THE SIGHT/SITE OF WOMAN IN THE ART OF THE FORTIES proper representational approach capable of creating a "progressive" art movement, even such a conclusive decision could not prevent a debate on the connotations of "realism". In 1938, Samar Sen in his paper "In Defence of Decadence" argued that reality as a whole including the decadent elements ought to find reflection in art, Saroj Dutta (1939) retaliated by saying that only the progressive and positive elements should be sieved out of reality by the artists. This debate was not resolved then and was taken up once more by Narayan Gangopadhyaya and Mangalacharan Chattopadhyay in 1948-49. In art, this debate had been initiated by Nandalal Bose as in his later work in the twenties he rejected his earlier interest in painting Hindu gods and goddesses in favour of relatively realist portrayals of landscapes around Shantiniketan, scenes from tribal life and even animals. In his own words, Bose claimed that "Earlier I found endless joy in painting the gods and goddesses; now I find the same spirit (amrit) in all the common things that I see around me." It was in response to this new work by Bose that Rabindranath Tagore wrote "To the Painter" in 1937. However, in the forties, artists rejected the earlier work of the Bengal school as "irrelevant" and "cliched" both in style and content. In the 1942 Manifesto issued by the Calcutta Group, one of the earlier Indian groups committed to reflect realism in a new representative language, the artists resolved to give primacy to the task of portraying the real life of people around them in a search to create a "contemporary realism." They adopted the slogan of the medieval Vaishnav poet Chandidas who said "The only truth was Man, and nothing was greater than Man."1 In their own work, this slogan was interpreted in two ways: in the choice of subjects, this meant a rejection of historical and epic figures in favour of men and women of their own times, and that for the first time, people from all walks of life and all sections of society, even the poorest, were fit subjects for art. In addition, this depiction was supposed to be "class bias-free" and "non-critical" in nature. The central concern of the Calcutta Group was with creating an idiom for "modern", "Indian" art. These theories found expression in the works of Prodosh Dasgupta, Paritosh Sen, Prankrishna Pal, Shubho Tagore where they portray scenes such as a street boy eating a melon "Melon-eater", "Flying Kite", "Babu" by Paritosh Sen or "Orphan" by Nirode Majumdar or "Tea Party" by Gopal Ghosh. Like the writer Samar Sen, many of these artists felt that the portrayal of reality was an end in itself and that this portrayal was to be "bias-