Realism in Art and Literature in Contemporary Odisha
Dr. Mrinal Chatterjee
Put simply, realism in the arts means, the accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction
of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in
favour of a close observation of outward appearances. As such, realism in its
broad sense has comprised many artistic
currents in different civilizations[1].
In the visual arts, for example, realism can be found in ancient Hellenistic Greek sculptures accurately portraying boxers and decrepit old women.
The works of such 17th-century painters as Caravaggio, the Dutch genre painters, the Spanish painters José de Ribera, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Zurbarán, and the Le Nain brothers in France are
realist in approach. The works of the 18th-century English novelists Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett may also be
called realistic.
Realism was not consciously adopted as an aesthetic program
until the mid-19th century in France, however. Indeed, realism may be viewed as
a major trend in French novels and paintings between 1850 and 1880 in which the
artists and writers attempted to portray the lives, appearances, problems,
customs, and mores of the middle and lower classes, of the unexceptional, the
ordinary, the humble, and the unadorned. Realism was stimulated by several intellectual developments in the first half of the 19th century.
Among these were the anti-Romantic movement in Germany, with its emphasis on
the common man as an artistic subject.
Theme of Realism in modern Indian literature is an outcome
of the creation of a reading public which was trying to construct an identity
in the context of the anti-colonial struggles and nation-building. This attempt
combined liberal-reformist ideology with an affirmation of an 'Indian' cultural
specificity. The realist novel's focus on growth and individual freedom is
transformed in the Indian context with the economic conditions of uneven
capitalism. Thus the economic, political as well as the social conditions
served to provide the basis for Realism in modern Indian literature[2].
It is no different in
Odisha. Art and literature in Odisha followed the general trend prevalent at
the national level. However, we find a surge of uber-realism in Odia literature
post 1980s in the writings of writers like Kanheialal Das and Jagdish Mohanty.
This surge continues through the early decades of the new millennium in the fiction
of writers like Gourhari Das, Mrunal, Ashish Gadnayak and Khetrabasi Nayak.
This surge of realism
is present in the theatre since 1980s. In the operas (open air theatre) the
realism wears the garb of popular fantasy to cater to the low brow
entertainment need of a paying public. The operas take up contemporary events and
issues and weave a tale around them with enough turns and twists to keep the audience
glued. Interestingly mainstream Odia
cinema, barring a few, is immune to the surge and continues its dalliance with
romanticism. At the best it takes up the contemporary themes like political corruption,
violence, atrocities against women, but the treatment is too melodramatic to keep
the realism out.
***
24 July 2017
The author, a journalist turned media
academician also writes fiction. So far he has published 6 novels and 7
anthologies of short stories.
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