ART ICHOL Journal 3rd Volume

JOURNAL VOLUME THREE MMXVI-VII

stone metal ceramic fine art graphic

1

JOURNAL VOLUME THREE MMXVI-VII

stone metal ceramic fine art graphic

Consultant Editor, Concept and Theme: Dr. Alka Pande Editor: Prof. Shormishtha Panja Copy Editor: Bhavana Sabherwal Journal Design & Concept: Vijay Verma Cover (front): Artwork by Sudipta Das | Photo courtesy: Art Ichol

Printed and published by: Ambica Beri for Art Ichol Village Ichol (Khajuraho-Bandhavgarh Highway), Maihar - 485771, Madhya Pradesh. web: www.artichol.in email: info@artichol.in +91 98 31 005009 An initiative of Gallery Sanskriti, Kolkata web: www.gallerysanskriti.com email: info@gallerysanskriti.com +91 98 31 009278 Printed at: Solar Print Process Pvt. Ltd., Noida, U.P. India email: solar@spppl.in | 0120-7191600 ART ICHOL 2017

Contents

Director’s Note ... Ambica Beri

04

Editorial ... Prof. Shormishtha Panja 06 From the Intangible to the Tangible ...Vaakyam ... Dr. Alka Pande 10 Shankar’s Graphic Elegy and the Emergence of Neo-colonial India ... Christel R. Devadawson

18

An Overview of Altering Equations Between Word and Image in Indian Art ... Dipyaman Kar

26

Documenting Colonial India: The Use of English in Patnakalam Painting ... Saumya Garima Jaipuriar 52 The Lure of the Baluchari ... Tina Roy 60 Disappearing Dialogues ... Nobina Gupta 72 Collaborators for Disappearing Dialogues

77

Calendar of Events

87

Director’s Note Reviving the cultural legacy of Maihar and villages like Ichol is like nurturing a flower in the middle of an industrialized and rapidly changing region. A close kinship between art and people of the community has developed since the inception of Art Ichol. We see a change in the lives of the women and children of the community and a new relationship seems to be forging between the villagers and the outside world.

2017 brought in various artists from around the country and world like the President of the International Academy of Ceramics, Jacques Kaufmann, who came to create a Brick Temple at Art Ichol as a homage to the humble Brick Maker. He was joined by Tan Hongyu (Ayu), talented film maker, artist and ceramicist from Guangzhou in China. Installation and Ceramic artist Madhvi Subrahmanian from Singapore and India, stayed three weeks to create a series of works for her upcoming exhibition in Mumbai’s Gallery Chemould. Artist Satish Gupta spent a few days at the Centre to create and conceptualize three panels as part of his Buddha series. Paresh Maity was on his annual hiatus from the world when he revisits Art Ichol to simply slip away and dissolve into paint.

This year, Akshara Foundation for Arts and Learning in association with Book A Smile, Mumbai, collaborated to conduct workshops in theatre and performance, for 350 children in a local school.

Dreams and Aspirations. Photo Credit : Nobina Gupta

4

In February, Art Ichol was infused with an air of excitement and fervour when artists and professionals from all around the country and world joined us for our Second MAI (Maihar Art Ichol) Festival, an annual celebration of our opening anniversary. New meetings, exchange of ideas, works, new possibilities and collaborations ensued from this melting pot of people.

Day 1 showcased a play adaptation in Hindi, a Swang Nautanki of Devdutt Pattanaik’s book ‘Hanuman Ki Ramayan’ by Gillo Repertory Theatre of Mumbai. IndiAgape from Nagod brought in the best of World Jazz all the way from Chicago, Fareed Haque and his Funk Bros, when Ichol came alive with audiences participating and dancing.

We welcomed March with an International Ceramic Residency at Art Ichol curated by Falguni Bhatt with 6 distinguished artists from around the world who explored different manifestations and meanings of Space.

Many exciting possibilities are yet to unfold, beginning with Disappearing Dialogues, which is a community and research based project, an important vertical of Art Ichol, conceived and curated by Nobina Gupta.

My gratitude to Dr Alka Pande for guiding us as a consulting editor, our editor Prof. Shormishtha Panja for impeccably putting together Vaakyam our third Art Ichol Journal, and Bhavana Sabherwal for her unstinted support always.

Art Ichol calls out to all those who can see and appreciate the beauty and infinite creativity of the Arts.

- Ambica Beri

Ambica Beri is the founding director of Art Ichol and Gallery Sanskriti. A Textile designer by training, she chose to follow her passion and nurture art and artists, through her gallery and other establishments. She now creates on an altogether different plane.

5

Editorial In the past, the world has been conceived of as a book. Now it is the turn of the visual. Visual culture brings to the fore the notion of the world as a picture. Freed from the ivory tower, privileged bastion of the educated elite where art history dwelt, visual culture runs amok in the world around us. The visual is all around us; it is inescapable, its rise inevitable. Distinctions of high and low culture are annulled in the classless world where kitsch rubs shoulders with Rembrandt and a teapot crafted by Good Earth is placed next to a lithograph by Raja Ravi Varma. Kitsch’s pastiche is the visual equivalent of literary irony and satire. It punctures the high narrative of history and creates a space for small, local, disruptive, non-mainstream histories. Digital art makes us rethink earlier concepts of the original and the unique.

Globalisation, the need of equality, equity and compassion in the twenty-first century--visuality has responded to these more effectively and more immediately than textuality. So much so that the crisis of postmodernism is often linked to its inability sufficiently to visualize. Jean-Francois Lyotard discusses notions of discourse and figure.1 According to Lyotard, discourse is ruled by “predatory” reason and thirsts after “linguistic-philosophical closure” and ultimate significance. Figure, meanwhile, is “relatively free of the demands of meaning” and is “a space where intensities are felt.” The surplus that remains after reason has had its say flourishes in this space. Visual culture cannot be captured in language alone. It has an affective dimension to which verbalization cannot do full justice.

Nobina Gupta | Mixed media on paper

6

Images have created a level playing field in the world of culture in which words have often been seen to erect roadblocks, to create Theodore Adorno’s “unequal halves” of high and low art. Distinctions of class, race and gender have not been regarded as vital to the epistemological experience as a result of visual culture.

And yet, in the process, the politics of discrimination has not been annulled or pushed under the carpet or elided. It has, if anything, achieved sharper emphasis through visuality. Consider installation art, art as protest—increasingly the artist’s implements have, if not substituted, then definitely enhanced, the power of the pen.

Think of the political graffiti on the walls of educational institutions or sprayed across walls in a large metropolis, bringing into inescapable focus the angry face of the underprivileged and dispossessed. The array of various disciplines too have been brought into more meaningful alliance with the rise of multi-disciplinary visual culture. The disciplines’ discreteness is acknowledged while they interact in order to produce that new object, in Roland Barthes’s words, that belongs to no one.

Manisha Parekh | Ceramic platter 1

Jean-Francois Lyotard, Discourse, Figure trans. Antony Hudek and Mary Lydon (University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

7

Dipali Daroz | Ceramic

8

Visuality has also aided the inevitable, even remorseless, materialization of culture; but it has also mapped through the lineage and provenenace of every object, be it a piece of broken pottery or an oil painting by Anjolie Ela Menon, the links to the past and future, to human impulses across cultures to which many of us can relate despite our cultural distinctions.

This issue of Art Ichol takes us back to the word and its meaningful re-alliance with the image. We have four essays here written by artists, scholars and experts working with Indian crafts. They come to the theme of “vaak” or “vaakyam” from many different points of view. While Christel R. Devadawson’s essay analyses a Laxman cartoon and its reconfiguration of members of Nehru’s cabinet as so many ancient Indian figurines of gods, Tina Roy’s essay looks at the changing narrative on the Baluchari weaves, borrowed from Hindu epics and vignettes and objects of colonial life. Saumya Garima Jaipuriar’s essay closely examines the function of written words used in the mid-nineteenth century paintings of the Patnakalam school, in particular the Opium Factory paintings of Shiva Lal, and Dipyaman Kar maps the long and fascinating history of the alliance of the word and image in Indian visual culture, from Bengal’s poto chitro to children’s primers like the Bengali Shohoj Path with its text by Rabindranath Tagore and its illustrations by Nandalal Bose down to the present day installation art of Adip Dutta, the graphic art of Sarnath Banerjee and the work of Atul Dodiya that so deftly combines on canvas a narrative in alphabets with powerful images of protest and social critique.

- Professor Shormishtha Panja Guest Editor

Shormishtha Panja is Professor, Dept. of English, University of Delhi.

She received her PhD from Brown University where she was awarded the Jean Starr Untermeyer Fellowship. She has taught at Stanford University. She has served as Dean, Faculty of Arts and Head, Dept. of English, University of Delhi. Her many books include Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures (Sage 2016) and Word Image Text: Studies in Literary and Visual Culture (Orient BlackSwan 2009, rpt. 2017).

She has delivered

keynote addresses in the UK and Egypt on Shakespeare illustrations and has been invited to deliver talks on Shakespeare in India, Indian feminism and visual culture in universities in the USA, UK, Australia and Canada. She has been awarded the Mayers Fellowship at the Huntington and a Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library, USA. 9

From the Intangible to the Tangible ... Vaakyam Where, like men cleansing corn-flour in a cribble, the wise in spirit have created language, Friends see and recognize the marks of friendship: their speech retains the blessed sign imprinted

- Hymn lxxi.11. Jnanam, Rig Veda

I

n the heartland of Central India, Vidisha, Ujjain are few of the most vibrant geographies where some of the greatest artists of pre modern India created some of their most seminal works. The land of celebrated poets of ‘shringara’ rasa such as Kalidasa and Bhartrihari, inspired poets through centuries to create more and more kavya (verse). Close by is yet another special place called Maihar. The place immediately evokes the name of one of the greatest maestros of the sarod, sitar and shehnai, Ustad Allauddin Khan Saheb. Maihar also is the home of the divine shakti peeth of the Devi who is known as Ma Sharada in this region. It was here that the necklace of Sati fell (mai ka haar) thus the name Maihar. It is to Ma Sharada (Saraswati) that Ustad Allauddin Khan owed allegiance and reverence–a sign of the plural and syncretic culture of the wonder that is India.

10

For the last couple of years, at Maihar yet another animated cultural space sprang up called Art Ichol. A multi-disciplinary arts centre, Art Ichol, named after the village where it stands, is run by the dynamic Ambica Beri. From ceramics to prints, from sculpture to paintings, from music to theatre, throughout the year the studios are busy. The plastic and performing arts are provided a fecund soil to grow and develop with an unrestrained creative freedom. To provide a theoretical framework to the practical component of the art production, another dimension was added: the vac (written word). It was decided to bring out a trilogy of journals, which would encompass dhrishyam (sight), vac (written word) and natya (drama), very much in keeping with the essence of Indian aesthetics.

The core of Indian aesthetics and criticism are over two millennia old. Indian aesthetics owes the seed of its birth to Bharata’s Natyashastra. The fourth century text on dramaturgy, Natyashastra is written at the height of the Golden Age of Indian Art i.e. the Gupta Empire. The treatise is a seamless relationship between mind, body and spirit. The theory of rasa (emotions) contained in the Natyashastra is based on the premise that all human emotions can be divided into the navarasas: delight, laughter, sorrow, anger, fear, disgust, heroism, and astonishment. These in turn, can be experienced through the reworked categories of bibhatsya (disgust), saundarya (erotic,), hasya (comic), karuna (pathos), raudra (fury, anger), bhayanaka (terrible, odious) vira (heroic), adbhuta (marvellous, awe inspiring) and shanta (silent or peaceful). In Sanskrit, each word contains within itself the element of dhvani or resonances of multiple meanings, leading to a highly nuanced and layered method 11

of the communication of meaning. This is referred to as the soul of poetry by dhvani theorists. As a result of this tradition, these nine emotions are believed to encapsulate the core flavour or sap, the rasa, of all human experience, and by evoking these in the audience the artist can create a heightened dramatic and aesthetic experience.

