From Gurukul to Studio: Pedagogical Transformations, Spatial Shifts, and Creative Labor in Indian Artistic Practice

This study investigates the institutional, architectural, and labor transitions across two centuries of Indian visual arts pedagogy. Moving from the domestic-devotional model of the pre-colonial Gurukul and hereditary ateliers (shilpa-kula) to the regimented imperial art schools of the British Raj, and finally to the contemporary capitalist Studio, the paper traces how the physical locus of artistic generation conditions the nature of creative labor. Drawing on archival curricula, spatial blueprints, institutional accounts, and sociological critiques of studio economies, this paper demonstrates that traditional modes of knowledge transmission were not simply erased by European academicism. Instead, the postcolonial trajectory—exemplified by Rabindranath Tagore's open-air ethos at Santiniketan and K.G. Subramanyan's craft-syntheses at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda—mounted deliberate structural critiques against colonial compartmentalization. Finally, the inquiry interrogates the contemporary private studio in metropolitan India. We argue that while the modern studio claims hyper-individualized creative genius, it often functions through opaque hierarchies wherein master-apprentice dynamics are resurrected as precarious, under-credited labor performed by junior artisans and studio assistants.