Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 27

The correct answer is A, Raghurajpur. Raghurajpur, with the neighbouring Dandasahi, is the village of the Chitrakar families who paint Pattachitra, engrave palm leaf and make the painted masks and the Jagannath vesha panels; almost every house in it is a workshop. Option B is wrong because Pipli, also in Odisha, is famous for applique work in bright cloth, not for Pattachitra. Option C is wrong because Konark is the site of the thirteenth century Sun temple, a monument rather than a painters settlement. Option D is wrong because Nathdwara is in Rajasthan and is the home of Pichwai, the cloth hung behind the Shrinathji image; placing a Rajasthani centre in Odisha is the trap this question sets. Raghurajpur is also remembered as the village of the Odissi guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, a detail papers sometimes use to frame the same question.

The correct answer is D, New Delhi. The institution stands at Teen Murti Bhavan in New Delhi, the house where Jawaharlal Nehru lived as Prime Minister for sixteen years, and it was opened to the public in 1964 after his death. It holds a museum on his life, a research library on modern Indian history with private papers and old newspapers, and a planetarium added in 1984. It works under the Ministry of Culture and has since been renamed the Prime Ministers' Museum and Library. The name Teen Murti comes from the three-soldier memorial in the circle outside. A is wrong because Kolkata has the Victoria Memorial and the National Library. B is wrong because Prayagraj has Anand Bhawan, the Nehru family home turned museum. C is wrong because Mumbai has the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. Exam tip: pair Teen Murti Bhavan with Nehru and Anand Bhawan with Prayagraj.

The correct answer is B, Nandalal Bose. Nandalal Bose, who headed Kala Bhavana at Santiniketan, was asked to illuminate the handwritten Constitution, and he and his students painted the borders and the headings of its pages with scenes from Indian history, from the Indus seals to Gandhi's march. Option A is the classic trap: Prem Behari Narain Raizada was the calligrapher who wrote out the whole document by hand in flowing italic, but he did not paint the decorations. Option C is wrong because Ramkinkar Baij, also at Santiniketan, was a sculptor whose Santhal Family of 1938 is read as the first modern public sculpture in India. Option D is wrong because Jamini Roy, a Bengal painter of the same generation, had no part in the manuscript. One more name is worth keeping: Beohar Rammanohar Sinha, who decorated the preamble page of the same manuscript under Nandalal Bose.

The correct answer is C, Jammu & Kashmir. Pashmina is the very fine wool combed from the undercoat of the Changthangi goat, reared by herders on the cold high plateau of Ladakh, and it was first spun and woven into shawls in the valley of Kashmir. The craft is traced to the fifteenth century, when Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin is said to have brought weavers from Central Asia; the shawls later reached Europe and gave English the word cashmere. A single Kani or Jamawar shawl can take months on the loom, and Kashmir Pashmina now carries a GI tag. A is wrong because Uttar Pradesh is known for Banarasi silk and chikankari. B is wrong because Punjab is known for phulkari embroidery. D is wrong because Himachal Pradesh weaves Kullu shawls and Kinnauri patterns from sheep wool. Exam tip: Pashmina — Changthangi goat of Ladakh, woven in Kashmir, GI tagged.

The correct answer is D, Pichwai. Pichwai is not a Madhubani style at all; it is the painted cloth hung behind the image of Shrinathji at Nathdwara in Rajasthan, showing the seasons and the festivals of the deity. The recognised styles of Madhubani are Bharni, with the outline filled in solid colour, Kachni, built of fine hatching and line, Tantrik, which uses religious symbols and the forms of the goddess, Godna, drawn from tattoo patterns, and the Kohbar painting of the nuptial chamber. Options A, B and C are therefore wrong as answers because Bharni, Kachni and Godna are each genuine Madhubani styles, and a question of this shape is answered by spotting the one name that belongs to another region. Remember that the five Madhubani names are regional styles of one tradition, while Pichwai is a separate craft of a separate state.

The correct answer is B, both statements are true, but B is not the correct explanation of A. Chola temples such as the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur, built by Rajaraja I, were far more than places of worship. They held land and villages, employed priests, garland makers, cooks, dancers and musicians, ran schools and craft workshops, and even lent money, so the religious, social and cultural life of the region gathered around them. Chola bronzes were cast by the lost wax method and mostly show deities such as Nataraja, Vishnu and Parvati, while a few portray donors and devotees, including saints and members of the royal family. Both statements are correct facts, but the subject matter of the bronzes does not explain why the temples were social centres; their land, wealth and grants do. So option A is wrong. Option C is wrong because Statement B is true, and option D is wrong because Statement A is true. Exam tip: Brihadisvara temple, Thanjavur, Rajaraja I; Chola bronzes by the lost wax method, Nataraja the most famous.

The correct answer is B, Ramkinkar Baij. Baij worked at Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan and modelled Santhal Family in 1938 in cement and laterite in the open air, showing a Santhal couple with their child and dog moving house. Its rough surface and everyday subject broke with the smooth academic statuary of the time, which is why it is read as the beginning of modern Indian sculpture; Mill Call is his other standard answer. Option A is wrong because Devi Prasad Roy Choudhury made the bronze Triumph of Labour on the Marina at Chennai and was the first chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi. Option C is wrong because S. K. Bakre was the sculptor member of the Progressive Artists' Group of 1947. Option D is wrong because Sailoz Mukherjea was a painter. Baij taught sculpture at Kala Bhavana, and his open-air cement and laterite figures are the standard example of modern Indian sculpture in exam papers.

