Vrishchik, Year 4. No.3

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VRISHCHIK

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September, 1973 Year: 4 ' No, 3.

Editors : Gulam Shelkb Bbup~u ~bakbar

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Address:

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B(2 Shirali .Apartments, Fatebgunj, Baroda 2. Gujarat-INDIA.

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Annual Suhscription : Rupees 10(- ( Inland ).

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:$ 5 or £ 2. (S,, ' rntil. ) . $ 10 or £ 4. '( Air mail ) Cover".I'.OrBwlng by Nil/ma Sheikh f

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Space donations:

Bharat Liodo'er Pvt. Ltd., Baroda . .

Chika Ltd., Rombay.

Mercury 'Paints and Var.nishes Lid., Bombay . .

India ToJ>lacco Company Ltd., Calcutta.

Lakhia Brothers, BarQda. We acknowledge the generous donaiiorr of Comet Paints. Pvt. Ltd., Vallabhvidyanagar.

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Published by Gulam Sheikh from S/5 ShiraH Apartments, .FatchgunJ. BarOiiJa-2, and ~printed by A. N, Jogtekar 3-A Associates, 8-A, Caxmi Estate BahucharaJi Road Baroda .

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K. G. Subramanyan

Artists on. Art-l

When he knocked at the door I thought it was the delivery boy because be alone of the people comiog to our house is too short to reach the bell. But it wasn't he. It was Socrates.

Or at least that was how he introduced himself. He was ridiculously short. Hardly a foot. But he did resemble closely the statuette one sees in the art books. Could be be living still? The books say he was put te sleep with a lethal doze of hemlock ages and ages ago. But he had some explanation; he said be was not all Socrates, but only bis pokiness (curiosity, in higb-brow language) which hemlock could not finish then, and age couldn't later. And he has been wandering since from place to place. Watching and learning, he said.

â&#x20AC;˘

He will eat my head out, I tbought in alarm, witb all kinds of questions, if he is who be says he is. I hate these poky-woky manikins who will not give you peace, I muttered to myself. But, as if he had heard my thoughts, he said he had changed his habits. He did not any more expect answers for his questions; he made them all up himself; be left you to concur or differ as you pleased.

If you wanted to say anytbing extra it was entirely your cboice.

So that is where it all started. The only unpleasant thing about it was that be wanted to sit on my shoulder and talk into my ear; and you had to hear the man you couldn't see, But then, as he said, he didn't have the kind of face you would miss seeing and if worst came to worst you could imagine you were talking to yourself.

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"I do not know when artists started being purist", he said after shuffling around to see my work, "probably a lot of them have been so for a long time. Should be about the time they started considering their gift as a special tool or possession and wanted to do all kinds of things with it.

Like cbildren wbo find old rusted screws on the roadside and try to do every kind of trick witb it; open locks, punch holes, test the resilience of tbeir kid brother's bottom; as if it was the only thing in tbe world and you could do everything with it. And all tbis cross-fire between Painting and Sculpture, Major and Minor arts, Art and Non-art, just because one brandishes his rusted screw against anotber's ! Eacb one building his own cabbage patch, in his own individual way, with tbe notion tbat it was all of bimself, bis creative offspring! A str ange kind of megalomania, making a retish of himself and his

possessions, forgetting that, really, be is a tool himself and his real gift lay in his being a tool, in as much variety and depth as was possible. This is possibly wby tbe earlier artists were not so exclusive and tried a hand at many things, gratified to do eacb in its special way. The continuity in their work was psychic, not stylistic. They didn't try to do in one medium what could be only done in anotber; nor forgo the pleasure of doiog it; they didn't grow tulips to be cabbages, cabbages to be mulberry bush wbich the new purists did in a kind of obsessive inversion and went into tortures over it. I, I couldn't quite figure out what he was driving at. He was probably trying to put me at ease witb the fact that I worked in various media. Wbicb pleased me somewhat.

"It is true that tbe cabbage-patcbers are getting fewer these days," he said, Hand that a lot of artists, even the reputed ones, don't mind doing things so far considered beneath them. Calder can claim as his opus oot only his stabiles and mobiles, hut pavements, tapestries, even a painted aeroplane ! So can various otbers. Tbougb I I still suspect that they are too obsessed with personality traits to do all these with genuine freedom. Tbey want to plant a penny-whistle in each to sqeak out their names.

Ridiculous wben you tbink how much they lose by it. It is a kind of idiotic self-indulgence. Imagine my going to Xantbipe saying, Xaothipe my girl, let us tonigbt calculate to produce a baby-girl with my pretty snub -nose on her!

She is sure to flare up and bundle me out of bed, as she bas often done for mucb less reason. Art as you know is not Xanthipe, it luffers any inquity and endures its sears in silence,"

"Tbere is anotber kind of purism that constrains the artist" he continued, "and that is their seDse of the past.

In countries like yours and mine and in certain others wbose past is still visible in its vestiges tbrown over tbe landscape or tucked up in its museums. Tremendous tbings surely, but deadly of sorts, if you are not on your guard; they could dazzle you and strike you blind to tbiogs around you. Tbe splendour tbat was Egypt, tbe glory that was Greece, tbe¡wonder that was India and all tbat. Throwing art critics into frenzy and holding artists in thrall. Not that thero isn't anytbing like history. But people try to COD dense bistory into the dimensions of a small Iifc and build a vault around it. Tbey forget its vastne_nd variety. And it. codlessness. A sense of history is part

of civilisation surely, but you should put your history where it belongs, Behind you if you like it to give you the background, beneath you if you wanted to give you added height. Bu~ tho~e 'Jllt1 G;!rry ;, on their ile~",s !ir:~ a~~ec!!l'J.\.路h:tQ $m~~.~ ~hotdn~ ....hem \'.p~ fOA'-::tng ~hem '~~ seround and round in their circular rut, they are pitiable."

I am not too bothered, I said. I suppose [am part of the stream, surely, but at this end. If its pUlh comes through me without my going into convulsion. about it, I shan't be unhappy. If not, I wouldn't grumble; it could even be that I am adding a new band to its spectrum.

Probably that Wal a little too much to say about one.elf.

Socrates grunted. Certainly there was something in what he had said. No one is what he is not and he could do without an inordinate oblession to be somebody. And there are various ways things behave; each one is individual. There is something you can do with clay, you cannot do with paint; it yields to your touch. it folds, warps, fissures in special way.; when fired it aasumes a sanguine freshnesa like that of flesh. To bandle each is special. I al80 knew tbat art experience deepens as it broadens and the more you are familiar with its many keys the rounder your repertory is. I also could agree tbat an over-weening sense of history can be an immobilising burden. But I did Dot know wbelher one had to make a sODg and dance about it. " You have to, my dear fellow," Socrates said (be had a remarkable talent to catcb up witb your thougbts) "man is special because he has language or wbat you may call the machinery of communication. He has made almost all of it himself. Otber living tbings probably have signs and responses between themselve. and with the enviroment but iheirs is built-in, visceral. The buman being, exteriori.es his responses more decisively, elaborates it, and makes it into a lasting structure; he lays it around like a township.