Acknowledged by many as the Fifth Veda, the Natyashastra occupies an unparalleled place in the workings of art, its emotive content, its power, its depiction, communication, inferences and connotations. It was for contextualizing the very core of Indian aesthetics that the idea of these three journals was conceived. After celebrating dhrishyam it is now time to celebrate vac. The origins of vac are found in the Rig Veda where goddess Saraswati is synonymous with the written word.

Imperative to cognitive thinking, the word is a manifestation of an idea conceived, an effort to give formal expression to the shared knowledge system. The goddess bestows love upon her devotees by empowering them with sharp intelligence. A personification of elegance and prosperity, the goddess is the mother of creation. By offering names to the tangible and intangible, the goddess is perceived as immense power to the enlightened: With sacrifice the trace of vac they foIlowed, and found her harbouring within the Rsis.

They brought her, dealt her forth in many places: seven singers make her tones resound in concert.

-Hymn lxxi. iii. Jnanam, Rig Veda

12

Vac is not limited to the mortal beings, but spreads its wings to the non-liminal spaces of panchtattvas: vayu (air), jal (water), prithvi (land), agni (fire) and akasha (ether). The 125th hymn of the tenth mandala in the Rig Veda proclaims that vac maintains universal harmony, a thread that holds the many existences of this eternal universe. Rig Veda also venerates vac as a divine being, which is omnipresent. Speech or the written word conveys the amrit or purity of divinely beings. It is the personification of the minds of great gods such as Mitra, Varuna, Indra and Agni. It is thus difficult to refute that if the arts strive to hone human beings’ intellectual sensibilities, raising them to the level of the transcendental, which in Indian philosophy is Brahman or ultimate reality, then vac is the force behind the making of the arts and its eternal experience, ananda or joy.

When friendly Brahmans sacrifice together with mental impulse which the heart hath fashioned, they leave one far behind through their attainments, and some who count as Brahmans wander elsewhere.

-Hymn lxxi. viii. Jnanam, Rig Veda

The elements of a growing partnership between Vac and Brahman are reinforced through the writings of the Rig Veda. If Brahman is the word, then vac knits together the words to give it a free-flowing expression. Their relationship is seen as indispensable to the dissemination of knowledge.

To bring in the context of the interdisciplinary aspect of artistic creations at Art Ichol with its ongoing work, “Disappearing Dialogues,” conceived and curated by Nobina Gupta, this issue of Art Ichol journal devoted to vac /written word highlights the underlying synergetic essence between the process of making, engaging, experiencing and representing artistic creation. Essays by Prof. Christel R. Devadawson, Dipyaman Kar, Saumya Jaipuriar and Tina Roy, all commissioned and edited by Prof. Shormishtha Panja, catapults this issue of the journal into a well-sorted collector’s item.

-Dr. Alka Pande 13

References • Bharata. Natya Shastra. tr Manomohan Ghosh.

Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal. 1951.

• The Natyasatra. English Translation with Critical Notes. Ed. Adya Rangacharya.

New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2003.

• The Hymns of the Rigveda. tr Ralph T. H. Griffith, available at http://www.sanskritweb.net/rigveda/griffith.pdf.

Accessed on September 11, 2017.

14

Madina Bhawan_2, Maihar | Photo credit: Sandeep Dhopate

Passionately involved with art for nearly three and a half decades, academician & curator, Dr. Alka Pande is the Consultant Arts Advisor and Curator for the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre. She was awarded Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, the Australian Asia Council Special Award and the Amrita Shergill Samman.

15

16

ESSAYS 17

Shankar’s Graphic Elegy and the Emergence of Neo-colonial India Christel R. Devadawson

G

raphic satire–specifically, political caricature–does not often use an ensemble cast. The need to offer rapid, intense analysis of the moment rather than extended survey, the difficulties of representing multiple relationships within a single panel, and the concern that caricature might unspool into portraiture usually work against such composition. When pictorial protest sets aside these first principles it makes a statement that is usually worth close attention.

This essay will study a cartoon by Shankar–featuring fifteen cabinet ministers grouped around Nehru in the form of popular historical artefacts–to understand the way in which pictorial protest enables speculation on intertwined themes. These are: the interdependence of the literary and the visual, the alternate avoidance and dependence that history and prophecy show toward each other and the shift from one kind of empire to another.

Studies in Indology The title of the cartoon, along with its legend, indicates the field with which it is in conversation. Shankar captions it ‘The Glory that was Ind,’ and explains in the legend that–while inaugurating the centenary celebrations of the Archaeological Survey of India–Nehru suggests that ‘the past must provide a guide for the present and the future’ (Shankar 337). Caption, legend, and occasion alike respond to a particular configuration of the past: that offered by the Indology of the first half of the twentieth century. The immediate source for the caption–despite the partial misquotation–is A. L. Basham’s The Wonder that Was India (1954), of which more will be said shortly. The ultimate source is Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 revision of his 1831 romantic lyric, “To Helen,” that carries a mannered reference to “the glory that was Greece/ and the grandeur that was Rome.”

18

The occasion of the cartoon however is more complicated. While Shankar marks the centenary of the ASI, it opens up three kinds of critical perspectives. The first concerns the nature of ancient India, as configured by the ASI, and by the constellation of writings that responded to its initiatives. The second concerns the re-visioning of the leaders of the new Indian republic as prehistoric and protohistoric artefacts, easily recognisable by the popular imagination. The third concerns the interpretation of an increasingly fragile nation-state that perpetuates and indeed seems to intensify the fault-lines of the empire. As the conversation between visual and literary materials precedes and facilitates the other two exchanges, it is best to begin with it.

The interwar years saw many developments in Indology. It broke away from the insistence of the late nineteenth century that all that was valuable in India came from Europe. Indologists worked within a range of disciplines–archaeology, epigraphy, classical literatures, performance traditions, numismatics, painting and sculpture–to insist on the indigenous roots of much that was valuable in India. Most of the work published during this time drew on the material or findings made available by the ASI, even if the authors in question were not officially affiliated to it. While the familiarity of Shankar and his first readers with this body of work cannot be guaranteed, the popularity of the publications with the general public was undeniable, as was the fact that their data was common, even when their findings were not.

Books in this field include Ernest Havell’s The Ideals of Indian Art (1911), E. J. Rapson’s Ancient India (1914), Ananda Coomaraswamy’s Introduction to Indian Art (1923), John Marshall’s Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization (1931), R. C. Majumdar’s Ancient India (1932) and A. L. Basham’s 1954 text, to which allusion has already been made. While the first and last titles do not fit into the interwar period, they cover substantially the same ground from a shared perspective. These books define 19

“Ancient India” as a critical category marked by shared patterns of social organisation, the emergence of a priestly class, the development of a monarchy, and the evolution of Hinduism. They treat Hinduism not so much as a belief-system as a syncretic model of cultural organisation capable of taking over Buddhist and Jain systems of worship, symbolism, and philosophy. The writers share scholarly preferences and prejudices.

They seek to bring field-research within the reach of the general reader rather than the scholar. Within this crossover space, they use photographs, line-drawings, and lithographs interleaved with written matter to illustrate and develop their argument.

While most authors mentioned here write for the specialist, these titles have been chosen because of their popular appeal. As is common during this phase of the evolution of Indology, the writers profess admiration for the continuities in Vedic oral traditions over the centuries. “This is beyond all question the most marvellous instance of unbroken continuity to be found in the history of mankind” (Rapson 38). Indologists of this period are willing to salute a spirit of spiritual self-sufficiency, even when they do not understand it in the least. “The Aryan’s religion was ... above all his own, for his own soul [to] commune in secret with his God” (Havell 7).

These savants are usually supportive of the idea that–in most Indian traditions– art is not a decorative addition associated with special events, but part of the daily round of work. They claim to study Indian art “as an integral quality inhering in all activities, entertained by all in their daily environment...”(Coomaraswamy1923: viii). Most interestingly, Indology of the inter-war period treats the subcontinent as a geopolitical territory that sees successive empires rise and fall. No single imperial system ranks above another, as all display similarly repetitive patterns. “The struggle for empire between the three great rival powers [warring Rajput clans] thus had its logical end.... Each played in turn the imperial role. But their empires, like the waves of the ocean, rose to the highest point only to break down” (Majumdar 187). To these scholars, empire is not a singular and jingoistic British enterprise but a phase of historical evolution through which civilisations moved with varying degrees of speed and achievement. This feature of their work gains added resonance from the fact that it takes place against the long twilight of the British empire in India. Their findings might be at variance with each other in matters of detail but–as will be shown–there is a great measure of shared coverage. Perhaps they wear the shared hope for future political stability a little too easily as the following assertion suggests: “Already the extremes of national self-denigration and fanatical cultural chauvinism are disappearing” (Basham 486). Nonetheless, this particular constraint carries its own advantage. It enables the Indologists to make available to their readers a range of religious icons without the exclusivity of religious zeal. This ease of access meant that religion could check undue encroachment by the state. “Divinity was cheap in ancient India,” (Basham 88) in that living saints and mendicants were readily accessible. In such a world, cultural icons were not far to seek. It is to such icons, and to Shankar’s ability to endow them with the likeness of living statesmen that we now turn.

20

‘The Glory that was Ind,’ K Shankar Pillai, Shankar’s Weekly, 24 December 1961, anthologised in ‘Don’t spare me, Shankar! 1983, rpt Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 2002, 337.

The editor and publisher of this issue of Art Ichol would like to thank Yamuna Shankar and Children’s Book Trust, New Delhi, for permission to reproduce the above cartoon by K Shankar Pillai.

Pictorial Parables Shankar uses the occasion of the centenary of the ASI to represent Nehru and the important members of his third ministry as a set of museum relics occupying two rows in a gallery. From left to right in the back row these include Krishna Menon (Defence), Gulzari Lal Nanda (Labour and Planning), Jagjivan Ram (Railways), Lal Bahadur Shastri (Home), S. K.Patil (briefly Food and Agriculture), and Morarji Desai (Finance). The front row features Satyanarayana Sinha (Parliamentary Affairs), Nehru, Swaran Singh (Steel and Mines), K. D.Malaviya(Petroleum) and B. V.Keskar (intermittently Information and Broadcasting). Shankar uses different kinds of representation, such as the seal, the full-length statuette, the bust, and the mural for this purpose. Tall statues such as Menon and Nanda stand on low plinths.

Shorter idols such as Shastri enjoy tall pedestals. The Malaviya miniature suffers the ignominy of a severed head and the Swaran Singh figure endures a truncated torso.

As museum exhibits in a well-lit gallery, the Union Cabinet of the time is on public display. Shading on the back wall creates the illusion of depth. Shankar constructs each exhibit along the lines of a well-known piece of art or sculpture. This essay will focus on three ministers, all of whom are known to have held views on succession after Nehru, and on the Prime Minister himself. They will be discussed in ascending order according to their rank in the Cabinet. Each of the four figures is cast as a work of ancient Indian art, discussed by at least two to three authors mentioned in the 21

previous section of this essay. The public imagination therefore can recognise them not just in terms of external appearance but also in terms of the political and cultural debates that they signal.

Received wisdom on the subject of likeness in caricature considers it as grounded in distortion. The aim of the caricaturist is, in this sense, a reversal of that of the portrait-painter. “‘Like as a whole, unlike in parts,’ [a quotation from Baldinucci, a seventeenth-century art historian] is the nucleus of these definitions.... the unlike parts are united to give a new meaning. They form an animal [or an object] in which the portrait of man lives on” (Gombrich 1938, 322). Equally there is the sense that while caricature carries such an inner psychological truth related to the individual, it is also a vehicle for larger framing statements about the evolution of a people as well. It is possible to argue that when audiences interact with these images and the written narratives in which historians place them, a new social meaning begins to evolve. The images that Shankar chooses carry within them possibilities for unrest and change so as to set in play a critical characteristic of print culture, namely, “a complex dialogue between social and cultural reality, and representations of that reality” (Maidment 53).

