Lord Curzon on Indian Art
As part of the Delhi Durbar of 1902-3 an art exhibition was mounted in the Kudsia Gardens. As Viceroy of India Lord Curzon gave this speech at the opening of the exhibition on 30 December, 1902.
‘It is now my pleasant duty to proceed to the first of the functions of the present fortnight, and to declare open the Delhi Art Exhibition. A good many of our visitors would scarcely believe that almost anything that we see before us except the trees is the creation of the last eight months. When I came here in April last to select the site there was not a trace of this great building, of these terraces, and of all the amenities that we now see around us. They have all sprung into existence for the sake of this Exhibition, and though the effects of the Exhibition will, I hope, not be so quickly wiped out, the mise en scène is, I am sorry to say, destined to disappear.
Perhaps you will expect me to say a few words about the circumstances in which this Exhibition started into being. Ever since I have been in India I have made a careful study of the art, industries and handicrafts of this country, once so famous and beautiful, and I have lamented, as many others have done, their progressive deterioration and decline. When it was settled that we were to hold this great gathering at Delhi, at which there would be assembled representatives of every Province and State of India, Indian princes and chiefs and nobles, high officials, native gentlemen, and visitors from all parts of the globe, it struck me that here at last was the long-sought opportunity of doing something to resuscitate these threatened handicrafts, to show the world of what India is still capable, and, if possible, to arrest the process of decay. I accordingly sent for Dr Watt, and I appointed him my right hand for the purpose. Far and wide throughout India have he and his assistant, Mr. Percy Brown, proceeded, travelling thousands of miles, everywhere interviewing the artisans, selecting specimens, giving orders, where necessary supplying models, and advancing money to those who needed it. Three conditions I laid down to be observed like the laws of the Medes and the Persians.
“I wanted only the work that represented the ideas, the traditions, the instincts, and the beliefs of the people.”
First, I stipulated that this must be an Art Exhibition, and nothing else. We could easily have given you a wonderful show illustrating the industrial and economic development of India. Dr Watt has such an exhibition, and a very good one too, at Calcutta. We could have shown you timbers, and minerals, and raw stuffs, and hides, and manufactured articles to any extent that you pleased. It would all have been very satisfying, but also very ugly. But I did not want that. I did not mean this to be an industrial or economic Exhibition. I meant it to be an Art Exhibition, and that only.
My second condition was that I would not have anything European or quasi-European in it. I declined to admit any of those horrible objects, such as lamps on gorgeous pedestals, coloured-glass lustres, or fantastic statuettes, that find such a surprising vogue among certain classes in this country, but that are bad anywhere in the world, and worst of all in India, which has an art of its own. I laid down that I wanted only the work that represented the ideas, the traditions, the instincts, and the beliefs of the people. It is possible that a few articles that do not answer to my definition may have crept in, because the process of Europeanisation is going on apace in this country, and the number of teapots, cream jugs, napkin rings, salt cellars, and cigarette cases that the Indian artisan is called upon to turn out is appalling. But, generally speaking, my condition has been observed.
Then my third condition was that I would have only the best. I did not want cheap cottons and waxcloths, vulgar lacquer, trinkets and tinsel, brass gods and bowls made to order in Birmingham, or perhaps made in Birmingham itself. What I desired was an exhibition of all that is rare, characteristic, or beautiful in Indian art, our gold and silver ware, our metal work and enamels and jewellery, in carving in wood and ivory and stone, our best pottery and tiles, our carpets of old Oriental patterns, our muslins and silks and embroideries, and the incomparable Indian brocades. All of these you will see inside this building. But please remember it is not a bazaar, but an Exhibition. Our object has been to encourage and revive good work, not to satisfy the requirements of the thinly lined purse.