Tbis fosters him. But it contains him too. And like all townships it outgrows its usefulness and falls into ruin. So all languages or communication systems call for constant renewal and renewal .tarts with tbe resumption of pristine contacts with things around and fixing our place within them. I tbink Ar! il language at this point of renewal. It is language in the crucible. So you can see why it is sustained more by actual contacts tban by its antecedents; and larger tbele contacts are, the beller it is for it !"

"Art these days i8 losing in status." he continued, "though gaining in dividends. Most of it is taken up by fabricational expertise. The rest of it with individual gimmickry. The artist today wants 10 be a performer like a tumbler or a ju~gler or a contortionist, to amuse, to shock or titillate.

Not that I would not like to be amused, sbocked or titillated.

But tbe,e are pleasures of the bath-bouse. Art sbould give you something better.

The ruddy old Greek, he is .Iillth. high-faJuti!lS cloud)"ialk~r ne \"':23 a:l(~ ~tUI <!u!o:-, ch':}lppin~ hit' 1Q~8~ 5ne. He ,i2S '5~Zl;? ::,ough to s~ni!: thi~ C'ut 'and cb:arg~c tl~ topic.

"I have a question to ask you, "he said," about your terracottas. [see that they bave some thematic Icontent.

Would you call them historical ?" Historical! what do you mean by historical, [ asked with some irritation.

"Not quite what Max Rapbael has in mind, as in his critique of -Guernica : if that i! what you meao. Max is certaininly a sharp one. He goes over the thing wit h a scalpel. He slits it into verticals and horizonlal s and inverted triangle. and the like. He pulls it into bone, and sinews like 'met iculous anatomi't. He ,aits Ihe whole heap with arresting statements. He points hi. finger at the am bivalences of its imagery and laugbs at the absurdity and untenability of the readings by va rious exponents. Tben he adds an equally tentative version of his owu. He certainly hypnotises you with the orderliness and precision of his analysis and the near-plausibility of his theses. But for all that his ideas on art are terribly petitbourgeois. He can Ihink of painting only in terms of tbe 19th century empiricist, of tangible object iD tangible space; he reacts positively only to things portrayed in .. immediate facticity ". Symbolism, empathy are un savoury tbi ngs to him. All allegory is an.thema. If EI Greco painted his Laocoon and commented through this on the [nquisnion, he was guilty of cowardice and did so to escape the hang-man's noose! ~'\ nd I tbink he con ;idered Delacroix's ' Liberty Leading the People' a great pa inting I I feel Itke laughing. The theatrical venus i, certaInly a handful, ample in proportions, tan talisin~ly sensuous, but hardl y a symbol of Liberty, ev.n she w ,re ~ur<ti ng her corset. Which i. all ratber a pity because Max bas a keen observant eye and an incisive ]anguage. " "But this happens to some thin leers. They can't look at themselves. They teach pragmatism but act like sorcerers.

They want art to do what insurrection shor.ld. This is the crassest kind of 'totemisrn',- tbe same which Max accu~es Picasso of" .

.

" I tbink I have strayed too far away from my poinl" he said, what I meant to say was I do not use tbe word 'historical' in th e lim ited Sense Max does."

I thought I had better have my say. Or else be will again fly .,tr at a tangent. Thematically, I said, I have been shuttling In these terracottas fro m the sensuous to the tragic. The sensuousness I seek to contact is the sensuousness of the common place, casual, undramatic, as lies concealed ina family portrait, a room interior or a window

II

inset, the tragedy I seek to contact is related to man's . inbumanity to man and the moronic pleasure with which some indulge in this ; juxtaposing mao's fra gil ity on the ooe hand and his obtuseness 00 the o the r. I have been asked whether my relitf, have any refaence to happeoings in Baogladesh (There is the historical ror you .) The answer is yes and no. Tbey do attemp t to poin t at the idiotic chase in which a man makes his fell ow-mao his quarry. \\ht re in the face of the suffering he causes. he gloats in

his victo ries and raltles his medals. But its site can be Bangladesh, Viet Nam or anywhere in the world.

Tbis, I think, is the most absurd of today's absurd dramas aod our culture's greatest defeat . The prospect is depressing and bleak. But I suppose I still nourish a feel 109 tbat life sball prevail. May be breaking out like a pale sprout out of a barren twig. may be crawling out like a pathetic orphan from tbe belly of a dead mother.

But I do not feel tbat any fact of history is tbe legitimate

subject of art until it becomes an artist's personal myth and its tragedy becomes a scar on bis ionermost beinE. Otherwise it will stop short of reportage-Would yo u call that historical? Max woudo'!. He would call it 'totemism'.

Well that was a long peroration. " Q uite involuotary; tbis midget sh ould have driven me crazy. I bate to dress my wiodow with so much verbal lace. It cuts the outlook.

Any good work will be much in excess of what you can say about it. lt lVas then that S. came into the room asking, what are you muttering to yourself sitting in the dark 7 I wanted to say that I was not talking to myself but had a visitorwben .udde.nly I saw Socrates was not on my .boulder.

He had disa ppeared. He had left without as much as saying good bye. These Greek s can be as churlisb as tbe Ind,"ns. '

So when S. put on the light I looked at her with a Sheepish smile.

Ktshav Malik

POEMS

The Finest Hour At your finest hour 1you are as though you were fine as a fine hair recording the delicatest tremors riling from deep within the sleep of geologic layers.

At your finest I-as if couchant on a bed of bubble or foam measuring the cuaec flow of the liquid consonant. of .oul below the endless meters of a brute crust.

Then, no other sound for you does no sound no Dotc, but only the air or stir of the barest rum our loole beneath the essential .ilence of stone. Neitber more nor less.

Moonshine A pregnant moon i. ballooning bigger and bigger, Then down upon your floor she bursts witbout a sound.

Fragments, like milky marble or silky glass Are now spilled aU over, And you are on your fours Gathering the.e marvels, a. precious As a shattered Sung or Ming.

Above, tbe sky now il pitch dark.

Sheet Cream Not possible, not till the lashing tongue shuts up in tbe mouth complete like a jack back in its box and tbe eyes' dry ovens open wide to take in a glance the glowing soark from the diamond circle of tbe sky not possible till tben tbe rise of joy'. gaily waving coloured kite.

Come my cat. lap up your sweet cream of snow-white light or the springs of your tboughts stay singularly less their wings of agile imagining, the silver bowl of th. head empty of its rich pap of holy tbrilling.

And sorely troubled by flies and flea. you only to gingerly wend your way for stray fins' among asb cans, the great pyramids of the suburban refuse to choke your throat with rot.

No cat, not till curious eyes open wider and lhe padded paws tryout the mystery of the Iigbt flashing in running steam, till then not lhe faintest gbost of a cbance of the breathless dance.

Terracottas by K. G. Subramanyam

, March 1 971 '

'The laugh'

( The General's alter-piece I

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Detail : The General's alter-piece'

• Portr.its of Heroes'

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Det.il : • Portr.its of Her<;l8\l ,

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â&#x20AC;˘l

, Seven Eves'

In Quest of Identity: Art & Indigenisma in Post-colonial culture with special reference to contemporary Indian painting

GEETA KAPUR

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( This series of articles weJl be published in a book form when concluded.

It will be available on an advance payment of Rio 10/-)

CHAPTER VIII

J.