The first such example to be discussed is the representation of S. K. Patil as the Brahmany bull engraved on a clay seal discovered in Mohenjo Daro on the excavations begun in 1922 that were overseen by Marshall as Director-General of the ASI. Shankar retains the distinctive hump of the zebu but discards the equally distinctive dewlap, perhaps because it underscores the transformation from human to animal more than is necessary. He represents both horns in profile–a noteworthy feature of this representation–but to emphasise the sense of stasis gives us a seated figure, not the standing bull of the seal. Shankar’s representation is not the more dramatic and wellknown seal but approximates more closely to that of a more obscure moulding in which “the head is lowered, but not to charge...” (Marshall ii 386). Shankar omits the crib or manger from which the animal on the seal would eat, again, possibly to blunt the reduction from human to animal a little more. Shankar’s interest here is not so much to destroy his subject as to demonstrate his political and cultural irrelevance to an evolving nation-state. In that sense, this representation takes forward the Nehruvian concern to reduce the stature of cabinet colleagues significantly, so that they appear redundant in comparison to Nehru himself. Patil would complain in years to come of this kind of treatment: “The Prime Minister is like a great banyan tree. Thousands shelter beneath it, but nothing grows” (Adams and Whitehead 186).

Despite his regional hold over Bombay state, Patil’s status in Nehru’s cabinet did not expand beyond that of Food and Agriculture minister. Shankar’s accuracy–deployed in consonance with Nehru’s known but unspoken intentions–is devastating. Patil as an artefact from the Indus Valley civilisation is admirably fitted to represent the “thriving agricultural economy on which the Harappan people built their rather unimaginative but comfortable civilisation” (Basham 19).

22

Shankar casts Morarji Desai as Ganesh, after the manner of what appears to be a popular lithograph. Again, this is a shrewd move. Anxious, bespectacled, and with an eye to careful economy, Desai is every inch the Finance Minister who keeps a close watch on small spending. While he does not carry the instruments of chastisement that Ganesh usually does, Shankar’s Desai gives the impression of looking out carefully for details. Desai’s contemporaries knew him as a micro-manager who was not always successful. In the first General Election, as a spokesperson for the interests of Bombay presidency, his efforts to secure a position for himself and the state had not worked out, as Laxman indicates elsewhere1. Desai would subsequently stand down in the Congress party organisation to enable Shastri to take over after the death of Nehru.

Ganesh has “the sagacity of an elephant which keeps the mind tied to earth, not the spiritual power of Shiva which can take wings and lift the soul to heaven” (Havell 83). On the basis of this single caricature we might not be inclined to go along with Shankar in this identification of Desai with Ganesh, but it is possible that the matter is sufficiently convincing to persuade the first readers of this cartoon of the parallel.

In contrast, Shastri as the eleventh-century Chola bronze of Nataraja, or the Dancing Shiva, is diminutive in size but strong in terms of movement. “The god is ideally formless, yet he has the power to emerge in any form that his worshippers might imagine” (Jayne 4). While he was in Nehru’s cabinet, Shastri came across as a spokesperson for Hindi at the height of the anti-Hindi agitation in the Madras presidency. When he took over as Prime Minister, however, he showed in the war with Pakistan that he was able to conceptualise an Indian identity without the markers of language, ethnic origin or religion. “Whereas Pakistan proclaims herself to be an Islamic State and uses religion as a political factor.... so far as politics is concerned each of us is as much an Indian as the other” (qtd Guha 401). Notably, Shastri did not repeat Nehru’s military debacle of 1962, proving to be a more effective leader perhaps in war than in peace. Again, on the basis of this single caricature we cannot speak for the details associated traditionally with Nataraja, “the moulded hands... of greatest perfection, a little slenderer, and a little more nervous than the Gupta forms” (Coomaraswamy 1914: 211). It is possible to consider the whirling nature of change, furious action in the context of the war with Pakistan that was four years in the future, and Shastri’s ability to change defeat into victory.

How real though is the capacity for change among these relics of the past? Shankar’s masterpiece is surely his decision to cast Nehru as the coy, self-regarding Bodhisattva fresco from Cave 1 at Ajanta. Shankar’s Nehru usually wears a jaunty rose, so the See M. V. Kamath, Laughter Lines: The Cartoon Craft of R K Laxman and Bal Thackeray (Mumbai: Business Publications, 1999) 181.

1

23

more languid lotus twiddled in his right hand is an entertaining change for the nonce.

The elongated torso, slender waist and narcissistic self-absorbed re-interpretation of the dhyani or contemplative figure, on the road to attaining philosophical enlightenment and bliss, are crucial details. As Coomaraswamy comments on the Ajanta fresco in Cave 1, “This is the picture of a halcyon age, when renunciation and enjoyment are perfectly attained, an art at once of utmost intimacy and reserve” (Coomaraswamy 1914: 69).

This brings us to the final concern: the extent to which pictorial satire can anticipate the future. A study of an assemblage of art objects is also a study in the way a nation-state evolves in its assessment of itself. In that case, we might well keep in mind a valuable caution. “The problem of the public, in its actuality and absence, needs to be pitched centrally within the particular trajectories of the nation’s modernity and democracy” (Guha Thakurta 204). If Shankar’s Nehru stands at the centre of a cabinet that is gradually turning into a museum, it is because there is no real engagement between the republic and its citizens. Not a single caricature directs his gaze toward the reader, or even toward any of his colleagues. Under such circumstances, elegy becomes a disturbing mode of prophecy. It reminds us that–without any engagement with its people–the young republic will lay the foundations not for a new kind of citizenship, but instead for a new colonialism. In the absence of a continuing connection with its people, democracy becomes just another word for empire.

Christel R. Devadawson is a Cambridge-Nehru scholar from Girton for her Ph.D, Christel Devadawson is Professor and Head, Department of English, University of Delhi, where she supervises research in contemporary South Asian life-writing and popular visual culture.

Christel is currently working on a manuscript on the visual politics of Lockwood Kipling. Her most recent publication in the field of Visual Studies is ‘Personal convictions, public performance: Representing Anna Hazare,’ in Divya Dwivedi & V Sanil’s (eds) The Public Sphere from Outside the West (London: Bloomsbury 2015). She curated the exhibition entitled Legacies of laughter, legacies of loss: Pictorial satire in post independent India for Samanvaya, the Indian Literature Festival, 2015. Christel’s books include Out of line: Cartoons, caricature and contemporary India (Delhi: Orient Blackswan,2014), and Reading India, Writing England (Delhi: Macmillan 2005).

As a keynote speaker at the CUAC Triennale (Chennai 2017), Christel spoke on gender and visuality in contemporary India. As Westcott Memorial lecturer (2001), Christel spoke at Cambridge, Birmingham, Leicester and Warwick on the subject of India’s road to post colonialism.

24

Works Cited Adams, Jad and Philip Whitehead. The Dynasty: The Nehru-Gandhi Story. London: Penguin, 1997.

Basham, A L. The Wonder That Was India. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954.

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. “Hands and Feet in Indian Art.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 24, No. 130 (Jan., 1914), 204-207+211.

– Introduction to Indian Art. Madras: Theosophical Printing House, 1923.

Gombrich, Ernst and Ernst Kris. “The Principles of Caricature.” British Journal of Medical Journal of Psychology. Vol. 17 (1938) 319-342 [Trapp no 1938A.1].

Guha, Ramachandra. India after Gandhi Vol. 1. London: Picador, 2007.

Guha–Thakurta, Tapati. Monuments, Objects, Histories. New York: Columbia UP, 2004.

Havell, E. B. The Ideals of Indian Art. London: John Murray, 1911.

Jayne, H. F. K. Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum, Vol. 18, No. 73 (Jan., 1923), 2-7.

Kamath, M. V. Laughter Lines: The Cartoon Craft of R K Laxman and Bal Thackeray. Mumbai: Business Publications, 1999.

Majumdar, R. C. Ancient India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1952.

Maidment, B E. Reading Popular Prints 1790-1870. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996.

Pillai, Shankar. ‘Don’t spare me, Shankar! 1983. Rpt Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 2002.

Rapson, E. J. Ancient India. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1914.

Illustration ‘The Glory that was Ind,’ from Shankar Pillai, ‘Don’t spare me, Shankar! 1983. Rpt Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 2002, 337.

25

An Overview of Altering Equations Between Word and Image in Indian Art Dipyaman Kar

I Introduction

T

here was a time when some of my artist friends used to ask, “If we can draw a recognizable image, why do we really need words to explain it?” By saying this, they possibly indicated two things, firstly, an indifference to the written or verbal narration of a painted image, and secondly, the importance of image over the written word.

Their doubt, as it seems in one way, was right because, images are like words--part of a system of signs. Images can effectively convey a meaning, like a language. Yet, it appears that their reservation was not entirely correct because there are valid instances in art where image and word co-exist by the virtue of both their inherent contradictions and similarities. Their differences cannot make their similarities invalid or vice versa.

Therefore, word and image shall always come closer to each other within the periphery of art. Artists utilize words not only to explain their pictures, but also because words play the role of images: they express an idea or serve as a design element. Even written words in the form of the signature of the artist becomes part of a work of art.

Word and image belong to the same category in the theories of semiotics. They are both signs. But at the same time, they are not essentially the same thing. There are differences between the two. A word is a phonetic sign; we can read, hear and understand it. On the other hand, an image is a visual sign. It is to be seen and realized.

This sensory divide between word and image doesn’t make them strictly different.

As W.J.T. Mitchell says about the word/image relationship, “It is a dialectical trope because it resists stabilization as a binary opposition.” 1 26

However, my intention here is not to focus exclusively upon the word/image relationship. I was just trying to point out the complexities in the understanding of the word/image relationship. It is particularly more difficult to comprehend within the framework of art because the nature of this interplay is not static. Therefore, I shall look into the details of how word and image co-exist in art, and how artists have been employing written, painted and printed words in their works.

I shall approach the word/image relationship from a position that can best be described in a curatorial project of Adip Dutta, a Kolkata-based practising artist and an Assistant Professor of Rabindra Bharati University. Dutta called it ‘Writing Visuals’. To explain the equation between writing and drawing, he claimed drawing as a ‘surrogate of writing’. From this perspective, one can look at all those works that have some kind of affinity with the act of writing. Hence, any visuals would naturally have the resonances of text. Here I am looking at word, text and language, at large, in a literal sense. I shall focus on artworks containing words consciously employed by artists.

II

Image and Word Visual art, like any other art form, cannot be fully realized without keeping in mind the bigger changes in culture and society. Advancement of material culture and technological innovations change lives, practices and affect consciousness.

Philosophically, critically and even, at times, dispassionately, art tends to represent and record these transformations by reflecting upon them. Within the field of visual art, the interplay between word and image also changes when transformations take place outside of the discipline.

27

Khusrau Shirin conversing in landscape at night, 1625-30 Source: www.metamuseum.org

Image and word, and their respective systems, roles and positions in the larger context of society have been changing (not by nature but according to human needs and goals) from the earliest times. Writing and reading evolved after image and speech, and they have taken a long time to arrive at the present state of being. What we identify as writing today has evolved over the course of thousands of years, from the basic need /desire for graphic reproduction of human speech. But, “writing is much more than Voltaire’s ‘painting of the voice.’ It has become human knowledge’s ultimate tool (science), society’s cultural medium (literature), the means of democratic expression and popular information (the press), and an art form in itself (calligraphy), to mention only some manifestations.”2 Therefore, when we use the English proverb, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” it reflects the power of writing, thereby the power of words and finally the power of knowledge.

