Page 391 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

388 ART AND CRAFTS

Folk icons became prominent in the works of Rashid Choudhury since he went to
Europe for higher studies for the second time in the sixties (1960-64). On this
journey he went to Paris. Until that time, his works had revolved around the
academic trend. This change in his work in the mid-sixties became a permanent trait.
Thus, the search for the reason of this change is important in the analysis of the
works of Rashid Choudhury.
We should consider his childhood first. He was brought up in Ratandia of Faridpur
district. His childhood was spent in watching the destruction and creation wreaked by
the mighty river Padma. The children of the priest of the Hindu temple were his
playmates. He listened to the melodious incantation of holy scripts by the priest. He
had seen broken temples, statues of deities amidst unruly vegetation. Rural life, folk
tales, myth, Durga, Kali, Radha-Krishna was all mixed up in his memory. He said
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these were not religious matters, but part of our culture, our heritage. We understand
from the recollection of his memories that he was brought up in a liberal religious
environment and nurtured a secular consciousness right from the very beginning. He
sought out the tradition of Bengali culture from within his memory, in the rural life he
observed, the folk tales, folk festivals that he had seen and especially in the icons of
folk art. We can connect this memory-based inspiration of Rashid Choudhury’s
artwork with the works of the first generation artists of Bangladesh- most of whom
were his teachers.
After the partition of India in 1947, the first formal institution of art education of
East Bengal was established in 1948 in Dhaka, which is now known as the Institute
of Fine Art, Dhaka University. Rashid Choudhury was admitted to this institution
in 1949. His teachers included Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin, Anwarul Huq,
Safiuddin Ahmed, Habibur Rahman and Quamrul Hassan. They had all started
their lives as artists in Kolkata. Art critic Sovon Som has mentioned in an article
on Zainul Abedin that right from the beginning, the works of Zainul Abedin,
Quamrul Hassan and Safiuddin Ahmed, especially the subjects of their works, were
totally different from the general trend of that time. Although they had different
approaches towards compositional style, there was a kind of similarity in their
subjects. They took the world of their direct experience as the subjects of their art.
Here they were free from romantic emotions and naturalism gained prominence.
In their works we could see the lives of common people of that time and their direct
experience and memories of rural life. 42
One of the reasons behind this characteristic might be their religion. At that time there
was a taboo against image based art works in Muslim families. They had defied the
taboo and gone for art education. Yet there was no role of the image in the daily lives
of their Muslim families; besides, the Muslims of Bengal had no strong myths. On the
other hand, their lives were deeply connected to the nature of East Bengal, the
agrarian, riverine life, various social events, rites and rituals. They discovered their
artistic selves within this periphery.