19th April 2019
Haman-hai-ishq — love is all there is — words evocative of India’s rich pluralistic tradition represented the quintessence of what Haku Shah, a celebrated Gandhian artist and social anthropologist of exceptional vision, stood for. His death at the age of 84, after a long illness on March 21, didn’t go unnoticed. The National Gallery of Modern Art celebrated his extraordinary life by hosting an evening of music and intimate reminiscences.
An avant-garde in more ways than one, Shah mainstreamed rural, tribal, folk art and craft by bridging the chasm between elitism and art that has often been relegated to the eponymous category of folk or subaltern tribal expressions. His love for folk artists and artisans evolved as part of a burgeoning movement in the 50s for the creative intersection of craft and design. One of his first assignments was at the Weavers’ Service Centre established by Pupul Jayakar near the Opera House in Mumbai. An astonishing number of artists with different terms of engagement gravitated to the centres and elsewhere — Prabhakar Barwe, Jeram Patel, Jogen Chowdhury, Himmat Shah, Gautam Vaghela, Bhasker Kulkarni, Amrut Patel and Manu Parekh to name but just a few. Also budding scenographers like Rajeev Sethi and Martand Singh. KG Subramanyan came occasionally and created stunning standalone sculptures from the fibres of handspun wool. Haku Shah thrived in this hothouse of creativity. His next assignment, a long stint with the National Institute of Design, was also not an act of artistic hubris, but was driven by the need to research tribal art and crafts, rituals and belief systems that had intrigued him for a long time. In 1978 he was appointed advisor to the Mingei International Museum at San Diego in California.