Mayo school of art

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Hussain Ahmad Khan: Rationalizing the Relationship

RATIONALIZING THE MYSTICAL RELATIONSHIP OF ART WITH ARTIST: ART DISCOURSES IN ENGLAND AND FORMATIVE YEARS OF MAYO SCHOOL OF ARTS, LAHORE (1875-1895) HUSSAIN AHMAD KHAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE ABSTRACT GWF Hegel (1770-1831) was not alone who termed Indian civilization as a mystical one. There were several others like Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), James Fergusson (1808-1886) and James Mill (1773-1836) who held the same opinion about the Indian civilization. Such sensibility came to the forefront with the Great Exhibition, held in 1851. Literature on the Great Exhibition suggests multiple views on Indian art; a few art critics termed it as barbaric, some romanticized it as the European past, and the rest believed that the Europeans can learn artistic skills from the Indians. The exhibition also generated a design discourse which formalized a “mystical relationship” of Indian craftsman with his product. This article studies how did the British rationalize the presumably mystical or non-rational relationship of craftsman with his craft through education in the later half of the 19th century colonial Punjab? It also highlights the cognitive failures of the British art administrators to understand the context and dynamics of the province. These cognitive failures were due to the problems faced by the British in the colonies, and due to some preconceived notions developed over a period of time in the metropolitan. Different dynamics, new challenges and crisis not only altered the preconceived notions of the British art administrators but also made them aware of that rationalization might not work in the colony. In other words, the British art administrators realized that the modernity 89


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