28

We never claim that ‘a paintbrush’ or ‘a chisel’ can equate the might of a pen. Does this imply the powerlessness and insignificance of the image in relation to the word? I think not. Like word and writing, the role and the power of image and image making have multiplied over time. Think of the changes with the invention of paper and printing, which not only enhanced the quality of text and image-making but also increased production and circulation of text and image. A camera and photographic images are the most appropriate examples to reveal how powerful and vital images and image-making have become.

All these transformations in turn affected art conceptually and physically. That is the reason, perhaps, that while in one epoch word and image dwell in the same framework of a picture, in another era, a single word takes over the entire pictorial space in the guise of an image-text.

If we take a look at the recent past, those who were born in India between the late ‘70s and the mid ‘80’s, learnt about the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic, from their parents or grandparents in the form of stories read or narrated aloud. The Mahabharata appearing on television in those days added a further dimension to their knowledge of the epic. Possibly some had also read a version of the Mahabharata later in their lives. People born prior to the ‘70s, however, were introduced to the epic mostly by their elders and through an exposure to abridged versions supported with limited visuals much before watching it on television.

The experiences of the process of the absorption of the epic between the people from these two different age groups (from all strata of society) are naturally substantial. The progression from image to text and text to image is crucial here. One may legitimately argue that in our country those who go to school, become habituated with words and reading at an early age. Though this argument holds good yet watching an epic like the Mahabharata on television and reading the book are not the same experience.

Besides, illiteracy is an important factor in this country. For those who do not get a chance to go to school, who cannot read or write, the visual sign and verbal narration play an extremely vital role.

One may argue that the televised version of the Mahabharata is not the first and only visual representation. There were many other forms of visual and visual-verbal representations of the epic in the past centuries. It is true that Jatrapala, pata, temple and popular sculptures (murti,) murals, paintings, oleograph, lithograph, engravings and prints have also been representing images from the epic since time immemorial.

These visual and visual-verbal depictions of the characters, scenes or events from the epic not only stimulated minds of the educated and privileged section of society, but also importantly influenced the imagination of the underprivileged. These depictions have imprinted images of the epic in the minds of those who could never read the text.

29

This is not to forget that in the Indian socio-cultural context, visual and verbal representation often work more effectively/widely than the textual form of representation. A painted, printed or sculpted image from the epic, always has the text attached to it, metaphorically speaking. Jatra (Bengali folk theatre) and Natak (drama) are live performances (one can see and hear), yet they cannot equal the power of a printed comic book or a television mega series, in terms of the power of circulation, communication and manipulation. Also, the ease and comfort of watching television in the privacy of one’s home and taking the trouble to read a difficult text like the Mahabharata are two very different things. Reading requires some kind of skill, the understanding of language and the power to envisage. On television the viewer watches things that have already been visualized and convincingly presented by others.

Televised serials also use all kinds of technological and visual aids that a jatra, natak or nrityonatya (dance drama) cannot afford.

I may add here that this is not to create a simple binary between watching and reading, between bad and good, nor to prove that images come to us first and words later. It is not as simple as that. By talking about the progression from image to text, I am trying to indicate the newly-gained power of the image by virtue of technology. Technology has brought the image to the forefront of life, more than ever before. Watching and learning from images, and making images, have at once become a need, a compulsion, and a vital social practice.

This does not mean that the word has become less important; rather, it has gained new power and acquired a new role with time. Word and image now have become both confrontational and complementary to each other.

This single essay does not hold the gamut of the discussion about ‘image/text phenomena’3 in the social and cultural context. It can be looked upon as a marker that suggests the disposition of our altering affiliation with the world of words and images. Perhaps, it reflects upon how and why the relationship between word and image in visual art is gradually shifting.

In this essay I shall focus on the interanimation between word and image in the context of modernist and mainly contemporary visual art practice in India by focusing on the use of the word/text in art.

30

III Pata Chitra As in many other cultures, word and image co-existed in Indian art and visual culture from the earliest times. If we try to map out the time of inception and look into the history, the attempt will lead us to any of the caves in India, and we shall end up studying cave paintings.

Pata Chitra of Bengal, Author’s Personal collection

31

Without going deep into the history, if we simply look back at terracotta and stone shields/tablets from Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, where hieroglyphic characters or inscriptions were illustrated along with images, they ably demonstrate the relationship between image and word in ancient times. These inscriptions have not yet been fully deciphered. Therefore their exact relation to the depicted images is unclear.

From the distant past if we turn our eyes to the palm leaf manuscript paintings (early 12th cent, Pala school) or miniature paintings (Mughal era,) we see how word and image were essential to each other even in those days. In the artifacts of past cultures a fragment of a written text/word was not always an elucidation of the corresponding image. Written words always played multiple roles. Sometimes words were written in the works as a message, a brief narration of an event as documentation. Words were written for ceremonial purposes or added as pure design elements to enhance the beauty of artifacts.

Intaglio seal with script and unicorn 2200 bce, Source - https://www.harappa.com/

32

Mahavihar master Bodhisattava Avalokiteshvara Expouding the Dharma to Devotee Folio-Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita.

Pala period, Bengal, early 12 cent.

Opaque water colour on palm leaf Source - www.metamuseum.org

The references above typically indicate the relationship between written words and images in artifacts. This is not the only form of equation between word and image. A word is also a sound with a meaning attached to it. In the folk traditions of Bengal, scroll painting or Bengali ‘Pata Chitra,’ one of the longstanding traditions of visual storytelling in rural Bengal, demonstrates how different word/image equations can be. Here words are not presented in written, but in spoken format.

A ‘Pata’ is usually a long rollable scroll with images painted on it; it depicts no written text. These images narrate stories from the regional epic called Mangal Kavya, a set of long poems on regional deities of rural Bengal. Scrolls also depict stories from folk tales and the life of Krishna. Mangal Kavya at some point became extremely popular because of Pata Chitra.

In the tradition of Pata Chitra, painters or Patuas travel with the painted patas or scrolls and “use them as travelling illustrated story books in performances by patuas, where they sing out the appropriate ‘kavya’ lines while unrolling images in their scrolls and pointing to the corresponding scenes.”4 So, in scroll paintings words are not written but spoken. It is an audio-visual delineation of narratives or verbal representation of words along with images. In Pata Chitra word and image always correspond to one another.

33

IV Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose In relation to the earlier traditions and the art of the colonial era, the emerging space of modernist art in pre-independent India was eclectic, impure and highly experimental in nature. It was not completely unaffected by the warmth of escalating struggle for independence. Within this milieu, interanimation of word and image had acquired an entirely different dimension, through conscious, intentional and playful incorporation of both, in drawings, paintings, prints and illustrations by the artists of the early modern period. Artists at this time were free individuals, searching for individuality in art, conscious about society, hierarchy, identity, and ideology.

Art at that time was also a means of symbolic struggle for independence and the construction of a national cultural identity.

Rabindranath Tagore Sahaj Path (Prothom Vag) Ink Scribble drawing on written script 1912 Source – Visva Bharati, Santiniketan/Grantha bivag

34

One of the most significant artists of the time, Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951,) nephew of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941,) becomes crucial at this juncture for his idea about the interface between text and image. He was first and foremost an artist, but also a brilliant writer and a “multifarious personality”5 who “writes art” and “paints words” (chhobi lekha shobdo anka) (Soumik Nandy Majumder, Bageswari Shilpo Probondhaboli). This assertion clearly expresses the importance of image and word in Abanindranath’s practice; but a literal understanding of this statement would be a mistake. If we only consider Abanindranath’s artworks and not his writings, it can be seen that he is employing or experimenting with written/painted words in his drawings and in his paintings as in the Krishna Leela series (1895-97). Also, Abanindranath creates narrative paintings from literary sources where often written narratives get subverted because of reinterpretation and transformation into visual narratives, for example his Omar Khayyam (1907-9). Hence, in his art practice, it seems that accord between text and image is not static and linear, but changes with different circumstances.

The consideration of Abanindranath as a ‘writer-painter’ may help us to understand the image/word relationship in his practice in a different manner. He produced a large number of texts in the form of fiction and nonfiction, but I shall concentrate on his visual productions and examine the image/text relationship in his art.

Here it needs to be mentioned that in his practice Abanindranath frequently opened up his art to past traditions and cultures, bringing in numerous elements in his work from art and literature of different times. This fondness of the past has been viewed by many as nationalist ideological motivation. Nonetheless, as Soumik Nandy Majumder writes, “Quite unusual to his time, Abanindranath Tagore’s art abstains from any kind of straight jacketing and it is replete with surprise.” Nandy Majumder further writes, “His alignments with the swadeshi pledge and engagement with the so-called revivalist school are equally complex and frequently confronted by his own sensibilities and predictions.” 6 In spite of this and without setting him in a narrow category, one can conveniently say that Abanindranath’s openness to different traditions, cultures, and exposure to nationalist politics, reflects in his works and endeavours. Many of his paintings demonstrate the vivid influence of miniature paintings, the folk tradition of Bengal and the influence of far eastern art and calligraphy.

Let us consider a painting called Noubihar from the Krishna Leela series. It demonstrates the application of the miniature style in the depiction of the image and its accompanying inscription. I shall only focus on the inscription: it is written in the Persian calligraphic style but the actual language of the inscription is Bengali. This kind of depiction indeed was a conscious effort by Abanindranath to upset history, culture and the convention and hierarchy of his time. This equally complicates the

35

Abanindranath Tagore Noubihar (Krishna the boat man) Water Colour 1895 / 97 5� / 8� source- https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/entity/m0632pc Permission to print applied for

36

relationship between image and text in art. One can see two languages at one time, belonging to two different cultures. In these painted texts, meaning resides on two levels: first, in the actual/literal mining of the text and second, in the calligraphic sign applied to write the inscription. This symbolic intermixing of cultural, historical, linguistic and ideological spaces enhances the significance of the texts.

Another series of paintings, based on Mangal Kavya, is also important in this context.

In this series, the exclusion of text from pictorial representation can be observed.

Abanindranath started paintings based on Mangal Kavya from the middle of 1938.

I have mentioned earlier that Mangal Kavyas were popularized by traditional scroll painters in rural Bengal.

Abanindranath represented two so-called Kavyas (regional epics,) and he named them “Kabikankan Chandi” and “Krishna mangal.” The first one is a version of “Chandi mangal,” a regional epic that celebrates the glory of the goddess Mangal Chandi.

Abanindranath Tagore Kabikankan Chandi series Wives of Tiger Water colour 1938 Source- https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/entity/m0632pc Permission to print applied for

37

The second one, “Krishna Mangal,” is a set of images that is not painted from the text of Mangal Kavya. Debashish Banerjee writes, “The second turns out to be a nonexistent text that is a set of paintings purporting to represent a regional Kavya, yet to be written. In other words, the paintings become the basis of an imaginary Mangal Kavya based on the life and exploits of Krishna.” 7 The absence of text in these works, in relation to patuas, who visually and verbally narrate Mangal kavyas by singing and unrolling pata, becomes crucial. As Debashish Banerjee writes, “Abanindranath, painting Mangal Kavya in the modern context of stand-alone viewable paintings in 20th century Calcutta, pries open the cracks between image and text through the presentation of a set of images without a corresponding text.” 8 It seems that Abanindranath is reversing the priority of text over image in pata chitra by emphasizing “performative” and “communitarian” context of Kavya paintings of subaltern rural Bengal, from a “modern elite perspective.”9 Pata Chitras in rural Bengal are always painted on the basis of existing texts, especially in Kavya painting.

Image and text are both equally important.

According to Banerjee, in this series of paintings, Abanindranath presents single isolated images without corresponding text, because Krishna Mangal is not painted on the basis of any existing text from Mangal Kavya. It only offers the possibility of a text or creation of an imaginary Kavya. By doing this, Tagore, in turn, is trying to “(a) revers[e] the priority of the text over image from the rural subaltern perspective of the culture of pata,” and “(b) draw[ing] attention to the performative and communitarian context of Kavya paintings of rural Bengal, from the modern elite perspective, by creating the expectation for a text and opening up the vanished spectre of the performance through absence.” 10 Apart from Abanindranath, two more personalities and their works become extremely crucial, Rabindranath Tagore’s doodle drawings on his written scripts and Nandalal Bose’s illustration in Sahaj Path, a children’s primer written by Rabindranath Tagore.

