Page 258 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

CONCEPTUAL ART AND NEW TRENDS 255

time are of this milieu with their own unique brand of originality, and who present a
high standard of artwork.’ 2
The subsequent Asian Art Biennales of Bangladesh continued to exhibit Japanese
installations based on this new trend. These innovative, versatile and massive
installations have always been praised and awarded by the juries of the Biennales.
The Existing Process and the New Trend
The innovative installations presented in the Asian Biennales had a strong influence on
the current art practices in the country and encouraged new experiments. The visual arts
are undeniably of an evolutionary and innovative nature. Therefore, it is necessary to
define first which types of arts are being identified as ‘new trend’ in the context of the
contemporary visual arts of Bangladesh. In parallel, it is necessary to determine the scope,
form, and reality in the context of continuing trends in the visual arts and the conventional
formal structure of the contemporary visual arts in relation to the ‘new trend.’
When the topic of the contemporary visual arts of Bangladesh is raised, it is naturally
identified with the unilateral practices belonging to the ‘modernist mainstream.’ This
mainstream or ‘modern art’ excludes the pre-colonial local practices and denotes what
was approved and patronized, directly or indirectly, by the British colonial rulers
(1757-1947) - which stream, in the post-colonial era, continued to flow with the
indirect endorsement of the western, i.e. European and North American, trends. This
stream of art is urban and believes in universality, and at the same time, in nationalism.
Whether it is good or bad can be a subject of debate, but these are the fundamental or
primary characters and facts of this stream in terms of construction, form, aesthetic fig. 6.2 Hamiduzzaman
response, style of presentation, marketing practice, etc. Khan, installation,
During the colonial rule, a government art school was established in Kolkata in 1854 metal, wood and fabric,
that resulted in the development of institutional education in art in the then undivided 1976
Bengal. Because of this development, the mainstream visual arts
continued to grow within institutional capacity in post-partition
East Pakistan (1947-1971) and later in liberated Bangladesh (1971).
Though partition and liberation added diverse subjects in the realm
of arts, it did not cause any fundamental change in its form or
presentation. Just after partition, attempts were taken to incorporate
local folk art in the mainstream. On different social and political
issues such as independence, nationality, language, etc. art played a
noticeably active role. Some of the second-generation artists came
back to the country with higher education on art from the west.
Their leadership inspired art in the Abstract Expressionist style
during the 1960s and this trend continued after liberation. Before
the Asian Biennales, that is until the 1970s, the limitation of
contemporary Bangladeshi art was its lack of connection with
world art. In the 80s, because of the Asian Biennales, together with
higher education in different countries and participation in