CONTINUED FROM YESTERDAY

Reminiscing once again on his favourite topic of the Art College during his time, filled with nostalgia, Jahangir elaborated once more with feelings, "It is definitely very different from the present Institute of Fine Arts. The atmosphere in the Art College used to very friendly and the teachers never kept the students at an arm's distance by any chance. We used to work together, chat together but at the same time we used to respect our teachers enormously. Zainul Abedin meant Zainul Abedin even though we gossiped with him at times. I believe these element of respecting the elders and having camaraderie with them, at the same time, is totally missing of late. We were also close to the contemporary poets and other litterateurs and musicians of the time. We were a small group of artists and consequently we clung together. Naturally we were completely aware of our cultural environment as we had a lot of interaction with others in the cultural scene. These days, I believe that the Fine Arts Institute is too big and has too many students."

Continuing to talk about how different his student days were from that of the young artists today, Jahangir said, "However, they are more advanced in the knowledge of fine arts as they have many more knowledgeable people around them. Again, they have more books and are allowed to be more experi-

mental. We used to come from the village and were not well versed in English in which the arts books are written. We had to struggle with the books. Jeffrey Hedley from the British Council helped me a great deal in learning the English vocabulary and its pronunciation. We would borrow books and open the dictionaries to get ahead. Nowadays the art students are quite educated as a lot of them can read the necessary books in English. At a young stage they get a lot of scholarships and they are exposed to workshops and cultural exchanges. Consequently their horizons are broader. Today a number of 2nd and 3rd year students are having solo exhibits which were unheard of in our days. Again, there are so many more galleries from which they can learn so much. In our time there was just the Art Gallery and even the Shilpakala Academy came into existence in 1974."

Asked to say a few words about his Shilpakala days, where he had worked as Director, Fine Arts Department, "Having come back in 1973, being delayed in Pakistan, where I had got held up against my will, I was working as a free lance here and held my solo in 1978. In the meantime, Shilpakala Academy needed someone to run its Fine Arts Department and they needed someone to run it. Only Subir Chowdhury was doing some work there with the help of Aminul Islam. Aminul Islam and Quamrul Hassan insisted that I take up the job. I wasn't interested in doing a bureau-

cratic job. However, the authorities talked me into it. The man behind my final decision was my friend Asafuddowla, who was then a Joint Secretary, Ministry of Educa-tion/Ministry of Culture. I planned to establish the department and go back to my free lancing days. I felt that I could create an adequate atmosphere for other artists, specially the young ones, and ended up working there for fourteen years. My decision was very satisfactory for me as my experience there for 14 years was extremely pleasant" (The Ekushey Padak that Syed Jahangir got was for his work at Shilpakala Academy).

Comparing the Shilpakala Academy today with that in his time, Jahangir said, "I would say that it has not improved in the ways that I had hoped and it should have been. The biennials now are the same things as before excepting that more countries are participating and more countries are coming forth. The quality of work has not improved ."

Syed Jahangir, in his recent exhibition at Saju Art Gallery, has gone back to impressionism with the theme of "Sonar Bangla". He has heaped gold and blue colours in his oil on canvas pieces, in his presentation of his vision and thoughts of Bangladeshi sun-washed fields, farmers, fishermen and their wives.

F. H.