SWAMINATHAN (1928-

Swaminathan was born and brought up in Simla. He had just finished school when he ran away to Calcutta to join the national struggle for Independence. He was a political activist from 1943 to 1953, first in the Congress Socialist Party and then in the Communist Party of India. During this period he read widely and wrote in different political and literary journals, with equal fluency in both Hindi and English.

On settling in Delhi, he resumed his interest in painting, which he had enjoyed since school days. He came to know the painters in Delhi and sporadically attended c1alSes at the Delhi art college. From the late 1950's he began to paint .erioully and regarded himself as an artist. During 1958-'59 he went on a scholarship to the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He fir8\ exhibited in 1960 but it was not until 1964 that he held hi. first one-man show.

As he became involved with the Indian art scene, he started writing articles and was for some years the regu)ar art

critic for Link. During 1966 he edited a little controversial magazine on contemporary art called Contra. During 1968-'70 he worked as a Nehru Fellow on the theme, Th. Significance of the Traditional Numell to Contemporary Arl. In this .tudy he has formulated his belief in the vital relevance of the folk and tribal art of India to contemporary consciousness.

Manism and his political involvements have given him a wide perspective on cultural question; these have al80

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provided him the intellectual facility to propose or demolish ideological issues. But gradually, over the last !O years he has retracted from communism and from social ideologies, and if he speaks in political terms at all it i. from a loos. and ratber predictable anarchist position. Swami nathan'. intellect shifts between intractable contradictions and these tend to remain merely intriguing until he disciplines himself in writing.

Then his ideas arc often original with

the quick of the imagination and the lubtle dialectic of an argument. In recent years he bas repeatedly expressed his preoccupation with the metaphoric quality of the primitive consciousness, and

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the other hand, the abstract

magnificence of Hindu metaphysic.

And he claims or

wishes, to draw bis aesthetics from these indigenous sources.

In his work between 1959 and 1965, he drew upon traditional symbols, rooted in Indian religion and myth (the Swastika, the Om, the lingam, the snake, the imprint of palm.) In India these ancient symbols, are not out of use for Indian religion is practised at several levels from pure

metapbysics to popular worship of familiar idols '.

But for an increasingly Jarge population in the urban areas the traditional symbols are no longer symbols In Catholic cultures, religious symbology is sti ll meaningful but it probably does not proliferate in the every day life of people to the same extent as in India. Eut in Catbolicised colonies e. g. in Latin America a parallel to the Indian situation exists.

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of simple faith, they have a kind of half-life they are 'virtual' symbols.

Swarninathan bas been aware of these ambiguities and most probably he has used symbols because they exist in this twilight territory of meanings. In using them he bas tried to question the assumed dichotomy between what is traditional and modern. Thus his symbols carrying a weight of nostalgia, become as it were, symbols for remembering.

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There is a second aspect to the u50 of symbols. I have mentioned that in India they appear everYWhere, in temple. on the walls of dwelling and as decoration on object. of use, like pottery and textiles. They mark festive and auspicious occasions but they are also scratched on walls a. casually as graffiti. At every occasion, besides communicating their meaning, they have a formal life as well; there is a manner Of style of expression or what one might call pictorial 'handwriting' determined in each case by the surface and the tools used. The pictorial characteristic is also determined by tbe experiences of the artist - how often and how rapidly he repeats the gesture of making tbe symbol. A contemporary artist's horrowings from traditional Iymbology are vital to the extent that he ,ecognises the connection between tbe symbol and its ·special ecri/ure. And to the extent that he relates its meaning function in the tradition with tbe formal

versatility that the symbol bas developed. In Swaminathan'l painting of this phase, there is a recognition of these factors.'

But tbe interpolation of traditional symbols in contemporary painting, however imaginatively they are used does raise many question. that cannot be satisfactorily answered. The context in which the contemporary artist exists and paint. hi. easel picture i. far removed from all those ingenuous places wbere the traditional symbols appear. Even if rhe artist cao simulate the faith of icon makers, he cannot ignore the fact that their meaning-function is inevitably linked to a cultural context which assumes the viewers' uuderstanding.

What then is the purpose of transferring symbols from one to another context? Does the mere transference give them new meaning ? Should they be consciously transformed by the contemporary artist, does not the symbol expire when it is thus transformed? Looked at theoretically, the odds are overwhelmingly against such a wilful For example when using the symbol of the .nake he employed a rapid calligraphic movement of the hand to inlcribe the image into thick paint, simulating the formal character of that symbol IS it is inscribed on soft mud walls. Wben using the symbol of the hand, he dipped his open palm into paint (traditionally it j, Bme. cowdung or earth red) and prened it against the canvas (8S traditionally aaainst a wall), to limulate the sponteneoul and eccentric character of the imaae in its oriainal environment.

use of traditional symbols l , In India where history is as it were subsumed by a tradition that continues till today, the use of symbol may not be anachronistic but it is not ultimately fruitful. In a rapidly changing society even a barricade of traditional symbols performs finally no more than a decorative function. x

x

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Since 1967, following a transitional phase of abstract painting -which he called 'colour geometry' -Swaminathan has developed a more personalised imagery in which there is a unique use of metaphor. However he still makes references to the Indian mythological and literary tradition; he attempts in fact to develop a pictorial convention that is at one and the same time attached to and independent of the tradition.

It may be contended that modern artists have been openly eclecticreferring to disparate sources and superposing their plunders in a linglc work. But this contention must be looked at a little closely. Modern artists have been affected by (a) different visual modes of apprehending reality (Primitive art). (b) different stylistic conventions-their special pictorial mode ( Primitivo art, Persian llrt, Arabic and Oriental Calligraphy).

But seldom have fully made symbols been imported and if at all, then with the specific purpose of commenting OD their content,

the values that are being symbolised.

Here a digression is in place. The relationship between symbols and metaphors is very close; in its origins the sym bol generally derives from a metaphoric concept. (A metaphoric concept becomes a symbol when a cultural group a&tees to conventionalise its meaning, and if it is visual, its form.) The metaphor tends to be closer to the appearance and attributes of a thing than an abstracted symbol. Moreover, the metaphor is a concept whose pictorial realisation need not be fixed, whereas in the symbol the form is inseparable from its concept and meaning, and an imaginative interpretation only distorts or obscures the symbolic meaning.

It is difficult to clearly distinguish between metaphors and symbolS in a long mythological and literary tradition.

But it seems reasonable to say that those metaphor-symbols that are a part of the poetic tradition will allow for a transplant, and a transformation of meanings in different environments. The metaphoric meaDiDgs~are Dot revived so much as re-created in a new syntactical context. Whatever memory clings to them is welcomed by the selfconlcious borrower and forms a part of his very intention of borrowing.

It i. also worth mentioning that it is in this century that the metaphor i. re-instated to the power that it generally holds in the primitive and folk arts or other pantheistic traditions. In modern art as for example in the case of

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ween he

Klce reality is not so much referred to as replaced by a self-complete world of metaphors.'

I. (A

ral f it is the t,d whose symbol g, cures

sand n. symbols or a erent revived WhatIf¡ tention

Since 1968 Swami nathan has consisteotly used certain images: of these the mountain (or a range of mountains), the tree and bird occur in several paintings. In Indian mythology and literature, the mountain as a metaphor for ascent to higher consciousness, is used throughout.

The tree is a life-symbol as in several other traditions.

