18 - The Geography of Folk Art in India

Summary

With a few notable exceptions, cultural geographers have neglected the study of one of the most comprehensive spheres of human activity – vernacular or folk art, which embodies a complete record of man's life, work and experience. For both its materials and techniques, folk art depends on the character of a place as it expresses the physical and cultural environment as well as the distinctive mental perceptions of the people. As manifestation of human experience and aspirations, folk art is woven from the values and general patterns of life and culture of the people and as such, forms an aesthetic canvas that portrays the interactive elements of regional character.

The geography of art attempts to study various art forms as: (a) an expression of a region's physical, socioeconomic and cultural setting, and the people's distinctive values that orient, articulate or explain the culture, and (b) a record of a regional culture, an unerring clue to the life, experience and aspirations of a people. It is not concerned with dates, titles, names and biographies or with the sensuous value of works of art as individual independent objects. Rather it addresses itself to the physical and social conditions of origin and operation of a work of art, to the background of regional economic and cultural factors and forces that condition the forms of art and affect its motifs and themes, and also to its meaning in a given cultural region with all its aspirations, experiences and fulfillments.