The correct answer is D, Chhau. Chhau was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. It is a masked dance-drama of eastern India with three styles named after their homes: Seraikella in Jharkhand and Purulia in West Bengal, where masks are worn, and Mayurbhanj in Odisha, where the dancers perform without masks. The form grew out of martial training, so its steps imitate combat and the movements of birds and animals, while its stories come from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and local legend. It is danced at the spring festival of Chaitra Parva to the beat of the dhol and the dhumsa. A is wrong because Fugdi is a women's folk dance of Goa. B is wrong because Jhoomar belongs to Punjab. C is wrong because Dalkhai is a folk dance of western Odisha. Exam tip: Indian entries on the UNESCO list include Chhau (2010), Ramlila, Kutiyattam, Vedic chanting and Sankirtana.

The correct answer is B, Warli. Jivya Soma Mashe of the Warli country in Maharashtra was the painter who began to paint every day rather than only at weddings and rituals, which is how Warli art moved from the wedding wall to paper, canvas and exhibitions abroad; he received the Padma Shri. Option A is wrong because the modern Gond school of Madhya Pradesh was begun by Jangarh Singh Shyam, whose manner is called Jangarh Kalam. Option C is wrong because the names remembered in Madhubani are Sita Devi, Jagdamba Devi, Ganga Devi, Mahasundari Devi and Baua Devi. Option D is wrong because Kalamkari is the pen and block work of Srikalahasti and Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh, a craft of workshops rather than of one celebrated tribal painter.

The correct answer is B, France. Le Corbusier is counted as a French architect. He was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in Switzerland in 1887, settled in Paris, took French citizenship in 1930 and worked from France for the rest of his life. Jawaharlal Nehru brought him to India to plan Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, after the first planner Albert Mayer and his architect Matthew Nowicki left the project. Le Corbusier laid the city out in numbered sectors on a grid and designed the Capitol Complex in Sector 1 — the High Court, the Secretariat, the Legislative Assembly and the Open Hand monument — which UNESCO added to its World Heritage list in 2016. Option A is wrong because Germany is the home of the Bauhaus school and Walter Gropius, not of Le Corbusier. Option C is wrong because Italy is linked with Renaissance architects such as Brunelleschi and Palladio. Option D is wrong because Spain is known for Antoni Gaudí of Barcelona. Exam tip: Chandigarh — Le Corbusier; New Delhi — Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker.

The correct answer is C, 1947. The Progressive Artists' Group was founded in Bombay in 1947, the year of independence, by Francis Newton Souza, and its six members were Souza, M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, K. H. Ara, H. A. Gade and the sculptor S. K. Bakre. They rejected both the academic realism of the colonial art schools and the revivalism of the Bengal School in favour of a modern idiom. Option A is wrong because 1919 is the year Kala Bhavana, the art school at Santiniketan, was started. Option B is wrong because 1938 is the year of the Haripura Panels and of Santhal Family. Option D is wrong because 1954 is the founding year of the Lalit Kala Akademi and of the National Gallery of Modern Art, both of which came later. A common follow-up asks which member of the group was a sculptor rather than a painter, and the answer is S. K. Bakre.

The correct answer is B, Abhaya Mudra. Early Mathura Buddhas show the right hand raised with the palm facing out, the gesture that says "fear not". The Mathura School flourished under the Kushanas in the first centuries CE, at the same time as the Gandhara school of the north-west. Mathura sculptors worked in the local spotted red sandstone and gave the Buddha a round smiling face, a shaven head with a spiral top-knot and a strong, fleshy body, a style that was wholly Indian. The seated Buddha from the Katra mound, now in the Mathura Museum, is a well-known example with the right hand in abhaya. Option A is wrong because the dhyana mudra of meditation, with hands resting in the lap, is typical of Gandhara images. Option C is wrong because the dharmachakra mudra of teaching became famous later, as in the Gupta-period Buddha of Sarnath. Option D is wrong because the varada mudra of giving, with the palm lowered, is seen more often in later images. Exam tip: Mathura means red sandstone and abhaya; Gandhara means grey schist and dhyana.

The correct answer is A, Rajasthan. Phad is a long scroll painted on cloth in the Shahpura and Bhilwara area of Rajasthan, traditionally by the Joshi families, and it carries the epics of the folk deities Pabuji and Devnarayan; the Bhopa priest-singer unrolls it at night and sings the story before it. Option B is wrong because Gujarat is associated with Pithora, the ritual horse painting made by the Rathwa and Bhilala on a vow. Option C is wrong because Telangana has the Cheriyal scroll, also a narrative scroll but painted on a red ground for the story-telling castes. Option D is wrong because West Bengal has the Patua scroll, which is sung as it is unrolled, and the Kalighat painting of the colonial city.