He paints the peacock and the parrot, which are again ( along with tbe Maina) life symbols. Metaphorically thoy are also birds of love. Their natural characteristicsthe lonely splendour of the peacock, the speed and vivacity of the parrot-are also used in literature, both literally and metaphorically.

However, it is not merely the choice of these metaphor.ymbols but the attitude toward them, that is giving his painting this connection with Indian art and aesthetic.; it is Swaminathan's understanding of the intimate and reciprocal connection between lyric poetry and painting that is important. In mediaeval India, with the afflorescence of Ortega Y Gasset. De/zumanisation

y that cnerally eistic asc of

0/ Art,

P. 34

In establishing itself in its owo right the metaphor assumes a more or less leading part in the poetical pursuit. ... Before reality was overlaid with metaphors by way of ornament; now the tendency is to eliminate the extrapoetical or real prop and 'realize' the metapbor to make it the res poetica . ... . . "

Vaisbnav poetry, painting became an illumination of lyric verse. Poetry and painting shared each other's characteristics: vivid imagery poetry, lyricism In painting ( culminating in the last great school of the miniature tradition-the Kangra School of the 18th and 19th centuries). In the miniatures the essence of the lyric permeates the pictorialisation of the sky, the hills, the flowering trees, various animals and birds, and moulds their shape and rhythm. It permeates the pictorial elements, like line, colour and space so that the entire picture is, as it were, a composite metaphor for the lyric theme. The words of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer, written for some quite diff.rent context, are pecuiarly appropriate here :" ..â&#x20AC;˘ , to reduce the lyric to its element the metaphor ...... " The Indian painter achieves this beautifully.

in

Swaminathan's images are likewise, forms of poetic feeling, they are neither naturalistic nor analytical; the form perceived. by the eye and understood by the intellect as it were, recreated in the imagination to embody besides the physical presence, che entirety of its metaphoric, its poetic quality.

There is another alpect to be considered in the Indian artistic tradition, the metaphor not only enhances meaning but also embellishes the form of the poem or painting, Metaphor is one of the important alamkaras (figures of speech, meaning

,

literally, embellishment) in Indian Poetics. ' Mediaeval lyrics delight in the proliferation of references to the lotus, birds of love, the moon, the flowering trees . All creatures of nature mirror tbe state of feeling of tbe principle cbaracters but these references also serve a purely ornamental function

rn

the corresponding pictorial illuminations ( the miniatures) these images serve again the double function of enhancing tbe mood and ornamenting the pictorial space ( for example a crescent moon is etched sharply against a night sky; twinning birds are vivid in dense foliage; silver fish and lotuses float in grey ponds. )

on the level of an ephemeral sentiment.

Swaminatean does not use many images. nor is there a

Tbe colours are bright and lucid but though their intensity

profusion of decorative details . On the contrary, the basic images are simple and set in large colour-spaces. But he

varies, the composition is not in terms of tonal contrast.

uses a peculiar device of placing with exquisite care, a _ 'miniaturised' image. At first it was tiny formalised temple

with flag; in recent years it is usually a bird, within a vast mountain-scape. Apart from tbe metaphoric meaning of the image, its from and placement is ornamental ( in the sense tbis word bas been used above) rather like tbe placement of a jewel, by whicb the entire painting glitters.

Embellishment means more than decoration and ornament ion although both terms are included witbin it. The latter terms arc generally associated with degenerate art styles, aod refer to tho superfluities of Form. Coomaraswamy has at several occasions pointed out that at least until the mediaeval period, as there was no distinetion between artist and craftsman, there was an tntegral relationship between form and ornamentation.

--

Such 'devices' as Swaminathan uses are qu it e evidently dangerous as well, for tbe metaphors can easily become clicbes. the ornament, mere decoration . Also the pictorial realisation of a 'vision' is difficult: on the one hand, it can get trapped in paint-matter.' on the other, it can remain

Swaminathan has always used the medium of oils. Since 1968 he thin s the paint to lightness and transparency and applies it to the canvas with rags, using the brush only very occasionally, for finer details. The images appear on the canvas dematerialised as it were, like an apparition.

The cboice of colours is unu.ual; he may use colours like pink, yelJow, green and violet in a singe painting. Not only are the colours nonreferentia1 in terms of nature, they

do not seem to belong to a conventional vocabulary of pamtlng.

There are howevor

tWO

referents: miniature

paintings, particularly of the Kangra School ( wbere for example, a pin k and green may be used togetber with the freshness of spring) and Tantra paintings.

It is the concept of space whicb provides the cues for 'reading' a picture. Swaminathan's paintings can mostly be divided into two broad categories: those where he works within the flat two-dimensionality of the picture-surface and where the images are related diagrammatically; and those in which there is an allusion to an imaginary, a

~' ,------------------------------------------

al can rin

psychic-spiritual landscaoe. [0 paintings of the first category, reference to Tantric paintings and folk wall paintings is helpful, particularly as in both ( tbougb different from each oth~r ) the disposition of images in space is very often simple, symmetrical, yet in detail, eccentric. In tbe

I quote a verse by a contemporary Marathi poet, Vinda Karandikar, wbo invokes almost identical imagel as Swami nathan's paintings.

"Today tbe birds are of the sky, and the tender parrot leaves of the mango tree quiver with desire to f ly in the blue.

Today prayer is as big as the loul the god as big as the temple tbe f1owor as big as the god."2

lattcr category, the space is an environment wheJc a vision

very

,

lity t.

rs Not they of [ure ~r the

for

Iy be rko

is 'realised', and as such it must neither be naturalistic nor formal. And eveothough in some of these paintings the different spatial attitudes overlap in a way that the vision is trapped in banal devices, it i. generally the paintings of this latter category that are more original and important.

SEQUEL

The individual images are curiously 'iODocent' as if they have had no previous existence. Yet there is no surrealistic 5urprise nor any disturbance at their appearance. And it is only then one realizes that the images so 'resh in appearance do bave not only literary but traditional visual referents.

The temple and the flag ( Sbikbar and Pataka) or tree occur in naive folk paintings. The delineation of the bird resembles certain precisely formalised and exquisite images in Tantric paintings. I Amongst all the images it is tbe rock, transfixed in tbe sky tbat is a consciously modern metaphor. But even tbat has 00 ominous significance; it bas the simplicity of the artist's fancy sucb as a folk artist may display within a set of conventionalised images.

rface

lad a

Ajit

Mukherjee Talltra

pp 133-139.

Art; refer to reproduction

011

Swaminatban's work bas been cbanging during tbe last three years. Although he uses the same motifs, the spirit is less free and pristine than before.

He has become technically more apt in obtaining the transparent and textural effeets be wants. In tbat sense the cbarge tbat was oflen made against him, that he doe. not 'paint' well, ~s no longer valid. 1 was never convinced by that criticism; on the contrary I believe that his slightly unprofessional handling of the materials was appropriate to hi's peculiarly 'inDocent' vision.

For many years he used a restricted number of images.

There were the mountains and birds, sometimes a tree, a 2

Extract from' Tremendous as Onkar, the Mountain' Tranl.I{om Marathi.

lake, a rock suspended in the sky. The picture gave form to an ineffable vision and tho images were essentially metaphoric in tbat they had the vividness but not the materiality of things in nature.