Rabindranath Tagore’s doodle drawings emerge from the act of correction of texts or to erase undesirable portions in written texts. These works are playful and automatic in nature and are born out of the act of writing, reading and deleting. I shall not compare these drawings with the simple act of Victorian purification. Rather, it would be interesting to think of the images in the drawings as curtains, which reveal and conceal the interior at the same time. The equation between the written scripts and drawings here can be compared to the relationship between windows and curtains, not in a romantic but in a practical sense.

Nandalal Bose’s (1882-1966) illustrations for Rabindranath Tagore’s Sahaj Path contain linocut prints of images, alphabets and words. The book aims to introduce 38

Abanindranath Tagore Krishna mangal series Kalketu, The Hunter Water Colour 8� x 11�

1938 Source- https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/entity/m0632pc Permission to print applied for

39

children to the Bengali alphabet and to sentence construction in a simple way by reading and looking at the corresponding images. It is indeed a primer, but its artistic value is enormous. One of the interesting aspects of the images in the book(s) along with the words is that the images do not have much resonance of European convention of image making/book illustration. Looking at these silhouette-like images one can perceive the quintessence of the culture and life of rural Bengal.

The book does not educate children in the acquisition of language by following a mechanical method, but tenuously introduces them to the cultural/environmental elements that they will be able to identify as their own. Children are thereby able to relate to the book and not see it as something alien. Another, interesting aspect of the images in the book(s) along with the words is that the images do not always literally represent what is written as is the case with most primers or alphabet books. Instead, the illustrations provide suggestions that encourage young learners to imagine, rather than to memorize mechanically. As Sanjoy Kumar Mallik writes, “Take for example, the beginning page with the first two alphabets in Bengali. The couplet narrates that a child utters the sounds “a” and “aa” for it hasn’t learnt to speak yet. The picture that complements this couplet is an equally simple image of a crawling child. Neither the couplet nor the image attempt to impinge on to the mind of the young reader a direct correlation between the alphabet and a word where it is almost connected to one another in terms of the efficacy of use-value. Instead it is the resonance between the child’s unformed utterances and the sounds of the first two alphabets in the language that have been merely hinted at leaving a wide berth for imagination to play around the idea, sound and image.”11 Experimentation with word, print and image is not uncommon in this period of modernism. After Indian independence, however, and with the emergence of a new wave of internationalism, the following fifty (or more) years of Indian modernist art, seldom manifests the use of text in the artworks. Texts in this period are used sometimes as texture in paintings, but conscious representations of written, painted, printed words are very rare or scattered. The only conscious written words to be seen in most of the works are the signatures of the artists. In the field of sculpture, very few artists may be found using texts in their work.

40

V A New Era When Abanindranath Tagore was busy with his idea of written image and painted word, far away from the city of Calcutta, in France a new art movement was in its infancy. Marcel Duchamp had completed his Fountain (1917), a urinary basin with a signature at the bottom. This eventually paved the way towards a movement that would be known as conceptual art.

Raja Ravi Varma Abduction of Sita by Ravana Oil on canvass 1885

41

In 20th century European conceptualism, concept(s) or idea(s) of artwork took precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical and material concerns. Concept became the center of artistic activity. Language also became an important element to present the idea of the works and the artists. For instance, Josef Kossuth was an American artist who often borrowed words or names of different objects from the English dictionary. These names or words were then painted or printed on canvas and juxtaposed with photographic images of the same objects and the real objects. That is the way his works questioned the role of language in a society. 12 However, unlike Europe, in modern Indian art history, there is no such artistic phenomenon like the conceptual art movement. Yet after the 1990s, Indian art starts to change dramatically. Art in India has transformed at many levels since then and has acquired a shape that can be looked upon as conceptual, and, to some extent, text or language oriented. Language undoubtedly plays an important role in various ways in the process of image making, and it has been happening since ages. Contemporary artists are also doing the same, but the difference is that artists are using word/text in their art in a literal way, ‘more or less like a tool, a means by which they bring some aspect of life, rather than art, into focus in the viewer’s mind or psyche.’ 13 To clarify my point, I shall give three examples, the first from Raja Ravi Varma, the second from Atul Dodiya and the third from an imaginary artist. Both Varma and Dodiya take inspiration from the Ramayana (a text) to make images: Raja Ravi Varma’s Ravana Abducting Sita is faithful to the epic. Dodiya with his work on Shabari’s tale, is an artist working on specific stories from the epic to convey contemporary realizations, and producing images that have no visual affinities with the images that the text usually evokes in the mind of the reader. Raja Ravi Varma and Atul Dodiya belong to two different times. Therefore, their understanding of the epic naturally differs. I mention them here to demonstrate separate approaches to image making in relation to the text, while thinking about the text from the respective contexts of their own time and consciousness.

Now let us take the example of an imaginary artist taking a single word from the epic to write it on a public wall, to photograph it and then to present it in an art space.

Here, a viewer sees the photographed word and understands the immediate meaning, but the moment he/she learns about the context of the epic from where the word is sourced, his/her realization changes.

The second and third examples above are of how artists use words as materials in recent times. Words in art now have become an almost inseparable part of the artwork, not only as an image, a material, a conceptual sign, but also as a title of the work, a concept note, a text attached to an object, subtitles in video art, reading from text in performance art, instructional drawings , even as an artist’s website and/or blog, among others.

42

Atul Dodiya The fourth Sabari Cotton shirt, Pigment, kojo paper, paper pulp, carbon toner, screenprinting ink, placemat STPI cotton and linen paper.

66 x 52 inch 2005 Courtesy of the artist and the studio

43

Sarnath Banerjee Untitled Ink on Chinese rice paper 32 x 49 inches 2015 Courtesy of the Artist and Project 88, Mumbai.

The presence of word and image is therefore clearly visible in several contemporary artistic productions in India. Take for example, Sarnath Banerjee, a graphic novelist, film maker and artist, whose works reflect a strong orientation to the narrative structure of graphic novels.

Comic books are the immediate ancestor of graphic novels; hence the chemistry between word and image in both is quite the same. Here “Words take on some of the properties of pictures, and conversely, pictures take on some properties of words.”

Therefore, “Comics is a system of signification in which words and pictures are perceived in much the same way.” 14 Apart from graphic novels and films, Sarnath Banerjee produces drawings and works on paper, using various media like water-colour, pen and ink, acrylic or mixed-media.

These works are often a number of rectangular sheets of paper of various sizes, on which images and words are painted and written. These sheets almost look like tattered or missing pages of unknown graphic novels or books. As Sarnath Banerjee says, ‘The form of the graphic novel is desecrated from its calibrated structure and laid bare on the walls of the gallery.’ 15 In a graphic novel, words and images exist as part of one another to construct a narrative.

Here images and words do not deceive each other; instead of that together they form the narrative structure of a story, which a reader and a viewer can read and see simultaneously.

By infusing image and text, Sarnath Banerjee creates a witty or satirical sequence of images that critically unfold the nuances of contemporary urban life in big Indian cities.

44

Abhay Sarkar Lane Brush and ink on acid free paper 50 x 60 inch 2016 - 17 Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Experimenter, Kolkata

45

VI And Now...

Until now I was looking at the representation of written, printed or painted form of words in art. If we think about constructed words, what does this imply? Does materiality or what a word is made of, really matter? Quite often it does.

To prove it, I recall a project, Keywords, by Delhi-based artist Anita Dube in Khoj Studio in 2005. Dube used raw meat to make a few carefully chosen words. In this performative work, “Letters were cut and written from slabs of meat. She invited the audience to dissect their meaning and histories, in collaboration with her. The work explores the movement from the body to concept.� 16 A striking part of this work is that it merges together the act of writing, sculpting, slaughtering and memorizing through conversation.

Anita Dube Keywords Raw meet, ice slab, knife, live performance 2005 The Khoj Book, HarperCollins Publishers

46

RAQS media collective Premonition Signage on metal sheet with emergency lights 72 x 3 x 14 inch 2011 Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Experimenter Kolkata

47

RAQS media collective Premonition Signage on metal sheet with emergency lights 72 x 3 x 14 inch 2011 Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Experimenter Kolkata

Word here is a material and a concept with clear possibilities of getting degenerated with time. Therefore, the words and the performance would linger as a conversation in the memory of viewers, to fade away with time. Keywords is not the only example of the use of words. Written/sculpted words can be seen in many of Dube’s works and in most cases choice of materials plays a significant role in the making of those sculptural objects or installations.

Raqs media collective is also important in this context. Language plays a crucial role in their practice, therefore, words are present in their works in multiple ways like, written, constructed, printed, spoken, recorded and so on. “Premonition” is a word and the name of an entire exhibition of their works in Experimenter Kolkata in 2011.

The word was made three-dimensionally using light and industrial material, and it was displayed like a wall-based sculpture. The meaning of the word or the way it was realized/conceptualized by the artists of the collective, defines the idea behind the entire exhibition. Here, the chosen word acts as the title of a show, a sculpture and a concept that connects other images, objects, words and pieces represented in the show.

A brief survey of the website, http://www.raqsmediacollective.net/ would reveal how word, text or language is inseparable from almost all the images posted on the website.

These beautifully written texts are sometimes like windows that permit the viewers to peep inside, and sometimes like labyrinths that allow a viewer either to search for an entry into the collective’s mind or an exit to come out and go beyond.

48

I will draw the curtain on this discussion with another mention of Adip Dutta, a sculptor whose practice is heavily based on drawing. A good writer, he used to write on contemporary art but gave it up. It is interesting that almost from the same point of time he started to refer to his drawings as equivalent to writing.

His drawings are made of thousands of very tiny ink dots carefully and painstakingly applied on paper, bit by bit, with the help of a very thin brush. These dots construct various motifs in his drawings. Written words or fragments of texts sometimes find their way into his drawings. He never tries to create narratives of any kinds in his drawings.

Sometimes the written words he employs are so small that they are microscopic. Unlike all the other artists that I have discussed above, in Adip’s works words do not show up clearly all the time, as if they are trying to stay camouflaged within the fabric of the drawings. Why this game of hide and seek with words? Where does it lead?

The answer can be found in a sculpture of a book he made using steel wool as material.

In the book, no words are written; one can only see the steel wool, its rough and sharp surface, and can feel the threat of physical injury, if anyone attempts to touch it. Yet, nowhere in the book, are words like ‘threat,’ ‘injury’ and ‘pain’ written. The book quite inimitably gives visibility to these words by making the absence of the words visible through the use of the material, steel wool. Adip’s works suggest how complex the equation between word and image can become within the periphery of contemporary visual art.

Khastha Kotha Adapted from plebian salacious literature of Bengal Brush and ink on acid free paper, etching, digital print on archival paper and natural tussar 17 x 27 inch 2011 Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Experimenter, Kolkata

49

Adip Dutta The Book of Pain Stainless Steel and iron nail 26 x 39 x 15 inch 2012 Courtesy of the Artist and Experimenter, Kolkata

Notes See Word and Image by W.J.T. Mitchell in Critical Terms for Art History (2nd edition), edited by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003) 51. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=ObqVXJgMhYgC&pg=PA55&dq=difference+between+word+and+image&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEgsbMhbvVAhUEKY8KHcavBuoQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=difference%20between%20word%20and%20image&f=false

1

See History of Writing by Steven Roger Fischer (London: Reaktion Books, 2001). https://books.google.co.in/books?id=iYMXnSko5QwC&printsec=copyright&source=gbs_pub_info_r#v=onepage&q&f=false

2

See Word and Image by W.J.T. Mitchell in Critical Terms for Art History (2nd edition), edited by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff.

