Testimonials
Pranabranjan Ray
Dear Rakesh,
Painters, muralists, sculptors, printmakers, installation artists, art scribes and regular exhibition visitors all, we are unfailing in our professing of love for arts, especially the non-performing visual arts. Doubtful, however, is the number of us, willing to undertake love’s labour. You have been an exception. You enjoy the not-so-pleasurable task of knowing and let others know, more about art, for deepening the love.
From my reading of Vassari (whom the West wants everyone to regard as the pioneering historian of visual arts), Abul Fazl and Lama Taranatha, the three more or less contemporary chroniclers of visual arts, unknown to each other, from unconnected parts of the world, it seems, that a similarity, in quest, for finding an answer to the genesis of plurality in looks and concerns displayed by art objects, primarily motivated the activity of chronicling. Chronicles they wrote are the earliest archival materials. As are those collected, preserved and done-up by you.
The archive of the non-performing visual arts of modern India that you are building, with no less labour than love, I am sure, is love’s labour that very few have undertaken before you. I am not trying to run down the erudite discourses on silpa that our aestheticians have written from the late ancient times. Those used to be in sync with smriti and sruti systems of judgment, rather than about actual objects of art. Chroniclers like Taranatha and Abul Fazl were exceptions. More importantly, their type of discourses did not generate any continuity.
The British orientalists from William Jones to Percy Brown were so enamoured with their discovery of wonder that was India that they concentrated all their attention on the objects as objects-of-wonder, forgetting their contextualities. Similarly motivated were our own pioneers like Rajendra Lal Mitra. Their great love for objects per se made them great museum builders. Museums rightly became the monuments of our pride. Sadly, however, we largely kept ourselves off from intellectual discourses on the objects of praxis. Fortunately, however, not always. Our pioneering art historians like Troilokya Nath Mukherjee, Gurusaday Dutta and art activists like the Tagores of Jorasanko, who were equally interested in ongoing art practice, became archivists, recording the conditionalities and contextualities of making of art objects by makers, and their use by the users.
The Vichitra Tagores’ art archival activities had been the early inspiration for both the Rabindra Bhavan and the Kala Bhavan archives. The Rabindra Bhavan archive has had the good fortune of receiving E.B. Havel papers. Yet, there is a regret that the archival activities continued in Santiniketan by fits and starts. Attempts have hardly been made to build up a system for sustained functioning.
The greatest defaulters were the institutions of Calcutta like the University of Calcutta and the Government College (earlier School) of Art and Craft of Calcutta, the two of the earliest such institutions of modern India. As early in the second decade of the last century the University had started offering academic courses in the history of Indian art, as being backed by archaeology-the science objects made in the past. This endeavour was soon to be followed by the establishment, the Ashutosh Museum of Indian Art, one of the earliest of university managed museums. No effort was made to complement the endeavours with institutionalization of systematic archival practice. Was it an effect of the ingrained antiquarianism of orientalism! When the former Government School of Art and Craft was upgraded to a degree college, affiliated to Calcutta University in the sixties, courses in history of arts started to be offered. The courses even for the vocational school remained more or less similar to the non-vocational curriculum. No room for archival studies and practices was made. I wonder how discourses on art can be carried on without archival back-up.
Hope, you are trying to fill the yawning gap that was causing distress to researchers. The meticulous researcher that you have been, I hope you are taking care to: Ascertain the Provenance, Classify, and Categorise the collected documents, in accordance with an adopted standard, Provenance and mode of reproduction of Replicated documents, and adoption of standard method of Retrieval of content etc. Also necessary is a system of time-bound Review of the collection for junking of unnecessary load.
As a person who from time to time had helped the dormant Kala-Bhavan archive get an elixir and to give a start to the not-yet-conceived archive at the Calcutta Art College, I have a plea to you. In order to make your's a lively place of art activity, you may think of getting into a negotiation with the powers that are in the Faculty of Visual Arts, Rabindra Bharati, and the Department of Education, Government of West Bengal to locate at your archive, extension centres, to carry some courses in art archival praxis to post-graduate students of history of arts. The benefit of some of these part-time short courses can also be offered as in-service efficiency enhancement programmes, to those already in service in the museums and libraries of art institutions.