In these paintings, the picture space was that of an apparitional landscape, but not naturalistic. He created a space of such silent expanse - it seemed the echoes would ring out with the clarity and pitch of a bell.

Now he has begun to mulliply tne number of birds in a composition, perched them on clouds and trees and mountain peaks. The space is cluttered aad the bird has lost the lonely aplendour it had wben it was reflected in tbe mountain lake. Now the images work as motifs arranged on the picture surface for variety and effect. The compositions which had been simple and symmetrical have became more obviously difficult. The mountain images wbich still constitute the basic structural unit in the paintings have to perform acrobatic feats. poised tip to toe in far-flung posture â&#x20AC;˘.

But what is most disappointing is the choice of new images.

Besides a whole variety of birds, including an eagle, there are spiders and beetles and grasshoppers, placed precariourly on precariously dosigned mountains.

I bad earlier suggested that his images. fresb and original al they were, had a metapboric quality which made them truly lyrical and which in turn rooted them, imaginatively

in the Indian tradition of lyric verse and painting. The fact that he has introduced a menagerie of birds and insects puts sucb an interpretation in doubt. But tbe real pity is that tb, later paintings, whatever premise they adopt, are, despite their virtuosity, so much less magical.

A retrospective view form a point in a painters' developmenl which is not entirely favourable to him, may make one doubt the very premises from which Ihe painter conceived his work in the first place, espacially if there is not so muet difference in his content and imagery (as in quality) betweeI his earlier and later phase. Even in the ealier paintings 01 Swami, there was the danger that metaphors may become mere motifs and the simply composed paintings altogether decorative. But it is now when the paintings are otensibely more inventive that they seem to be worked from a formula The earlier paintings were inspired by an original vision; these later ones are in spirit and conception, formalistic.

One may make a more complicated argument and on retrospective consideration I am inclined to belive it. His

earlier paintings, whether we interpret them in purely aesthetic or in spiritual terms showed too conscious a preoccupation with beauty. Swami would probably call it bliss (ananda). Such a state of beatitude which is presumeably achieved by a transcendence from the conflict!, the grim and sordid struggles of human being., is a passive state. ( But art in the refined form of bum an praxis; it

fact puts ttbe

e

ment e ived fnucb ween gs of orne

her bely mula . on; embodies the contradictions of human exi stence and raises them to a Dew level of consciousn ess. If one admits for a

on His

y ~,

a

it s

Iiets, 5sive it

moment the possibillity of a mystical transcendence above the common human lot, then it is also admitted tbat io its first wonder it can inspire 3n art-form.) That is, the transcendent pOlition is an essentialiy omniscient and a

completelv tranquil ooe. And after the drst wonder of revelation the artist drawing bis images from such a spiritual experience (which may be renewed but which is by definition complete and unchanging ) is likely to become selfimitative and decorative, to falI into an artistic convention.

Such a convention may formally preserve an original

inspiration but it has little to do with tbe dynamic of human existence, ( wherein art must be regarded as the refined form of praxis, embodying the contradictions of existence, raising them to a new level of consciousness ). An artist

who claims communism witb Reality ( with a capital R ) may put himself in the danger of lo,iag that vulnerabiliy at tbe heart of experience out of which a wo rk of art is born.

The ' work then loses botb its spiritual and its human dimension and becomes merely an artefact of an aesthete.

I wonder if Swaminathan feels content in that position.

Pablo

Neruda

M. C. Gabriel

J The gun. go at midnigbt on the city. at various corners in the dark

tanks rumble and park and in the tightening toils of si lence stretch like wayward fingers full or fear tbe dark and twisted street â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘ Eartb bas no pity for its own nor the sky fOF cbildren afraid to cry.

Only tbe widowed eyes rounded and crazed seem to say in tbe windows above 'The Tyrant and his men bave come 'into the gardens of our love 'and tomorrow when the sun

'will take bis appointed place in tbe cast 'birds may not sing, flowers may fail to bloom 'but this is certain, certain indeed,

'that the fountains of the city will rUII 'with a people's rainbow blood.'

II Dear Chileans, my poor, poor brothers all this is true and worse may happ.n but wben they come, as sure they will, deafening tbeir despair in a frenzied cry 'Your Pablo Neruda i. dead' do not believe them. do not believe for as I walked tbrougb the gates af your city r saw this man - old and bent he washiding his face in his bands.

He called himself Death and as he slunk past be .aid 'don't blame me; r did my best.

'Took him away before tbe bullets got him.

'As I said I did my best 'but the trouble is 'tbis Pablo Neruda would not die.'

III Dear Chileans, friends, do not weep Pablo Neruda is only asleep.

What if bis lids are closed 1 Througb his eye the splendours of bis dreams sweep by.

What if his band. bave ceased to move in the eternal gestures of hi. love 1 A silence to freeze these guns is born

out of the winter of bi. scorn. because tbe old akin he wore will not serve as shelter

o

any

more

Let's not pretend he can be dead like any of us.

Instead now that be is loose watch him come

tbrough every door of every home upon tbe frigbtened children's very breath.

'Tbe best do not die even in deatb.

INDIAN PAINTING TODAY: THE SUBVERT ED TRADITION B. N. Goswamy

In contemporary Indian painting, unlike many other aspects of Indian social and cull ural life, Ihe division between the Iradilional and the modern remains relalively sharp. Ov.,. the past hundred years or so, against the background of a general rejection of the traditions of Indian painting, there have been several attempted revivals. One such revival is discernible today, with an extensil'e use oj allegedly traditional symbols. It is argued here, hwoel'el', that this apparent

revival is superficial, artifiCially induced by Ihe demands ~r the foreign market . There has beell a failure to synthesise.

This failure lies wilh the art historians as well as the artists Ihemselves, for recent art hislory has lended 10 befragmenled and specialised, lacking all overall view of Ihe dynamic conlinuily of Indian painling. The "Indian look" of much contemporary works, the author claims, lies in the imitation of particular signs and forms, not in creative development

wilhin a whole, and whalely perceived, aesthetic.

Signs of an Indian Look

To many a modern Indian artist, "tradition" fo1' many years sounded almost like a dirty word. It was irrelevant, had no use: what was worse, it ran counter to his wish to innovate: within its confines he could not dare; it could

oDly serve, he thought, to dim his new-found freedom. Tbis freedom, one might cynically say, was only the freedom to U

absorb" _ that is tbe word used-the influences that were

coming in from the West. But the point is that he believed he needed this freedom; needed to break away. But of late tbings have changed somewhat. The work of a whole new group of artists J is beginning to wear what

might be called a more Indian look.

Phallic images can

be seen to rise, blind-eyed, in many a canvas.

Oooe can

see swastikas sprouting everywbere, and mystical-looking,

if inaccurately drawn, yantra oiagrams surrounded by Hindi or Gujarati characters . Tbere is talk of tantra, of nayaks and nayikas, raga' and raginis. To speak of the tradition of Indian painting against (his setting may not

sound so very strange after all But to say that some notice is being taken of it again is different, of course, from saying that it is beginning to be understood.