Such is the general character of the Exhibition. But we have added to it something much more important. Conscious that taste is declining, and that many of our modern models are debased and bad, we have endeavoured to set up alongside the products of the present the standards and samples of the past. This is the meaning of the Loan Collection, which has a hall to itself, in which you will see many beautiful specimens of old Indian art ware, lent to us by the generosity of Indian chiefs and connoisseurs, some of it coming from our own Indian museums, and some from the unrivalled collection in the South Kensington Museum in London. Many of these objects are beautiful in themselves; but we hope that the Indian workmen who are here, and also the patrons who employ them, will study them not merely as objects of antiquarian or even artistic interest, but as supplying them fresh or rather resuscitated ideas which may be useful to them in inspiring their own work in the future. For this may be laid down as a truism, that Indian art will never be revived by borrowing foreign details, but only by fidelity to its own.
“We hope that the Indian workmen who are here, and also the patrons who employ them, will study them not merely as objects of antiquarian or even artistic interest, but as supplying them fresh or rather resuscitated ideas which may be useful to them in inspiring their own work in the future.”
And now I may be asked, What is the object of this Exhibition, and what good do I expect to result from it? I will answer in a very few words. In so far as the decline of the Indian arts represents the ascendency of commercialism, the superiority of steam power to hand power, the triumph of the test of utility over that of taste, then I have not much hope. We are witnessing in India only one aspect of a process that is going on throughout the world, that has long extinguished the old manual industries of England, and that is rapidly extinguishing those of China and Japan. Nothing can stop it. The power-loom will drive out the hand-loom, and the factory will get the better of the workshop, just as surely as the steam-car is superseding the horse-carriage, and as the hand-pulled punkah is being replaced by the electric fan. All that is inevitable, and in an age which wants things cheap and does not mind their being ugly, which cares a good deal for comfort and not much for beauty, and which is never happy unless it is deserting its own models and traditions, and running about in quest of something foreign and strange, we may be certain that a great many of the old arts and handicrafts are doomed.
There is another symptom that to my mind is even more ominous. I am one of those, as I have said, who believe that no national art is capable of continued existence unless it satisfies the ideas, and the wants, of the nation that has produced it. No art can be kept alive by globe-trotters or curio-hunters alone. If it has got to that point, it becomes a mere mechanical reproduction of certain fashionable patterns; and when fashion changes, and they cease to be popular, it dies. If Indian art, therefore, is to continue to flourish, or is to be revived, it can only be if the Indian chiefs and aristocracy, and people of culture and high degree, undertake to patronise it. So long as they prefer to fill their palaces with flaming Brussels carpets, with Tottenham Court Road furniture, with cheap Italian mosaics, with French oleographs, with Austrian lustres, and with German tissues and cheap brocades, I fear there is not much hope. I speak in no terms of reproach, because I think that in England we are just as bad in our pursuit of anything that takes our fancy in foreign lands. But I do say that if Indian arts and handicrafts are to be kept alive, it can never be by outside patronage alone. It can only be because they find a market within the country and express the ideas and culture of its people. I should like to see a movement spring up among the Indian chiefs and nobility for the expurgation, or at any rate the purification, of modern tastes, and for a reversion to the old-fashioned but exquisite styles and patterns of their own country. Some day I have not a doubt that it will come. But it may then be too late.
If these are the omens, what then is the aim of this Exhibition, and what purpose do I think that it will serve? I can answer in a word. The Exhibition is intended as an object-lesson. It is meant to show what India can still imagine, and create, and do. It is meant to show that the artistic sense is not dead among its workmen, but that all they want is a little stimulus and encouragement. It is meant to show that for the beautification of an Indian house or the furniture of an Indian home there is no need to rush to the European shops at Calcutta or Bombay, but that in almost every Indian State and Province, in most Indian towns, and in many Indian villages, there still survives the art and there still exists the artificers who can satisfy the artistic as well as the utilitarian tastes of their countrymen, and who are competent to keep alive this precious inheritance that we have received from the past. It is with this object that Dr. Watt and I have laboured in creating this Exhibition; and in now declaring it open, it only remains for me to express the earnest hope that it may in some measure fulfil the strictly patriotic purpose for which it has been designed.’