecture in cities? Pretty pathetic, I would say. First, there are no firm regulations in place in most cities. Second, urban development being a state subject, laws and regulations governing master plans and beautifying cities are more likely to be misused, bent and flouted. You can do a random check in any state in India and you would find a nexus of bureaucrats, contractors and local politicians busy ruining the cities rather than coming together to make them gorgeous places to live happily. Admittedly, India, for most part of its independence, remained busy in ‘roti, kapda aur makaan’. There was clearly no thrust on cities, let alone making them beautiful, and looking at them as an artifact, the way westerners looked at and made their cities look like one.

During the British rule, there still was a general sense of aesthetics reflected in park deigns, sculptures or buildings that represented a typical style of the time in India. In the later years-1950 onwards- things went from bad to worse with each passing decade.
Now with a fresh focus on cities, will there be an artist deciding about making cities beautiful, full of art and aesthetics? Unfortunately, barring a few rare exceptions, architects are not showing great innovative skills of global scale in India. I am sorry to state, their understanding of art is abysmal. In Delhi, where the Urban Arts Commission came into being through a piece of Parliamentary legislation in 1974, it did help the national capital, credited for its beauty largely to a British man-Architect Edwin Lutyens. But elsewhere the cities present a very dull, drab and deplorable picture.

Well, I have not heard of architects who made a pitched battle for bagging multi-crore contracts of preparing detailed project reports (DPRs) for creating ‘Smart Cities’, talking of building museums, art galleries or using eminent artists of national repute to do up our new cities. Most architects, unfortunately, are busy today in land use changes, projecting a complete new city (more through computer jugglery than through genuine public participation) which may not be identifiable with local ethos, traditions, history and culture.

During the times of Maharajas ruling cities like Indore or Mysore or Jaipur or Hyderabad, artists were patronised in a big way. They created best of art and designs. Top class buildings were made, sculptures and paintings were promoted by the Maharajas and cities were designed well under their supervision. Indian urban history is replete with examples of world famous artists working for Indian cities. Without sounding very negative and hopeless, I think the time has come again to make cities beautiful using artists. The smart cities mission has provided Government of India with an opportunity to make cities really beautiful, green and truly habitable.