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In pre-industrial Europe, when artists used to make their own
colours from natural pigments, egg was found to be the best
binder. Thus came Egg-tempera. In post-industrial Europe with
the standardisation of colours,
oil
replaced tempera as the major medium of art and since then
it continues to remain the most versatile medium of all. With
the invention of photography however, as the need for
realistic oil paintings came down, artists found more freedom
in experimenting with other emerging medium like Gouache,
Conte and Watercolor.
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Linocut work of Swapan
Das (on the left) and Conte work of Wasim Kapoor (right) |
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Thus medium of art is decided less by the artists and more by
the technological changes of the time. When seen in the
context of history, we see artists of various times
experimenting with certain types of medium which are not used
any more on a later date.
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The old artists of pre-colonial era
of Santiniketan adopted ink-works
in the style of Japanese and Chinese artists. An indigenous
forms of woodcut and Linocut were also very popular. Artists
like Sanat Kar had practised Linocut works even after
independence. But what
really caught the fancy of Bengal's artists after independence
was Etching. Almost all major
artists of the time like
Ganesh
Paine,
BR Panesar and Lalu
Prosad Shaw had made series of etching works. Along with
Etching what most artists like Wasim Kapoor and Dhiraj
Chouchuri had worked on was two toned Conte and Tempera. A
large part of Dhrmanarayan Dasgupta's works are in this
medium.
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Tempera painting of
Dharmanarayan Dasgupta |
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In
the
post liberalization
phase, Conte with its two colour limitation is no more
practised. Tempera and Gouache is replaced by the more easily
usable Acrylic. Colage is one more medium which is now on its
way out.
Devajyoti Ray and
Shakila are among the few notable names
who continue to work in this medium. Otherwise new generation
artists work more on computer graphics and applique works and
in the absence of any clear technique most of these new works
are loosely called mixed-medium.
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Gouache painting
of Sajal Roy |