Let me stop now for will have to speak more as you continue your activities. Cheer you for that.
Sincerely yours
Pranabranjan Ray
Prof. R. Siva Kumar
Collecting and systematic archiving is a passion with Rakesh and Radhika Sahni of Gallery Rasa. Over the years they have put together and digitized an immense amount of information on modern Indian art ranging from entire volumes of journals and magazines, to individual articles, and reproductions. What sets them apart from other private archivists is their willingness, even eagerness, to share their collection with researchers irrespective of their standing in the art world. This makes their archives an almost one stop destination for researchers on early modern art. I, like many others, have benefited from their generosity on several occasions.
Rakesh and Radhika have now decided to go online and make access to their archives universal and hassle-free. Besides locating and reading everything published on an artist in journals, the archives also allows accessing published images of his or her work. Being able to do this at the click of a button will be a boon to every researcher on modern Indian art. I wish to congratulate and thank them for what they have achieved.
R. Siva Kumar
Professor., History of Art
Kala Bhavana
Visva-Bharati University
Dr. Paula Sengupta
"My scholars, students, and I have long benefitted from the invaluable wealth of Gallery Rasa's archive. His thirst for knowledge and desire for dissemination of the contents of this personal archive, have led the gallery's founder, Rakesh Sahni to painstakingly digitise its contents over many years to put out into the public domain. Sahni is an informed collector, not merely collecting art over many decades, but also collecting a wealth of material around his art. The archive thus contains not merely artists and artwork, but the publication around it as well in an incredibly detailed and exhaustive bibliography that even allows access to some of the publications/articles listed therein. While the archive is, of course, a treasure trove on Indian art, there are two qualities that differentiate it from others - the first is that much of it pertains to art and particularly art writing in Bengal, both in English and in Bengali. The second, that Gallery Rasa has always had a special place in its heart for Printmaking, which is a quality also reflected in the archives. As members of the Printmaking fraternity, we have used these archives on numerous occasions over the years, and now look forward to the convenience of accessing it digitally. Indeed, the Gallery Rasa digital archives will be an invaluable asset to researchers on Indian art across the globe, allowing both pointers and access in an organised fashion to a vast wealth of material."
Professor
Dept. of Graphics-Printmaking
Rabindra Bharati University
Dr. Soumik Nandy Majumdar
Gallery Rasa website is one of the most impressive, rich and useful online repositories on visual arts I have ever come across. Consisting of visual and textual materials of huge archival value, the website is a rare virtual library providing access to a wide range of enthusiastic visitors from young researchers to senior specialists in the field of visual arts and art writings. To highlight one of the most valuable aspects of this website one must mention the Bibliography section. The drop-down menu itself indicates the varied range this section contains – from the rarest Bengali magazine of early 19th century to rare exhibition catalogues which are almost impossible to find anywhere else. All these materials are extremely important to any researcher who intents to study history of art through all these very important published documents.
Visual Archives section, similarly, contains priceless art works by artists ranging from widely known to less-known, and that again gives the visitors an opportunity to build an idea of the entire spectrum of Indian modern art, with a special emphasis on Bengal from the collection of Gallery Rasa.
Exploring the website is especially comfortable and user-friendly as the navigation is very well systematized. It is easy to locate the material – visual or textual – and very comforting to see or read – bringing the experience close to that of handling a physical archive, perhaps better and hazard free. I wish to see students, researchers, scholars engaged in pertaining fields of study exploring this treasure trove and feel truly rewarded.
I congratulate Mr. Rakesh Sahni and his team for launching this remarkable website and making it accessible to us. The hard work and perseverance the team had put to build it up patiently over a period of time requires special mention. Wishing all success to this laudable effort. Warm regards.
Department of History of Art
Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati
Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