3

See The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore by Debashish Banerjee (Delhi: Sage, 2010), 72. https://books.google.co.in/books?id=_NSGAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+alternate+abanindranath+tagore&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjon5WTibvVAhUHrY8KHQXHAmUQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=the%20alternate%20abanindranath%20tagore&f=false

4

50

See “Abanindranath Tagore: A Reappraisal” by Soumik Nandy Majumder, Art etc (News & Views) Magazine, 18, 21 July, 2011. http://www.artnewsnviews.com/view-article.php?article=abanindranath-tagore-a-reappraisal-&iid=22&articleid=556

5

6

See “Abanindranath Tagore: A Reappraisal” by Soumik Nandy Majumder.

See The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore 72-73.

7,

8,

See The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore 72-73.

9,

See The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore 72-73.

10

See The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore 72-73.

11

See “Nandalal Bose,” by Sanjoy Kumar Mallik, Art Etc (News and Views) 18, July 2011

12

See Concepts of Modern Art (from Fauvism to Postmodernism) edited by Nikos Stangos (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997).

13

See Concepts of Modern Art (from Fauvism to Postmodernism) edited by Nikos Stangos.

See The Language of Comics: Word and Image edited by Robin Vernum & Christina T. Gibbons (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001). https://books.google.co.in/books?id=j_S6QHAov1kC&printsec=frontcover&dq=language+of+comics:+word+and+image&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF0dukjbvVAhWIOY8KHehTAw0Q6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=language%20of%20comics%3A%20 word%20and%20image&f=false

14

See Project 88 http://www.project88.in/individual-exhibition.php?exhibition=EXBTN0018&artist=ART0012&name=Sarnath%20Banerjee 15

See Khoj International Artist Association website http://khojworkshop.org/programme/anita-dube-asim-waqif/

16

Dipyaman Kar is a practising artist and has been institutionally trained as a sculptor. He has studied Visual Art at the Faculty of Visual Art, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, and the Cardiff School of Art and Design, Cardiff, UK. He was awarded the Charles Wallace Scholarship in the year of 2009-10. He was awarded the National Scholarship by the Ministry of Culture & Human Resources, Government of India, in 2012. He has participated in an Artist Residency programme at Arrau, Switzerland, supported by the Khoj Kolkata Artists’ Initiative and Arbeitsgruppe Gasteatelier Krone, Aarau, and has taken part in Khoj International Artists’ Workshops in 2006, and in various exhibitions in India and Switzerland. His interest as an artist is to explore the extended possibilities of sculpture. This in turn leads him to investigate ‘space,’ as an essential element in sculpture. His study looks into the idea of space as a framework for unquantifiable elements. His artistic endeavor tries to negotiate with issues like discarded spaces, spaces of transit, built spaces, spaces in writing, spaces in the history of cartography and so on. Dipyaman lives and works in Ranaghat and Kolkata.

51

Documenting Colonial India: The Use of English in Patnakalam Painting Saumya Garima Jaipuriar

T

his paper seeks to explore the way the word and the image interact in midnineteenth century Patnakalam painting. I shall be looking at some of the Opium Factory Paintings by Shiva Lal(1817-1887).

British Colonialism in India left an interesting legacy of representation in art. For a long time, British Artists, both professional and amateur, relied on their own vocabulary and expression for the depiction of India. There was a considerable output of this kind all through the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth century. Artists such as Tilly Kettle (1735–1786), Johann Zoffany (1733-1810), William Hodges (1744-1797), Arthur William Devis (1762-1822), and William Daniell (1769-1837) produced varied representations of India in the image/imaginary of the coloniser. There were some early attempts by non-British European travellers to get native artists involved but at this point there was not enough continued interest for the development of a sustained style.

While the East India Company consolidated its operations and expanded its control over the Indian sub-continent, the circumstances for the growth of Western-local hybrid art styles presented themselves in various places where there was a possibility of interaction between the Company-man, art patron and the local artist. One such hybrid school, Patnakalam flourished in Patna from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The British colonial project often translated into an almost obsessive preoccupation with documenting various aspects of the colony/subject. The enterprise of documentation – district surveys, gazetteers, map making, Trigonometric Survey –was far from neutral. It was all devised to construct and fix the India the Company perceived and governed. This documenting impulse bled into the art school Italian traveler Niccolao Manucci (1639-1717) is said to have commissioned local artists of the Malabar region to paint aspects of Indian life to satisfy European curiosity, as is Frenchman Francois Bernier.

1

52

the British gave patronage to as well.

While the British artists in India had leaned heavily towards the picturesque aesthetic in their depiction of the natural and archaeological landscape, the Patnakalam artist was regularly commissioned to produce illustrations of customs and festivals, occupations and costumes, flora and fauna.

Bernard S Cohn suggests that Indian arts attracted the British in India more for their documentary value than any intrinsic aesthetic quality (98).

British patrons often commissioned Indian artists to paint natural history Figure 1 specimens. In the latter part of the From Transactions of the Linnean Society, 1791 Courtesy: Peter H. Raven Library Mussouri eighteenth century particularly, the Botanical Garden India Office purposefully acquired large collections of drawings done by Indian artists. This identification and subsequent conscious deployment, of hybrid art schools such as Patnakalam with documentation brings to mind the traditions of natural history paintings such as Botanical illustrations. Botanical illustration has a long history in European art. It saw a great resurgence in interest in the eighteenth century as the Age of Enlightenment, with its preoccupation with positivist empiricism, looked at scientific classification, taxonomy, for systematising information of the natural world. The Linnean Society of London founded in 1788, encouraged visually accurate illustration as a tool for scientific description in terms of class, order, genus and species. Arguably, the ascendency of “seeing” as the ultimate means of “knowing” which characterizes modernity starts with eighteenth century constructions of scientific knowledge in image form (Rose, 3).

It can be argued that the documentary impulse that led to the commissioning and popularity of native occupations etc. derives inspiration in spirit from European scientific illustration. The practical implication of the “scientific” documentation of the subject matter, of the body of the colonized subject, in the visual form of Patnakalam paintings may be seen in how the British tried to make sense of the subject peoples by classifying them on the basis of occupation and caste.

Travellers’ accounts from late seventeenth century Patna tell us that Patnakalam provided ample employment to the native artist. Artists often made and sold painting sets, which depicted thematically related subjects of local interests, to British and

53

Figure 2 | Š Victoria and Albert Museum | London

sometimes native patrons. These sets were quite popular as inexpensive trinkets to take back home to Britain. One such set of 35 drawings of trades and occupation from c1826 provides a perfect entry point for examining the early appearance of words in Patnakalam paintings.

In these paintings by an unknown native artist, the subject or the theme is occupation (fig2 and fig 4). The inscription labeling the drawings gives the name of the occupation in Hindi and its English translation, both in the Roman script. It is worth noting here that the Hindi words for occupation also stand for caste. The potter is not just someone who makes earthen pots on a wheel but someone who bears this occupation as his caste identity. The inscriptions were likely, added later by early British owners.

These paintings have minimal backdrop and the subject is drawn in the middle. The potter and the masons are shown in the process of performing their occupations. The western influence is seen in the use of shadow (fig. 2) and perspective (fig. 4). In the drawing of the masons (fig. 4) there is no attempt to depict the two masons as distinct individuals. This is not due to the limited artistic ability of the Patnakalam artist as there are numerous examples of quite accomplished portraits drawn in the style.

The masons are drawn as types, representative of their occupational fraternity. Their relatively higher social status, vis-Ă -vis the laborers, is depicted through the difference in their clothes. These paintings have an ethnographic, documentary charge to them.

These ethnographical studies are in a similar vein as the Patnakalam sets of botanical 54

Figure 3 | Bird by Bahadur Lal II Š Victoria and Albert Museum | London

or zoological specimens (fig. 3) rather than bearing any familial resemblance to depictions of people in older indigenous art traditions like Pahadi style or Mughal painting, from which Patnakalam is said to have descended.

The interaction between the drawing and the inscription in the occupation paintings is not complicated. The native artist draws the local subject that he is familiar with while the British master names it. Simple though it might be, this gesture of naming is not a trivial matter but is symbolic of the larger pattern of the use of European modes of knowledge to explain, describe, classify, and label India and the Indian subject in the context of establishing imperial power. This was derived from the same impulse that drove the early district surveys with their wide ranging documenting from local history, topography, population, cultural practices, to flora and fauna, minerals, state of agriculture, arts, and commerce. The corpus of knowledge thus created was purported to be used for governance and administration, for management and control. But since peoples and lived cultures, unlike botanical and zoological effects, are subject to be influenced by external factors, British intervention almost certainly affected various aspects of Indian life. It can be argued that the identification of castes with occupations, the classification of high and low castes, the making of modern identities on the basis of caste may all have been influenced by British intervention stemming from the eighteenth century projects of documentation.

55

Shiva Lal’s Opium Factory paintings provide a significant step forward from the set drawings in terms of the inter-animation of the word and the image. Shiva Lal was a well known Patnakalam artist with an established predominantly British clientele. In 1857, he was commissioned by a Company Superintendent posted at the Opium Factory in Patna, D R Lyall, to paint a series of paintings depicting various stages of opium manufacture. The paintings were to be used to decorate the walls of the factory. The project Figure 4 was abandoned after the death of Lyall Š Victoria and Albert Museum, London during one of the Mutiny skirmishes.

However, Shiva Lal did make nineteen paintings before this. These paintings depict the various processes of opium manufacture from the receipt of crude opium to the crating of the finished product ready for dispatch.

Opium manufacture came up in a big way for Colonial players in India by the late eighteenth century. The British were preceded by the Dutch and the French in large scale opium production in Patna, but emerged as monopolists by the turn of the next century. Opium manufacture significantly contributed to the revenue that financed Colonial rule in India. The Opium Factory at Patna was one of the biggest opium processing facilities during the Raj. Shiva Lal’s paintings of the Patna opium factory are significant cultural documents as they give us a unique glimpse of Colonial production, a hybrid process, in a hybrid style.

Unlike the set about classification of occupations discussed earlier, the Opium Factory paintings are not primarily ethnographic. They are documentary in another way; their focus is on British manufacture in India. Whereas the occupation set implied the naming and claiming British documentarian, standing outside gazing in, through the superimposition of the inscriptions in English, the Opium paintings place the unseen master inside the action of the image through his language. The unseen Company man is metonymically represented in the painting by his language as an active player, as the controlling figure behind the commerce.

Out of the nineteen paintings, only three contain any words in them. Yet they are not without implication. The paintings have a narrative progression from start to finish.

This is significant in how and when words appear in the paintings. An earlier painting in the series shows scribes listing and labeling the opium balls (fig 5). The scribes

56

are using Urdu for this purpose. The language of the preceding rulers has been incorporated into the new regime but is significantly subservient to (the language of ) the new rulers. The last painting of the narrative shows two labourers carrying a crate of ready to ship opium (fig 6). The crate is prominently labeled at the top as “Patna Opium” and has a consignment number in the bottom corner. The insignia of the East India Company is painted right in the middle of the crate. It stands in as the final word, the sign of authority validating the entire operation. It must be remembered that Figure 5 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London opium making, even cultivation of poppy was illegal under Company rule unless authorized by the government.

The regulation and control of all manufacture was integral to the economic foundations of the Raj. All significant indigenous systems of production – textiles, crafts – were recalibrated to suit British interests as the East India Company, a commercial venture, morphed into an imperial entity. For instance, while cotton textile made up the bulk of the Company’s cargo from India at the beginning of the eighteenth century, by the second decade of nineteenth century British made textile was being imported to India.

In this context, the inscribed ethnographic set seems almost benign, if somewhat ironical, in its focus on documenting the various occupations of the native subjects.

These occupations continued to exist as they posed no threat to the economic well being of the Raj. The isolated figure in the occupation set drawings not only stands for his occupation but also brings to mind the smallness of the scale on which he operates. The underclass subject is contained and circumscribed by words meant to quell the curiosity of the British viewer. These mementoes from the exotic land are indirectly also narratives of colonial economic control.

