Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 28

The correct answer is A, Jharkhand. Sohrai is the harvest and cattle festival painting and Khovar the marriage painting of the Hazaribagh belt of Jharkhand, made by women who brush on coloured earths or scratch through a top layer of white clay to reveal the dark layer beneath, a technique called sgraffito; the tradition carries a geographical indication tag. Option B is wrong because Assam is known for its manuscript painting on sanchi bark rather than for these wall paintings. Option C is wrong because Uttarakhand has Aipan, drawn in white rice paste on a red geru ground at the threshold and in the puja room. Option D is wrong because Chhattisgarh is better known for its Godna tattoo patterns and bell metal craft. Keep the pair in mind: Sohrai for the harvest and the cattle, Khovar for the marriage, both from the same belt of Jharkhand.

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 C, 1954. The Lalit Kala Akademi, the national academy of art, was set up in 1954 at New Delhi, with the sculptor Devi Prasad Roy Choudhury as its first chairman; the National Gallery of Modern Art at Jaipur House in New Delhi dates from the same year. The Akademi gives the National Akademi Awards and the Lalit Kala Ratna. Option A is wrong because 1950 is the year the Constitution came into force, not the year of the Akademi. Option B is a close distractor, since the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the academy for music, dance and drama, was founded in 1953, a year earlier; the Sahitya Akademi for letters, like the Lalit Kala Akademi, belongs to 1954. Option D is wrong because 1961 is the year the Film and Television Institute at Pune was founded. Keep the three academies together in memory: Sangeet Natak Akademi 1953, and the Sahitya Akademi and the Lalit Kala Akademi both in 1954.

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 A, Rajasthan. Lotia takes its name from the lota, the small metal water pot that women carry on the head in the procession with which it is performed, and it belongs to the folk tradition of Rajasthan, alongside Maand, Panihari and the Banna-Banni wedding songs. Option B, Tamil Nadu, has its own folk forms, chiefly Villu Pattu, the bow song, and Kavadi Chindu, but Lotia is not among them. Option C, Punjab, is the home of Tappa, Mahiya, Jugni and Boliyan, sung to the tumbi and the algoza. Option D, Assam, is known for Bihu geet sung at the spring festival, the Borgeet of Sankardeva and Zikir. The water pot in the name is the clue that points to the dry country of the west.

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 A, Rajasthan. Kathputli is the string puppet, or marionette, tradition of Rajasthan. The figures are carved from wood, painted in bright colours and dressed in long trailing skirts, and they are made without legs; the puppeteer works them from above with strings while a dholak keeps time and a sharp whistling sound stands in for the puppets' speech. Option B is wrong because the string puppets of Odisha are called Kundhei or Sakhi Kundhei, and Odisha is better known in this chapter for the shadow form Ravanachhaya. Option C is wrong because the string puppets of Karnataka are called Gombeyatta, which must be kept apart from the shadow form Togalu Gombeyatta of the same state. Option D is wrong because West Bengal is the home of Putul Nautch, a rod puppet form.

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 A, conch shell. The Pattachitra palette is made at home from natural matter: white is ground from the conch shell, black from the soot of a lamp, red from hingula, yellow from haritala and blue from indigo, and the gum of the wood apple binds them to the cloth, which is finally given a lacquer glaze. Option B is wrong because chalk is used with tamarind seed paste to prepare the surface of the canvas, not as the white pigment of the painting. Option C is wrong because lime and milk form no part of the traditional recipe. Option D is wrong because rice flour paste is the white of Warli wall painting, so the option is correct for another tradition and wrong for this one.

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 A, Chennai. Cholamandal Artists' Village was founded in 1966 on the coast south of Chennai by K. C. S. Paniker and other artists of the Madras art movement, and it is described as the first self-supporting artists' commune in India, where painters and sculptors lived together and sold batik and metalwork to fund their studios. Option B is wrong because Bengaluru is associated with the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath. Option C is wrong because Kochi is the home of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, first held in 2012, which is an exhibition and not a residential village. Option D is wrong because Hyderabad has no commune of this kind, though it houses the Salar Jung Museum, which is often confused into such questions. The pairing that papers set is the year 1966 with Paniker and with Chennai, so fix all three together; the Madras art movement is its background.

The correct answer is C, Himachal Pradesh. Thoda is the archery based contest of Himachal Pradesh, played around the Baisakhi season, in which two groups called the Pashi and the Saathi shoot blunt wooden arrows aimed below the knee of the opposing players, and dance and drumming accompany the contest. Option A is wrong; Uttarakhand shares the western Himalayan culture but Thoda is fixed to Himachal Pradesh in every standard list. Option B is wrong because Sikkim is associated with archery as a popular sport of Buddhist communities, yet Thoda as a named tradition is not Sikkimese. Option D is wrong because archery in Arunachal Pradesh and the north east generally is not organised as Thoda. The team names Pashi and Saathi are the surest way to identify this question, so learn them along with the state.

The correct answer is B, West Bengal. The Bauls are wandering singers of Bengal who reject caste and ritual and sing of the man of the heart, accompanying themselves on the one-stringed ektara and the small drum called duggi; their songs were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. Option A, Odisha, is the home of Dalkhai, Jhumar and Chaiti Ghoda, which are quite separate traditions. Option C, Assam, is known for Bihu geet, Borgeet and Zikir, and its characteristic instruments are the pepa and the gogona. Option D, Bihar, has Sohar, Bidesia and the Chhath songs made famous by Sharda Sinha. Bengal's own river songs, Bhatiali and Bhawaiya, are often set in the same question as Baul.

