There’s the lush sheaf of wheat, lovingly held, indicating agricultural prosperity.

There’s the hammer and the sickle, universally recognised as the symbols of the industrial worker and the peasant; And of course, the universal symbol of international communism.

And there’s the beautifully green and clean landscape, unironically juxtaposed against the backdrop of a fuming factory.

Although this is a painting, made with acrylic on cardboard, it is not categorised under the ‘Modern and Contemporary Art’ section in the MAP archive. Of course, one possible reason for this could be that the artist, simply titled ‘B.S’ in the collection entry for this work, was not well known, or more likely, was not considered an ‘artist’. Who was doing the considering though? What kind of work would an artist have to do to be in the ‘art world’ of mid-late 20th century India? This is a subjective question, I know, and one that opens up a can of worms on class, caste, ‘taste’, and cultural capital. B.S was likely an artist who lived and worked in a nondescript city or town, or in rural India. I wonder if they were commissioned to paint this work (if so, by whom?) or if they made it for themselves.

The painting itself is a clear reference to the Socialist Realist style, which emerged from the Soviet Union in the 1930s and was popular across the ‘Third World’ through the 20th century. Idealised depictions of farmers and workers, factories and agricultural plenitude were especially prevalent during this period. Below is an example from Communist China, wonderfully similar to the MAP painting in its symbolism.

To categorise this painting as ‘Popular Culture’, in a museum collection implies a marked hierarchical difference of a work like this from ‘Art’. That the popular is meant for mass appeal, while fine art appeals to more ‘refined’ tastes. again takes me back to the can of worms, and class, caste and cultural capital once again rear their heads.

Sure, the idea of a communist utopia of glowing industrial workers and peasants, living in a perfectly balanced world of agricultural surplus and factories might be more fiction than ‘realism’. But that does not distract me from the fact that popular culture in India once looked like this.