The First Rejection In a sense this wbole development should come as no great surprise, for strange things have been happening to tbe Indian tradition of painting for more than a hundred years now. It seemingly dried up first, tbeD begaD to be spoken of with great enthusiasm ; went through aD

attempted revival; was theD rejected and Dearly forgotten and is DOW being invoked again. And all this while its true nature was but imperfeetly understood . The narrative could well begin with the nearly complete shrivelling of the tradition towards the middle of the nineteenth century. The story is reasonably well kDowD. the first rejection of the tradition, for it can only be termed thus, came not from the painters but from the patrons.

The acquaintance of the rulers and the nobility of Indian st.tes ( from whom most of the patronage came) with European painting had been growiDg siDee the beginning of tbe ceDtury. The works that tbey were seeing, or receiving in gifts, were nothing like those tbat had stimulated and intrigued the great Mughals and tbeir painters two hUDdred years earlier. These

up

were realistic portraits, romantic reconstructions of

historical scenes and events, idealised landscapes: tbe kiDd of work tha , one would associate with an Emily Eden, a Sehoefft, a Tilly Kettle. Being paiDted in tbe grand manner, as lhey imagined this to be, was enrirely to the liking of most of tbese princes. Tbey cbeerfully sat for portraits, commissioned whole series of works and displayed them with pride.' They were streDgtheDed in their elevated view of tbis kind of painting, much of which we hold today in low regard, by the dim view wbieb the EuropeaDs, travellers and soldiers aDd admiuistrators alike, tended to take of IDdian painting at that time. Sometimes tbey poked fun openly at the work

Since what follows is not a discussion of the works of individual enists, names have been brought in only where absolutely

One ean imagine that the situation at many Indian courts must bave been a little like that at the Lahore court, which came into active contact with European painters in the first hair of the nineteenth century. That situation is described with great verve

necessary.

by Dr. W. Go Archer in Paintings of the Sikas.

2

,

of the Indian painters. 3 Even if tbey were not so explicit, their low opinion seems to have got accurate1y across to the Indian patrons whose faith in mucb else that was Indian was also then being sbaken.

D,'findling Patronage The result of sucb a situation was predictable. The painters, being for the most part dependent on patronage for tbeir subsistence, must bave found it hard to stand up to tbe situation. They may not have been exactly put Sn the road by tbis development, but tbey knew that tbey w.re on .ufferance: tbey could not but have sensed the change in the direction of the wind. And yet tbey could do very little: at that time tbere was virtually no open market for art goods. They could not have taken their works elsewhere or found new patrons. It is nol an accident then that the only type of painting which managed to survive, cactus-like, was that whicb was independent of the conventional kind of patronage: Kalighat, Paithan, Madhubani, Puri.

A Catastrophic Onslaught This whole trend of the fading away of official or sophisticated painting as distinguished from folk painting does not, one would tbink, speak too well of the vitality of a tradition which went back 2000 years or so.

One would have expected Indian painting to have withstood the onslaught and to produce its own, characteristically subtle, response to the challen ge, But if it did not, and went under rather tamely, the explanation i. to be found perhaps in tbe fact that onslaught carne at what mu.t be seen as already a time of crisis in t he arts of India. especially in painting. At the turn of the century painting bad entered upon a somewhat anaemic "base. There were to many clicbes, an excess of repetition. And tbere could be discerned a clear movement in tbe direction of naturalism, even a reaching out towards realistic rendering and detail whicb was dangerously close to what 3 See Vigne, G. T .â&#x20AC;˘ Travels in Kashmir &c., London, 1842. I, pp. 181-82. Describing some frescoes in the Mandi palace. he said; " [ derived some amusement from an in spectillo of tho new paintings on the wall and of these one in particular attracted my attention, as it was a specimen of the Dot unusual attampts of a Hindu Raphael to embody his ideas of HeaveD In the centre of the celestial city. of mixed Hindu and Saracenic architecture. was a courtyard, surrounded by a plain oct.! gonal wall: its circumferenee, such was the perspective, could not have exceeded one hundred yards. Within the court was a building or vestibule. in which Kali, or Parbuti, sat ( having notbing better to do in Heaven) smoking a hooker. by way of whiling away Eternity . . â&#x20AC;˘. " Again, Emily Eden said of tbe drawiop: of "a notice painter" who was' "sketching G." in 1833 : " .... if my drawing ioC)ked as odd to him as his did to me, he must have formed a mean idea of the arts of England,"

the Europetl artists were doing in their own tecbnique and stylo. The Indian painters were subsisting, it appears, on a vision borrowed from an earHer generation and on the taste for "prettiness" on tbe part of tbeir patrons.

But, if the history of Indian painting is any guide; rhis crisis might have proved to be only a low ebb to be followed by the rise of another tide. Period. like tbi. had not been unknown before: but after weary times when tbe tradition appeared to have turned elfete, it bad bounced back with surprising vigour. The recurre.nce of a phenomenon like that wculd not have been unlikely at all.

But right at the moment when it was beginning to sbow signs of exhaustion came this onslaught against sensibilities that bad already become a little dulled. The story can be seeD, of course, as forming only one chapter of a longer narrative, but this i. what setmingly happened. What might have been only another crisis turned into something of a catastrophe as far as painting in [odia was concerned.

Borrowing It is interesting to note the feeble efforts made by some painters towards the end of the nineteentb century to adjust to the new situation here and there on their own. The sketchbook of a Patiala family of artists contains copies of pictures of Parisienne models taken from fashion magazines, even a portrait in miniature of the local maharaja in tbe gouache technique but simulating the effect of old painting. 4 The a"ist Narottam of Mandi, who did not belong to a family of hereditary painters but had some facility in drawing, learnt the secret of lhe tecbnique of painting in oil by peeping tbrough a keybole and seeing a European painter at work as the local prince sat for bis pOItrait 5 : he later did several large portraits in oil of the Rajas of K ulu and mandi wbich still hang in wbatever remain. of tbe "darbar halls" of tbese states. Tbe theatrical attempts of Raja Ravi Varma and ,ome others to use the European techniques for painting traditional subjects from Indian mythology have been tbe subject of much study and comment. But if the Raja imagined that he was in any way reviving the Indian tradition, be was only mistaking subject matter for spirit: all tbat he succeeded in producing was a series of pompous curiosities of DO significance either to European art or to the Indian tradition.

The two serious elforts tbat bave been made to refer back to tbe tradition came only in the twentieth century: one 4. This family of artists came from Rajasthan : a large portfolio of their drawing and aketches, badly damaged, was examined by me some years ago. Some members of the family had collaborated with a Pahari artist on the Shish Mahal fresc lles at Patiala.

5. This story is told with much leJish by Narottam's SOD, Pandit Jawala Prashad, who is still alive. Narottam is Hill spoken of with some pride in Mandi.

od

o

by a small but brilliant group of aesthetes and scholars, tbe other by a set of gifted if ambivalent painters.

Building a Mystique Havell and Coomaraswamy are names to conjure with

18

ad of a all. w 'ties be r ight

a

in Indian art history, Their talents differed a great deal and they tended to move in directions that they carefully chose for themselves. But when we take their work together, they, wrought wbat can only be called a small miracle. They interpreted the spirit of the art of India for Indians and westerners alike, removed from its name a definite stigma,6 restored to it a generous measure of pride. And they set about, especially Ananda Coomaraswamy, the writing of a history of Indian art, something which had almost never been done before. To many sensitive contemporaries, especially in the West,

Coomaraswamy sounded like sometbing of a prophet.

