Page 397 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

394 ART AND CRAFTS

figures, one finds water where there were flower, fish and duck. On each side and the
top, there are trees, birds and all such elements of life. The work is done in bas-relief.
He used many lines and dots that were incised in this work.
Rashid Choudhury got pleasure from working with a number of media. He said,
‘There are obstacles in the traditional media. Therefore, I was searching for a medium
through which I could depict the nature and humans of my country. I found that
medium in tapestry.’ 51 [Trans.] Thus, he concentrated on tapestry. He gave it a
Bengali name. We know from the writing of Mahmud Shah Qureshi that he and
Rashid Choudhury gave tapestry a Bengali name. The word is ‘Tapestry’ in English
and ‘Tapisserie’ in French. 52 They formed the word ‘Tapisri’ in Bangla, meaning a
mat for the beautification of the wall.
He did a lot of commissioned work in tapestry. Rashid Choudhury called it a
secondary art like modeling. This is because one can make copies from the main work.
It increases its commercial possibilities. One can get a copy of a major work and
collect it. For example, Guernica was copied in tapestry for Rockefeller. He gave this
example to illustrate the fact that one has to draw first and then weave the tapestry.
Thus, the one that is copied is secondary but the main work remains. When a tapestry
is copied, the number of the copy must be mentioned as it is done in modeling or
printmaking. We understand from his sayings that he was more interested in the
artistic and social possibilities of tapestry rather than bothering about its classification
as a medium. It seems that he found immense joy in not only creating art in the
tapestry medium but also in the possibility of creating relationship between art and
people from different social strata through this medium.
Rashid Choudhury used indigenous materials like jute, silk, fur, cotton to make
tapestry. He worked with the carpet weavers who had come from Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh of India and were living in this country. He wanted to build up a village or
community in Mirpur with these weavers. Apart from these weavers, students and
artists who had graduated from art institutes also worked with him.
Contribution as an art organizer:
Rashid Choudhury was a man of action. In addition to his personal creations, he also
thought about the organizational side of art and felt responsible for contributing
towards it. He built institutions for art education. In 1968, the Fine Arts Department
was established in the Chittagong University. He joined there as the first teacher and
played a major role in developing this department. In 1972 he established
‘Kalabhaban’ (an art exhibition centre) and in 1973 he took the main initiative in
establishing the Fine Arts College of Chittagong.
He tried to organize artisans around tapestry. After returning to Dhaka from Paris in
1964, he established a tapestry factory consisting of one single loom. In 1981, he
returned to Dhaka from Chittagong and established a tapestry factory in Mirpur. He
wanted to build a ‘Tapisri Village.’ He made a draft plan of this village in 1984. Here
we can find a similarity with his thoughts and those of Zainul Abedin. He established
art education institutions like Zainul Abedin and he planned to form a tapestry village