The words in the Opium Factory paintings have far clearer resonance in terms of British involvement in India. Unlike the isolated figures of the occupation set, many of the Opium Factory paintings show rows of workers engaged in the processing of opium together. Even though the scale of these paintings gives off an artisanal feel, the suggestion is of industrial production. This new style of work was modeled on the industrial set up of mills and factories in Britain. The focus of these paintings is not the worker (occupation) but the resultant production. The words of the final painting complete with the Company insignia, claims ownership of this new system for the Company. The documentarian of the occupations set standing outside is the 57

Figure 6 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

master controlling production in the Opium Factory paintings. This may be seen as corresponding with the progression of Company interest in India from its early days as a trading company dealing with finished goods to the production controlling imperial entity in its later years.

The word-image interplay in both the occupation set and the Opium Factory paintings are reflective of the broader British attitudes towards not just Indian modes of artistic production but India in general. The word is deployed first as an authoritative documentarian sign, and it later takes on the additional charge of signaling the Company’s imperial control. Occupation sets continued to be produced till much later in the nineteenth century owing to their popularity.

However in case of this early set and the Opium paintings that came after it, there is a clear progression in terms of what the word signifies. In the occupation set, the British empiricist is deploying his language to authoritatively identify and simultaneously fix the identity of the native subject in terms of his occupation and caste. Once we ask the question – what gave him the authority to do so–we begin to see how empiricism served the interests of imperialism even in the most innocuous gestures of naming and image making. The Opium paintings are more directly imperial in the way they deploy the words within the image. Opium production was a significant source of income for the East India Company which it zealously 58

protected. It was central to its trade relations with China. This Economic enterprise at the heart of Company operation in India bears the sign of the Company in the last Opium painting. The sign stands for the imperial power of the East India Company.

Unlike the illegible lines depicting Urdu in the other painting from the Opium painting series, the English words and the Company insignia are drawn in robust lines. The native human figures are rendered secondary to the Company name and the Company product. In both, the occupations sets and the Opium paintings, the word dominates the image. But it is in the Opium painting that word-image interplay truly comes close to representing the power of the Raj.

Bibliography Archer, Mildred. Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period. Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992.

Archer, Mildred. Patna Painting. The Royal India Society, 1948.

Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India.

Princeton University Press, 1996.

Chaudhuri, K N. The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company: 1660-1760. Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Nickelsen, Kärin. Draughtsmen, Botanists and Nature: The Construction of Eighteenth–Century Botanical Illustrations. Springer, 2006.

Marshall, P J. The Oxford History Of The British Empire, Volume II The Eighteenth Century. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Rose, Gillian. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. Sage Publications, 2007.

Saumya Garima Jaipuriar is working on her doctoral thesis on Patnakalam and its place in the artistic traditions of modern India in the University of Delhi. She earned her MA and MPhil degrees in English from the University of Delhi in 2004 and 2006 respectively. She teaches English at Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi.

59

The Lure of the Baluchari Tina Roy

R

ecently in June 2017 Google launched the ‘We Wear Culture’ project at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on behalf of the Google Arts & Culture platform. The event not only marked a global collaboration between Google and more than 180 museums and cultural institutions across the world, but it was also a significant step taken towards acknowledging the world’s most well-known heritage fashion styles and statements recorded through the past 3000 years in 42 countries. The ‘We Wear Culture’ project sets out to digitize the world’s cultural treasures and bring together a collective web archive of the tales and trends of clothing, how it evolved across centuries, cultures and communities. India with its huge and varied textile canvas features in the project with the Baluchari being the top choice amongst the few selected Indian weaves. Meanwhile, the Weavers Studio based in Kolkata curated a show last year in November 2016, titled ‘Baluchari: Bengal and Beyond’ showcasing selected historical pieces from the TAPI Collection. The TAPI (Textiles & Art of the People of India) collection based in Surat has already

60

Smoking the hookah / The Tapi collection

documented some of the finest and iconic Baluchari sarees curated over the years from well-known families and personalities and has come out with a consolidated research publication, ‘Sahib, Biwi, Nawab: Baluchari Silks of Bengal: 1750-1900’ in collaboration with Eva-Maria Rakob, a German scholar who had conducted prior research on the Baluchari in the 1990’s. Initiatives like these have proved to be vital for the analysis of the Baluchari pertaining to its origin, evolution, decline and revival in the socio-cultural-historical context of Bengal. This is precisely why motifs and themes of the Baluchari are worth reflecting upon even today.

Anthropologists and historians have time and again resorted to the cloth or fabric to trace the history of culture. The role and function of a specific type of craftsmanship are linked to the literary, intellectual and artistic pursuits of a civilization. This holds true in the context of the Baluchari as well. The handwoven pictorial themes and designs on the Baluchari have been based on prevalent trends, texts and context, all of which could be broadly categorised in the following way: 1. Societal trends as in themes derived from actions, behavioural patterns which are exclusively characteristic of a particular historical phase within the given territory, as evident from the symbolic Nawabi and European figurative forms woven on the Baluchari.

2. Religious literatures and symbols as in Hindu themes from Mahabharata, Ramayana, terracotta temples of Bishnupur or the Islamic/ Persian motifs found on the Baluchari.

Let us keep aside the weaving technique of the Baluchari and delve into its textual and contextual significance.

Texts picked up by the weavers were translated into its corresponding imageries and were woven as designs on the sarees. This inter-animation of word or text and visual offers a very interesting aspect to the style of the Baluchari.

61

Wedding scene / The Tapi collection

Baluchar was a small village in Murshidabad with its name being derived from the term ‘balu’ meaning sand/soil and ‘char’ meaning sandbank formed as a result of silt deposits from a river. The very specialized and stylized form of weaving which came to be known as the ‘Baluchari’ originated from this region. It is said that at some point during the 19th century the village of Balucharwas submerged due to the flooding of the Bhagirathi river. However, it is believed that Baluchar is the same place where the present township of Jiagunj lies. The name Balucharwas changed to Jiaganj only after the Muslim rulers invaded Bengal and took control of Murshidabad.

The weavers hailing from the region were primarily silk weavers who came directly under the patronage of the then Nawab of Bengal, Murshid Quli Khan, in the early 18th century. He shifted his capital, the Bengal Diwani, to Murshidabad, previously known as Maksudabad, from Dhaka (now in Bangladesh). Murshidabad was a region with extensive mulberry cultivation, and it was already a flourishing trading point.

It was a lucrative destination for silk sought by traders who were mostly Gujaratis, Marwaris, and Parsis, as well as Europeans, of whom the Dutch and the English were primary.

62

Women smoking hookah atop elephant / The Tapi collection

https://scroll.in/article/693894/women-smoking-hookahs-saris-from-19th-century-bengal-depict-the-rapidlymodernising-world

63

The Tapi collection http://www.hali.com/news/baluchar-silks-bengal-mumbai/

64

The history of Baluchari is integral to the history of Nawabi culture in Bengal, the centre of which was Murshidabad. The 18th and 19th century had marked the Baluchari’s birth, evolution, popularity and also, sadly, its fall from grace. As the ‘nawabi’ and the ‘zamindari’ culture thrived in Bengal, it embraced and endorsed the Baluchari in ways where one could instantly identify motifs on the saree that represented the wisdom, power and aesthetic sensibility of the royalty. The transfer of capital from Dhaka to Murshidabad marked significant socio-cultural changes: artisans patronized by Muslim rulers began weaving Islamic motifs on tapestry used in the palaces and courts in an attempt to please the nobility. The lifestyle of the Nawabs along with their aristocratic accessories gained prominence and its corresponding pictorial representations were woven as designs on the Baluchari sarees. Nawabs seated on thrones, smoking hookahs, or nawabs in traditional attire with falcons perched on their hand, surrounded by courtesans and musicians began to appear. Noblemen riding on horses and elephants, a pair of ladies with birds in hands, Muslim bibis in conversation with one another also appeared. Details of nawabi attire, nawabi chairs and thrones, even the nawabi hookah were woven into the saree giving evidence of the minute detailing undertaken by the weavers.

With the advent of the British in Bengal, many new and significant changes appeared.

The pictorial subjects often took on the forms of European figures. Figures in angrakhas or the long-sleeved knee length jackets were changed to those in Georgian era jackets.

Hats, waistcoats, bonnets and the relatively stiff and form-fitting attire donned by the sahibs and memsahibs began to appear on the figures in the sarees. As with the earlier hookah, the figures were now seen holding flowers or wine glasses. Activities such as riding on horse-driven coaches, or travelling on boats and steam-powered

Nawabs and Britishers / The Tapi collection

65

locomotives were captured by the artisans on the Baluchari. All these vital new motifs mapped the changing socio-cultural and political pattern of the time. By the mid-18th century the paisley pattern using the kalka motif of Persian origin was also an integral part of the Baluchari. It was often woven as a central box panel surrounded by a panel of smaller paisley motifs in small rectangles and with other floral designs in the borders. While the Hindu or the general European motifs depicted various figurative images and actions engaged in celebration, festivals, marriage processions, brides in palanquins, warriors and horse riders, the Islamic tradition was subtle and symbolic with more floral and geometrical pattern and devoid of any graphical representations of human forms. Islamic and European motifs have been dominantly used on the Baluchari during the 18th century which over the next century of tumultuous sociopolitical and geographical shift made way for Hindu motifs that had been the central theme of the Baluchari in early 20th century and continues to be so.

Peacock motifs and ambi (paisley) / The Tapi collection

66

Battle scene from epic Mahabharata https://www.utsavpedia.com/motifs-embroideries/baluchari-sari-bengali-delight

Parul Bajoria who has worked with weavers to produce scarves, stoles and bags so as to extend the beauty of the Baluchari to artefacts and objects other than the saree and thus appeal to a wider public, comments that the indigenous weavers of Baluchar used Jala looms. The jala is a core design referent through which many other designs and motifs can be woven. The design is drawn on paper, passed on to fabric using thread and machan. This becomes a master design or core design. Weavers usually make copies of this master design on their looms in case of accident or loss. The intricate process of weaving these beautiful sarees with their reversible motifs can take fifteen to eighteen weeks. With the introduction of Jacquard looms the process is now shortened to six days with two artisans working in shifts. However, with the introduction of the jacquard loom, the reversibility of the Baluchari design can no longer be kept intact.

67

Arising out of environmental changes and topographical shifts in the Bhagirathi deltaic region, the Baluchari artistry gradually moved to Bishnupur. Bishnupur, named after the Hindu God Vishnu was a part of the Mallbhum territory which was ruled by the Hindu rajas of the Malla dynasty. The Malla rulers were Hindu Vaishnavites, claimed to have erected the famous terracotta temples made out of burnt clay bricks during their reign. These temples represented the classical Bengal architecture of 17th and 18th century Bengal. Images based on Hindu mythological stories, mostly legends of Ram, Krishna and Shakuntala,were carved on the terracotta walls of the temples.The revival of the Baluchari style in today’s times still follow the terracotta motifs based on the Jor Bangla temple or the Rasa Mancha in Bishnupur.

It is important to remember that at a time when Bengal was ruled by the Nawabs while simultaneously attracting the European traders and consequently coming under the control of the East India Company it had somewhat retained its religious identity and customary beliefs. With gradual strengthening of the British reign, Bengal also experienced a revival of socio-cultural and religious sentiments. Tales of gods and goddesses, kings, queens and commoners had a unifying element that seeped into the consciousness of the population. The epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, regarded as sacred texts by many, being both widely read and heard, were important as both referential and reverential materials for the royalty and the masses. The crux of the prevailing art forms such as architecture, folk lore, painting, music or weaving contained popular subjects such as Ram’s glory, his marriage to Sita, Krishna reciting the Bhagavad Gita to Arjun while both of them are astride a chariot in the middle of war—all these were popular Hindu motifs. The Baluchari sarees carry such visuals on the borders and the aanchal. The epics had been composed within the context of family feuds, marriage, sacrifice, exile, battles both won and lost. Fundamental and universal human issues such as power, revenge, justice, redemption formed the core of the epics and helped to bring the common people closer together. Pictorial representations of Ram, Sita, Krishna, Arjuna and Draupadi were chosen as painting, carving or weaving subjects in part due to their aspirational and inspirational value retained through the texts, through oral and literary traditions passed down from generation to generation. Mythological tales have thus been woven by the Baluchari weaver in such a manner that we are lead to believe that the physical impression of the person wearing the garment is not as important as having to pause, observe and reflect on the significance of the woven motif.