The correct answer is A, a carved cow representing the South direction. The abacus of the Sarnath capital carries four animals, not a cow: an elephant, a horse, a bull and a lion, and in the usual reading the horse stands for the south while the bull stands for the west. There is no cow anywhere on the capital, so option A is the component that does not exist. Option B is wrong as a choice because four lions standing back to back are the topmost element of the capital and the reason for its name. Option C is wrong because four twenty-four spoked Dharma Chakras separate the animals on the abacus, and one of them was placed at the centre of the national flag. Option D is wrong because the whole capital rests on an inverted lotus shaped like a bell. The capital was adopted as the State Emblem of India on 26 January 1950.

The correct answer is B, Andhra Pradesh. Tholu Bommalata is the leather shadow puppet theatre of Andhra Pradesh, and its figures are the largest of all Indian shadow puppets, made of translucent coloured hide so that the colours show on the screen; the stories come from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Option A is wrong because the puppet form of Tamil Nadu is Bommalattam, which combines the rod and the string techniques, not shadow play. Option C is wrong because the shadow puppet form of Kerala is Tholpavakoothu, performed at night in the courtyards of Bhagavati temples on the text of the Kamba Ramayanam. Option D is wrong because Maharashtra is known for the folk theatre forms Tamasha and Dashavatar rather than for a puppet tradition of this kind. Remember that the shadow form is identified in a question by the screen and the lamp, since the audience never sees the puppet itself, only its outline.

The correct answer is A, Andhra Pradesh. Tholu Bommalata is the leather shadow puppet theatre of Andhra Pradesh.

The name means the dance of leather dolls. Puppets are cut from goat or deer hide, dyed on both sides so the colours glow when a lamp throws their shadow on a cloth screen, and worked from behind while singers and a harmonium and drums carry the story. The plays are drawn from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and often run through the night. India has four famous shadow puppet forms: Tholu Bommalata here, Togalu Gombeyaata in Karnataka, Ravanachhaya in Odisha and Tholpavakoothu in Kerala.

Option B is wrong because Karnataka's shadow form is Togalu Gombeyaata. Option C is wrong as Kerala has Tholpavakoothu, performed in Bhagavati temples. Option D is wrong because Maharashtra's puppet tradition is Kalasutri Bahulya, worked with strings.

Exam tip: leather shadow puppets - Andhra Pradesh; string puppets - Rajasthan's Kathputli.

The correct answer is A, Jangarh Singh Shyam. Jangarh Singh Shyam of Patangarh in Madhya Pradesh took the Gond wall and floor decoration on to paper and canvas, filling his animals, trees and deities with dots and dashes, and the manner he created is called Jangarh Kalam after him; a generation of Gond painters followed it. Option B is wrong because Bhuri Bai is a celebrated Bhil painter, close to the same world but not the figure the school is named for. Option C is wrong because Sita Devi was a Madhubani painter of Mithila in Bihar. Option D is wrong because Ganga Devi was also a Madhubani painter, known for her kachni line work, and neither has any connection with the Gond tradition. A question on this topic often asks for the state as well, and the answer there is Madhya Pradesh, where the Gond are the largest tribal community.

The correct answer is B, M. F. Husain. Maqbool Fida Husain, a founder member of the Progressive Artists' Group and often called the Picasso of India, made the short film Through the Eyes of a Painter, which took the Golden Bear for a short film at the Berlin festival in 1967; he later directed the feature Gaja Gamini. He is remembered for his horses and for his Ramayana and Mahabharata series, received the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan, and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha. Option A is wrong because F. N. Souza, who founded the group, was a painter and writer who moved to London. Option C is wrong because Satish Gujral was a painter, muralist and architect who designed the Belgian embassy in Delhi. Option D is wrong because Krishen Khanna, a member of the group, painted bandwallas and did not make films. Husain was born at Pandharpur in Maharashtra in 1915 and began his working life painting cinema hoardings in Bombay.

The correct answer is B, Maharashtra. A powada is sung in a loud, declamatory style by a shahir, who narrates a battle or an act of courage, and the deeds of Chhatrapati Shivaji are its favourite subject; Lavani, Bharud, Gondhal and the devotional abhang also belong to Maharashtra. Option A, Gujarat, is known for Garba, Garbi, the storytelling form Dayro and the Bhavai theatre. Option C, Karnataka, has Bhavageete and Sugama Sangeetha, and the Yakshagana theatre with its own singing. Option D, Madhya Pradesh, has Faag and Alha, the last being a ballad too, which is what makes this option worth a second look; Alha, however, narrates the deeds of Alha and Udal in the Bundelkhand region and not those of Shivaji. Keep one more Maharashtrian pair in mind: Lavani is sung and danced to the dholki, while the abhang belongs to the Varkari saints Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram.

The correct answer is C, Odisha. Ravanachhaya is the shadow puppet theatre of Odisha, and it is the most austere of the Indian shadow traditions: the figures are cut from deer skin, have no joints and are left uncoloured, so only a plain black shadow falls on the screen, and they are smaller than the puppets of any other tradition. Option A is wrong because the shadow form of Andhra Pradesh is Tholu Bommalata, whose large coloured figures are the opposite of Ravanachhaya in every respect. Option B is wrong because the shadow form of Karnataka is Togalu Gombeyatta, where the size of the puppet marks the rank of the character. Option D is wrong because Bihar is associated with Yampuri, a rod puppet form in which the puppets are carved from wood in one piece.