Prabuddha Bharata or Awakened India October 1932

TIIE IMPORTANCE OF FOLK ART Now we find that with the growth of the industrial civilization and the development of communication between different nations and the promiscuity of knowledge the distinctive soul charateristici of nations tend to become masked or even lost owing to the devlopment of a stereotyped mentality of the machine age on the one hand and :a greater reliance on the mate [...] The growth of the hyper-material hyper-industrial and hyper-commercial outlook and the increasing sophistication of life which is a trait of mo tern civilzation is also accompanied by a loss of the simplicity and freshness of outlook aims ideals and aspirations and of the directness the vigour sincerity and spontaneity of life which marked the pre-industrial P ge. In the history of each n [...] The spirit of pure and simple joy or Anandam which is at the root of univesal life is often missing in the cultivated art of a people owing to the inroads of artificiality the growth of self-cociousness the cramping effects of the development of rigidity and sometimes even of corruption in social life under the.influence of perverted religious and social forces or through the influence [...] Thus for example in the sphere of sculpture and painting the living traditions of the medieval artists and craftsmen of Europe have copletely disappeared and in their eagerness to introduce freshness and vitality into the soulless artificiality of their present-day schools of sculpture and painting the European races are busy closely studying the sculptural creations of the Negroes and the ro [...] All those who hz:ve more than a mere superficial knowledge of the forces that go to make up the prsent vitality of the great English nation know how much it owes to the revival of its own old national folk dances and folk songs ni the shape of a wonderful accession of joy and vitality in national 'ife and of the purification of the national spirit not to speak of the impetus which it has supp