Year after year he appeared to be removing the veils of obscurity from periods of Indian art: in majestic prose and with a rare refinernenr, he wrote of classical sculpture, of Rajput painting, of the relationship of literature with art and of art with people. But when we look back, it is difficult to resist tbe impression tbat he was casting some

s of

golden veils at the same lime as he was lifting ethers. For even though he wrote from time to time of works of art

oeal Ifecl id some of og a is f the ver trical he am and oy ing cing itber

as works of art, pointing to their colours and forms and sense of de~ign, and discussillg the whole artistic approach of Indian artilols to their art, tbe image that his writings generally created was one of an art that had its

distinctive and almost u"approachabe mystique.

When we are discussing a formative influence. such as his clearly was, and the interpretation of a tradition, it is

necessary to see that what mattered most to 'bis contemporaries was wbat they believed he was saying, ratber tban wbat they knew him to be saying. And most people began to view tbe whole of I ndian art with. degree of awe: Coomarasw.myappeared to them to have placed it on a pedestal, surrounded it "ith a halo and burned before it worshipful incense. Of the elements of dharma and exaltation and dhyana and anonymity, a cloud began to form, as it were, through which the objet was rarely seen as

back ne of y me

ted it

fwith

3n

artefacr, valid in itself aDd possessed of a life of its

6. Early opinions of Indian art held by tbe British were low indeed.

Vincent Smith wrote , in the Imperial Gazetteer of India. "India has never produced an orlist of original genius in either painting or sculptule: and to this day the inhabitants of Hindustan, even the most highly cultivated, are singularly indifferent to aesthetic merit, and little qualified to distinguish between good and bad art," Even Sir George BirdwQod declared himself dissatisfied with "the monstrous shapes of the Pauranic deities" (Industrial Arts

of India. London, 1880, p. 125).

own. Tbe tradition to which it was seen to belong was much more than the tradition only of art; it was that of an entire social order. This had inevitable con,equences; few people especially among the artists who came later, thought of extricating the essentials of the artistic tradition from the general and of seeing the structural elements of rndian painting, for example, as distinct from its external Corm, which included its subject matter. And because tbe social situation had become so different, in their view any talk of

tradition in the context of tbe art of the twentietb century was nothing but an anachronism. Tn fairness, Ananda Coomara,wamy cannot be beld wholly responsible for this development, but it is very easy for beliefs to be at variance with facts when little effort is made to verify.

The Bengal School The one concerted attempt on the part of painters in the first three decades of the twentieth century to "revive'路 - the

word has been used both in the approbatory and tbl pejorative sense by different people-the tradition of Indian painting yields even more interesting material for study.

Estimate, of the total achievement of painters like Abanindranath Tagore, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Nandlal Bose and others of what is called the "Bengal School" vary a great deal but perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say tbat the movement which they consciously Counded and led failed in the sense that it did not revive tbe tradition in any significant measure; nor did it give Indian art a new turn.

It remained an interesting experiment in which some good

works of art by individual artists were produced, but tbe total oeuvre did not possess that vitality which alene could bave provided an alternative to the direction in which the art of rndia was bound sooner or later to go: tbe western,

This one can attribute to a variety of factors,

but I sbould like here especially to mention three. The first is that tbe painters of the Bengal school became too involved with the palt and its themes, seemingly paying to the subject matter tbe attention that the spirit of earlier art deserved. his wOrlh remarking that, even in respect of subject matter. if the Indian painters of an earlier age had some favourite themes they also had kept tbemselves abreast of themes of more or less cont::::mporary relevance or interest: Jataka tales, Jaina texts, court chronicles, sringara literature, bhakti poetry, folk narratives.

The Bengal school artists l in contrast, were constantly

looking back over their shoulders 7 : this made tbem fall out of step very easily.

7. Many of the artists did of course attempt other themes, including portraits of contempol aries, but these were not characteristic products.

Then, these artists were in a way attempting to move in different directions at the same time. Take, for instance their preoccupation with the at that time attractive idea of a common Asian spirit,8 and therefore expression, and their conscious reaching out towards Far Eastern art in the matter of technique. If there i, one thing that binds tbe various periods of tbe art of India together, it is a peculiar colour sense: vivid, vibrant, intuitively arrived at. But the wash technique whicb the Bengal scbool artists strongly favoured took care of that, and a dreamy mist of ambivalence spread over their work.

Tbe third factor is that in their work tbe Bengal scbool artists, extraordinarily, showed distinct signs of having beld in bigh esteem only tbe late products of some of tbe earlier periods of painting; so tbe compositions and the rendering tbat tbey sougbt to own and emulate were tbose tbat we see in some eigbtheentb-century Mughal miniatures or in the output of tbe Kangra school: gentle, luxuriant, mellow, almost fragile. Tbis must obviously have been matter of decided preference,- for attention bad been drawn by several publications contemporary to them to other schools of painting. But the Bengal school painters obviously did not respond to the brilliance of design, the wonderful sap of energy tbat flowed through tbe output of, for example, the Malwa or early Rajastbani or Basobli scbools. If there was anything that needed .. reviving .. in Indian painting in the twentietb century, â&#x20AC;˘ it was not its sentimental or emotional appeal, but tbe vitality whicb bad ebbed out of it a hundred years ago. Abanindranatb and his colleages in a sense failed to create a vital art because they failed to understand wberein the strength of the Indian tradition had lain . A Jamini Roy, even an Amrita Sher-Gil, made much better use of what they knew or saw of tbe tradition.

Reaction at Second Hand It is ironical, bowever, that It was the work of the Bengal

scbool, in itself so removed from the tradition in .0 many ways, tbat came in due course to be id entified in the popular mind with the tradition; this especially in the eyes of artists wbo at tbe time when the Bengal school revivalists bad established themselves were in their formative years, the years in whicb they were to make tbeis decisions. This generation was free to decide about its preferences because its members did not belong to families of hereditary artists who bad grown up in the Indian tradition and bad leal ned to see and express things in a given manner.

Tbey did

8. Cf. Okakura. Kakulo. Idea]s of the East, London, 1903.

9. This taste is also reflected in the conectlon of Muabal. Rajasthani and Pabari miniature paintings and drawings that was later acquired from the Tagore family by Shri Kasturbhai Lalbhai of Ahmedabad.

not bave any first-hand knowedge of the Indian tradition: they saw it, so tbey tbought, in tbe Bengal school work and quietly decided that tbey did not like it, Tbere were few museums, even fewer private ceJlections open to view: the most that many of tbem could have seen of earlier work must bave been in black and white illustrations in books that were themselves not very easy to come by.

And, most important, they did not care to bestir themselves to go out into the field and discover tbe art of India for themselves. It was easy to reject, although for the wrong reasons, the tradition; equally easy sweetly to succumb to the art of anolher and all-conquering quarter of the world.