The correct answer is C, Samaveda. The Samaveda is the Veda of melody. Most of its verses are taken from the Rigveda, but they are arranged for singing rather than for recitation, and that singing is known as Samagana. Every later Indian treatise on music traces the tradition back to it, which is why the pairing appears in paper after paper.

Option A, the Rigveda, is the oldest Veda and is a collection of hymns to the gods; it supplies the words the Samaveda sings, but it is not itself the musical Veda. Option B, the Yajurveda, is the Veda of sacrificial formulae, giving the prose mantras a priest uses while performing a ritual. Option D, the Atharvaveda, collects charms, spells and remedies of everyday life along with some philosophical hymns. Of the four, only the Samaveda was organised around melody, so it alone is called the source of Indian classical music.

The correct answer is A, S. H. Raza. Raza, a founder member of the Progressive Artists' Group, moved to Paris, won the Prix de la critique there in 1956, and from the 1970s built his canvases around the Bindu, the black seed point from which, in his words, form and energy radiate, often combined with the triangle and the square of the Panchatatva. Option B is wrong because V. S. Gaitonde called his work non-objective and used layered washes of colour rather than a single motif. Option C is wrong because Tyeb Mehta is known for the Diagonal series, the Falling Figure and Celebration. Option D is wrong because Akbar Padamsee is remembered for his Metascapes, Prophets and grey nudes, not for the Bindu. Raza was born in Madhya Pradesh in 1922, spent his working life largely in France, and received the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan.

The correct answer is B, Raja Harishchandra. Dadasaheb Phalke made it in 1913 as a silent film on the legend of the truthful king, and it is counted as the first Indian feature film. Option A is wrong because Alam Ara, made by Ardeshir Irani in 1931, was the first Indian talkie, the first film with recorded sound and songs. Option C is wrong because Kisan Kanya, made in 1937, was the first Indian colour film and was also produced by Ardeshir Irani. Option D is wrong because Mother India, made by Mehboob Khan in 1957, was the first Indian film nominated for the Academy Award in the foreign film category. The four years 1913, 1931, 1937 and 1957 are the ones examiners shuffle. Phalke shot the film in Bombay with an all-male cast, since women of the time would not appear before the camera.

The correct answer is A, Andhra Pradesh. Kalamkari means work of the pen, and its two centres lie in Andhra Pradesh: at Srikalahasti the design is drawn freehand with a bamboo pen and is temple-centred, while at Machilipatnam it is printed with carved wooden blocks for furnishing and dress. Vegetable dyes and repeated washing give the cloth its character. Option B is wrong because Tamil Nadu is known for the Thanjavur painting with its gold foil and gesso work. Option C is wrong because Karnataka has the Mysore painting and the Chittara wall drawing of the Deewaru community. Option D is wrong because Kerala is known for its temple murals in the five-colour scheme, a wall tradition and not a dyed cloth craft. The word itself is the clue: kalam is the pen, so the craft belongs where pen-drawn cloth is made, and Srikalahasti is in the Chittoor region of Andhra Pradesh.

The correct answer is B, Amrita Sher-Gil. Sher-Gil was born in Budapest in 1913 to a Sikh father and a Hungarian mother and trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Young Girls brought her early recognition at the Salon. After returning to India she turned to the Ajanta murals and the Pahari miniatures, and painted Three Girls, Bride's Toilet, Brahmacharis and South Indian Villagers Going to a Market before her death at the age of twenty-eight in 1941. Option A is wrong because Anjolie Ela Menon belongs to a much later generation and works in oil on masonite. Option C is wrong because Sunayani Devi was a self-taught painter of the Tagore family. Option D is wrong because Sarada Ukil was a Bengal School painter who taught in Delhi. She is the youngest of the nine artists whose works are declared national art treasures and may not be taken out of India.

The correct answer is A, Palaghata, the mother goddess. The chauk is the ritual square that the married women of the household paint for a wedding, and within it they place Palaghata, the goddess of fertility, so that the painting is itself a blessing on the marriage. Option B is wrong because Warli painting does not take up the gods of the epics and the puranas; Krishna belongs to Pattachitra, Pichwai and Madhubani. Option C is wrong because the tarpa player stands at the centre of the spiral of dancers, outside the chauk, and is a scene of celebration rather than the ritual centre. Option D is wrong because Jagannath is the deity of Odisha Pattachitra, where the triad and the vesha of the deity are the main subjects.

The correct answer is B, Kalighat pat of Bengal. Jamini Roy trained in the academic manner at the Government School of Art in Calcutta but abandoned it for the Kalighat pat, the cheap brush-drawn pictures sold to pilgrims near the Kalighat temple, and for Bengal scroll painting. From them he took the sweeping single line, the flat earth colours and the large eyes of his Mother and Child and Santhal dancers. Option A is wrong because Madhubani is the wall and paper painting of the Mithila region of Bihar. Option C is wrong because Warli painting, in white on a mud ground, belongs to the Warli people of Maharashtra. Option D is wrong because Phad is the long painted scroll of the Bhopa bards of Rajasthan. Roy received the Padma Bhushan in 1955, and his work also stands on the list of nine artists whose paintings are national art treasures.