A date with art at College of Art!

It was an SMS from Megha Madan, which prompted me to visit the exhibition put up by students of College of Art on its campus on Tilak Marg. It was partly out of curiosity in which environment the budding artist , whom I had once seen paint in my courtyard, was about to graduate. The curtain fall on the week-long show was to synchronise with a farewell function for the finalists both a Grad & PG levels. I invited my close friend, O.P. Dutta, formerly of Delhi Doordarshan, to join me with a promise of a cup of coffee later.

College of Art, established in 1942, is a leading art college for advanced training in Creative and Applied Art, under the Faculty of Music & Fine Art, University of Delhi, and is run by Government of Delhi. It boasts of the likes of Ramendranath Chakravarty, B.C. Sanyal, Biswanath Mukherjee, and O.P.Sharma as its former faculty members and an auditorium designed by ace architect, Satish Gujaral, which was added in 2008.

It offers training in Applied Art, Art History, Painting, Printmaking, Sculpture and Visual Communication. Anupam Sud, D.B.Seth, Manjit Bawa, Paresh Maity & Sonia Khurana are among its notable alumni.

Located in the heart of capital, it nurtures talent from all over the country, much of which was on display during the last week. The first thing we noticed was the festive atmosphere all around. Barring a few Master of Fine Arts (MFA) students who were determined to stick around & show their work even to the last visitors like us, most youngsters looked relaxed, radiant and raring to go. So we went round in solitude and were amazed by the variety of exhibits and the abundant creativity on canvases all around us. The pictures of a few of them, which caught our eye, have been added to this post but it evidently cannot do justice to the range.

The one whose memory is unlikely to fade away was a query scrawled in the left-hand box: ‘Hey, Why can’t I wear a spaghetti top and skirt to Chandni Chowk?’ Considering that Chandni Chowk’s only a couple of kms away, it seemed even art could not erase some social & cultural divides.

All the best to the debutants!