A Fragmented Perspective: The gap that was tbere in our own knowledge of what tbis tradition was, a gap created by the socio- political developments of the nineteenth century, could possibly have been filled by twentieth-century art historians. But an art historian was, and still is to some extent, a rare bird in India. And those that bent themselves to the lonely task of unravelling India's artistic past and interpreting it tended to carve out for tbemselves severely defined areas in which to work. There was comfort in tbis: in any case tbere was in it a great deal of potential for significant, intensive work, for almost everything had to be reconstructed and the first task was to gather and publish as mucb information as possible. Tbere were scbolars wbo made Ajanta their first passion; otbers who turned towards Mughal painting, or Rajasthani or Deccani or Pahari. Tn the process, while much that was significant was revealed, the general picture of development, the view of the tradition as a whole or of its continuity, remained but inadequately defined. Singularly few general histories of Jndi'an art, even of radian painting;tO were written, and it is remarkable tbat even now if one wished to know wbat was happening in Indian painting in. .ay, the seventeentb ccntury. one would have to piece together bits from different books and articles just to get an outline of facts.

It is certainly no l being argued here tbat there is no cue for specialised studies of different scbools or regions: what 1 am pointing out is that for want of comprehensive, albeit general, surveys, tbe wonderful, almost inexbaustible varietl of the Indian output in painting, a certain index of tb. strongth of the tradition, bas never been fully revealed.

Thus folk painting, for example, is only recently beginninl 10. Since Coomaraswamy's History of Indian and Indonesian Arc (from which, incidentally, M¡ughal painting is completely excluded) and Percy Brown's Indian Paintina, I can readily think-apart from some albums-only of Barrett and Gray's Painting of India and Shivramamurti', recent Indian Painting .

ons by.

vel ~r

bng to Id.

t

:&1 Y

ut ~

Iy n

~

had d

~re

who lCani tant iew ed ries

n,

~

lay,

tber dine .. for t I Ibeit ariety ~d.

to be seriously viewed,ll and yet when we realise that it has most of tbe features tbat make the Indian tradion so vital- ,trength of design; unfailing colour sense; impeccable line; reticence; a cultured innocence; an approach that is conceptual rather tban representational, a distinct tendency towards abstractioD-it must be clear tbat our view of Indian paintiDg witbout it could only remain partial aDd fragmeDtary. Likewise, a careful aDalysis of the pictorial lituatioD in different periods and styles is once again only r.c.ntly beginning to be made. Tbe tradition of Indian painting, then, as we knew it balf a century ago would appear to be substantially different from that we know today. What had been taken by the generation Ihat followed the Bengal school to be the Indian tradition was a weak, diluted version of it. To lay in this context th.n that the tradition was rejected for the wrong reasons would be inadequate. What was rejected was a phantom.

The tradition, as it really was, not even fully known.

Revival by Invocation

The cynical question to ask would be: are things any different today when there is more knowledge of the history oflndian pointing? Literature on the subject has grown considerably; quite literally tbousands of Inilian miniatures can be seen in museums without serious difficulty; reproductions in tbe most agreeably true colours are to be bad easily: in books, albums, calendars, even greeting cards.

But is there a more intelligent or sensitive appreciation of the true character of Indian painting today, especially on the part of tbe painters? The only answer that one can honestly formulate is : only slightly so. By and large, interest iD the paiDtiDg of yesterday is superficial; it matters very little to most people; ignorance of it is colossal. To me, it is typified iD tbe remark of a bright YOUDg architect, a painter herself, who declared tbat she could Dot spare much time for IndiaD paiDting for she had no interest in book illustration.

And yet, as we saw at the b.ginning, there is a great deal of talk of IndiaDness in modern Indian painting. Of many a significant painter' 2 who sees himself as a part of the world movement, honest practitioDer of an

nning

Ar. lud.d) t-1part

India

II. For instance, Madhubani paintings still form the subject only of a few articles, and virtually nothing bas been written on Paithan

work.

12. Once again I find it unnecessary to list names: tbey are not crucial to the present discussion.

iDternalioDal style, all this is not true, but the work of many others has take-D on a conscious direction, and the majesty of the tradition of IndiaD painting is being freely iDvoked. At least one principal reason for it this time, thougb, is clearly ecoDomic. The market for modern art is still very small iD India, but whatever there il of it is clearly responsive to tbe taste and needs of the fastgrowing community of foreigners interested in the art of this conntry. It is unfair to generalise, but this group of buyers, though not undiscriminating, is quite happy to buy reasonably inexpensive modern works that can at once be recognised as Indian. So are the rew Indian buyers: private individuals, museums, large commercial concerns. For there is ao accent on the "Indian" look: it is, like the sitar, in vogue.

The situation could have been regarded as quite bappy if only there were no confusioD about facts. The difficulty is simply that much of what is being traded as an ioberitance from the past is really ODce agaiD oDly a warped version of it. Wbat meets the eye is tbe externals: eye-filling, easily identifiable, but devoid of any true significance. Thc real tradition is still largely untapped.

The Failllre to Synthesise

I am tempted to add, myself, a postscript to what I have said above for fear that all this may read like one long, chauvinistie lament for the glory of India that is DO more.

Tbat was by DO means the intention. The work of leveral Indian painters today comma Dds respect, and I admire it.

Nor do I feel for a moment aDY guilt at the joy I persoDally derive from cODtemplation of the works of modern masters of tbe West. The point that I wished to make was iD the context of tbe Indian tradition aDd the impact it could possibly have had on the modern movement. But the IndiaD artists were in too much of a hurry in the matter of borrowing, or absorbing influences, if you like, from the West. There was much in the IndiaD tradition itself tbat was in consonance wilh the modern spirit, but this they overlooked. There, I tbink, aD opportunity has been, and is being, lost, for if they had tried hard eDough they cculd possibly bave come up with an expression whicb at once stemmed from' the Indian traditioD and yet reflected the modern sensibility. Had that bappened, modern IndiaD art could conceivably have become a voice instead of turDing iDto an ecbo. ( By Courtesy: South Asian Review Vol. 5, No. I .. Oct. 1971. )

J

POEMS

Mala Marwah

Grey Day

Wav .. Even at Worli

Birds in formation over higb clouds Sky ringing round. How grey tbi. world in lull Always bright some storm heaving Light from every tree!

Devouring my Itrange veins

Opposites Only on paths lying sidewise by the street, Especially on days when it is not certain Which way the wind will blow, Most markedly on women gone astray, Occasionally, too, on day. when only storms seem kindA gnomic opposite force pipe., pan-like; and Path nascent blooms, Wind undulates softly deep surfaces, Women become proud, clouds blow away Appearances Designed Ornaments beseige us in our emptinesa ; fly traps in heat; The peacock; male, bright in bis incapacity, vaunting Tail and crown ; chimera, ~ireDs in our streets, more Red berrings on display in markets full of cosmetics, Patches; this will display what it will camouflage Even as one fancies him some lord Eunuchs carry such enormous swords ..... .

As J dream of my many lives Fears, as I walk an ancient water路s edge, sniffing coconut smells, wondering

How long this walk around this world grown Dreary with factory busk and urchins shown brown As nuts, bow-long this mad realizing, this long Forgetfulness, these silly comings and goings, boys in groups Searcbing gutters for cigarette stubs, people Counting their wages, their Measures of rice, and bow ( as my chandelier clinks Me to sleep) how, in this maze of muddy pools, Stagnant drains, I can enjoy Voluptuousness Still tbrougb words ( sucb ) as tbese pointing, condemning My olden dream of a cbild's world of rainbows, jasmine bowls How as I walked tbat ancient water's edge I grew old and knew ( And saw, I tbink ) stones washed even with wounding waves breaking All the world

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