We see how the images woven on Baluchari reflect the historical eras gone by, be they Muslim, British or Hindu. The legacy of the Baluchari does not lie solely in being remembered as an erstwhile heritage clothing of Bengal but as a repository of Bengal’s artistic, intellectual and religious sensibilities and evolving human behavior.

As such, the Baluchari must be made available, accessible and attractive to the young generation who will carry the tradition further and protect the rights of the supremely gifted weavers of these priceless artefacts.

68

References Books: Rakob, Eva-Maria, Shilpi Shah and TulsiVatsal.

Sahib, Biwi, Nawab: Baluchar Silks of Bengal: 1750-1900.

Surat: Tapi Collection, 2014.

Internet sources: Bajoria, Parul. http://www.Gatha.com/baluchari-sari-bangal https://www.telegraphindia.com/1150524/jsp/opinion/story_21749.jsp http://www.biswabangla.in/sarees/2015/7/5/baluchari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallabhum https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/cQIyk7E6So7LLw (Google Arts & Culture: 1780 – 2000, Saris, Odhanis and More: Woven Tales from India, Case studies of Three Unique Weaving Traditions: Baluchari, Patola and Brocades.

Tina Roy has worked with NGOs like Women’s Interlink Foundation, Centre for Social Markets, Concern India Foundation and Earth Day Network on community development, environmental protection, and gender development. She has worked with the British Deputy High Commission on regional climate change programme and was selected for a leadership program under the U.S. State Department.

She is currently engaged in curating handloom textiles and handicrafts exhibitions, namely, ‘Syuti Shaili-Weaving Styles’, on behalf of Endeavour which she has founded to promote Indian handloom, and provide a direct marketing platform for weavers’ run enterprises, artisan clusters, young designers and crafts based livelihood projects run by NGOs.

69

Madina Bhavan_3 | Photo Credit : Sandeep Dhopate

70

71

Disappearing Dialogues Nobina Gupta As an artist, I have exhibited my works at various national and international galleries and art fairs and interacted with a niche audience within the four walls of a plush ambience. But the need to search for history and tradition dawned upon me while researching the ‘Disappearing Dialogues’ under Earth Art Project in 2014, cosponsored by Japan Foundation, in the nomadic villages of the Changthang valley in Ladakh. After closely observing the Changpas, I was faced with a plethora of unanswered questions. I realized that the rich and ancient societal structure was an excellent antithesis to the modern life where we struggle to cope with our ‘idiopathic environment’.

I felt the urgency to walk back to my roots, dig beneath the surface of our tradition and culture, to understand its core, and revive the tangible and the intangible sensibilities of life, sharing my acquired knowledge and speculating how to pass it on to the next generation to build new perspectives. I felt the responsibility to rediscover and archive the dialogues from within the deeper layers of communities; the dialogue between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’.

72

with the basket weavers of Uchhera village

Disappearing Dialogues, thus became a creative process with an open forum for transdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue by collaborating with enriched communities.

The objective is to stimulate a cultural response towards social enrichment and better living, by reflecting on our lost heritage and cultural resources. Interestingly, it has motivated people from different communities and social structures, through interactive activities, to recall the cultural, social and environmental losses native to their region, and to revive a dialogue to re-invent ourselves. In 2015, through a solo show at Gallery Sanskriti, I showcased my works and research with the Changpas, the nomadic community in Ladakh. In just a year, we received an overwhelming response to our drive.

Ichol, near Maihar, in M.P is a case in point. As the curator of the ‘Disappearing Dialogues’ project, with the support of Art Ichol, a unique arts centre in rural India, I conceptualized a research residency in M.P to motivate people to take a proactive stance. The history, heritage and traditional knowledge of communities could not be allowed to remain with the elderly, and gradually lose its relevance within the region.

Having shared a long relationship as an artist with Mrs. Ambica Beri, the owner of Gallery Sanskriti and the founder director of Art Ichol, I initiated the project within the creative ambience of the centre. In October, 2016 the ‘Disappearing Dialogues’ collaborative multi-disciplinary research team of 15 diverse local, 73

national and international professionals teamed up to develop a cross-cultural and trans disciplinary research focusing on Environment, Art and Culture, Heritage & Tradition within the local community in and around Ichol.

This marvelous journey began with each collaborator adding a new dimension to the initiative by expanding its boundaries, fusing cross-cultural views, researching through individual standpoints and organically moving beyond their usual practices. The region in focus was Baghel and Bundelkhand. The researchers identified ways and means of creating a dialogue across their respective fields. The days were spent travelling into the interiors of the region, engaging with the locals, with support from the staff at Art Ichol. The evenings were hours to share experiences and deliberate over germinating ideas. The process was made motivating by the subtlety of the developments. No one knew what would emerge from the process; yet there was a vivid picture waiting to unfold after authentic documentation and archiving. This ‘collective’ aims, in due course, to create innovative avenues for community enrichment.

Nobina Gupta, an alumnus of Shantiniketan, is a Kolkata based artist.

She has created a niche for herself through significant representations at national and international art fairs. As an art educationist and facilitator in the past 20 years, Nobina Gupta has been engaging with youth and children, unleashing inherent talent, nourishing ideas and igniting young minds to create connections between art, education, experience and technology to face challenges in the future. She is currently curating the multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural collaborative research project, Disappearing Dialogues.

opposite page: Ramleela_3 | Photo Credit : Sandeep Dhopate 74

75

76

Shiva Temple at Medhai Village

COLLABORATORS FOR DISAPPEARING DIALOGUES 77

CLARE ELIZABETH KENNEDY, an Architect from Australia has been studying traditional Indian vernacular architecture, and

understanding

techniques

of

craftsmanship and brick making around Maihar. She found an opportunity to deeply engage with a particular area, understand its history and the present.

Her focus was on building with earth, and in Ichol, she found fantastic examples of traditional earthen architecture that is slowly being replaced by concrete homes.

Clare is designing a small residential eco building at Art Ichol, fusing successful elements of traditional mud buildings with modern detailing which could be explored and replicated.

SANDEEP DHOPATE, a photographer from Mumbai is working on the grace and grandeur of the ‘Maihar Gharana of Hindustani Classical music’ depicting mood of popular ragas through staged photography, along with the wool weavers of Sukhna who continue the tradition of making woolen rugs. He believes that through photography he can address some economic issues by building a contemporary,

aesthetically

appealing

visual narrative of the products, in the hope that it would generate new opportunities for Indian hand woven crafts.

78

AMRITAH SEN, a visual artist from Kolkata has been working on the life of Baba Allauddin Khan and his Maihar school of Hindustani classical music.

Visiting Madina Bhavan, Baba’s house in Maihar, provided her an incomparable vibe of simplicity, dedication and purity that she misses in her contemporary life.

Amritah is documenting her discovery by creating a book art that will narrate the story of the house -- it’s past and present.

SHATARUPA THAKURTA ROY, an academician from IIT, Kanpur, focuses on Folklore as a part of life of community cultural research. She is engaged in creating interfaces of interactive board games on Mythology attached to the Tamas river (Kaushal Parvat etc.), which will enable people, locally and globally, to understand the multiple underlying layers of Indian mythology and culture which unfortunately remain forgotten.

79

SHASHWATI G. GARAI, an Odissi dancer from Kolkata worked with a local folk singer SHASHI KUMAR PANDEY and his troupe of musicians, and a young collaborator MAHIMA SABHERWAL to create a performance. The fusion of their expertise resulted in a vibrant dance and music performance executed by the local school children, celebrating the region’s cultural heritage. This show also infused pride into the hearts of the young audience.

TRISH

BYGOTT

&

NATHAN

CROTTY , textile designers from Australia are working to explore the meditative aspect of stitch and cloth. They set-up an embroidery and crochet workshop in October 2016 along with women of Ichol village, who are now co-creating a line of products. Their idea was to refine this skill, latent in these women, which would provide sustained livelihood and financial independence. Besides, the larger community would enjoy a sense of pride for playing a meaningful role in preserving native forms, patterns and art and craft techniques fast disappearing in India.

80

NIDHI KHURANA, a textile artist from

New

Delhi

is

studying

the

biodiversity of the place, and creating visual maps of the region. At a skill development workshop with the villagers at Art Ichol, using natural resources from the area, she demonstrated various techniques of natural dyeing like ecoprints, bandhani, shibori, thereby making locals value mundane elements of the environment. This promises an opening for a better occupation for women with proper training.

PAYAL NATH/ KADAM INDIA,

a

social entrepreneur from Kolkata is working with communities across India creating

means

of

livelihood

using

product design. Having realized that the communities of Maihar had lost faith in their knowledge of basic crafts and/or arts due to the rapidly changing socio-economic

fabric

of

societies,

through a basic workshop, involving our young collaborator ANTARA GUPTA, she instilled confidence in the ladies and girls of the village, who are now creating a range of interesting products on base materials like recycled cement bags, fusing music with craft.

81

LENNY RUBENOVITCH, a Wood & Furniture artist from Canada focused on reviving the refined craftsmanship of woodcarving that was an enriched tradition under the patronage of Indian rulers and royal families with abundant resources of durable raw materials such as Teak and Sal in the region.

SHILO ENGELBRECHT, a Fashion and Textile designer from Australia researched on pigments developed from local materials. She is experimenting through painting, with local materials and techniques, examining ways of cultural preservation and steps to encourage use of natural dyes.

82

ULRIKE REINHARD, a social reformer from Germany has been working with community children in Janwaar, Madhya Pradesh for the past few years to empower and educate them, addressing social issues and preventing their migration to cities by providing better livelihood alternatives and restoring rural life, communities and structure.

RITA BANERJI/The GREEN HUB, initiated a process of engaging locals and youth to capture their surroundings and address common issues through a new medium, at Art Ichol, through a workshop on videography through mobile phones.

The youth created captivating short films, which, with further training with experts from The Green Hub, hold significant promise for creating livelihoods for the younger generation.

83

PIPSON SEBASTIAN MAMPILLI, an entrepreneur working on Sustainable Living, who, during our research residency, interacted with farmers to understand their problems related to farming. He motivated select farmers to undertake training at an organic farmer Prem Singh’s farm in Banda,U.P. in techniques of organic farming. This will help them convert their chemical farms into organic farms over a period of time.

ABHISHEKA.K, an ecological artist and

educator

from

Bangalore

feels

that though education is important for

local

communities,

knowledge

dissemination methods in rural schools have done significant damage as they are

disconnecting them from nature.

The younger generation is losing out on traditional knowledge. Through her project, involving all interconnected locally available resources, she creates a marriage of traditional knowledge and science facts which can result in solutions to problems.

We work together using pedagogical tools and programs, conducting art workshops for children and youth to build links with their traditional knowledge.

84

85

86

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

February 2016 to July 2017

87

FEBRUARY

MARCH

2016

2016

26 04

Senior artist Laxma Goud spent time at Art Ichol creating his signature works in clay.

The seeds were sown for a graphic studio at the centre.

88

JULY

30 2016

Art Ichol opened in Madhya Pradesh in February 2015, and 18 months on, we graciously accepted the National Tourism Award for ‘The most unique and innovative destination in India’, from the speaker of the Lok Sabha, Mrs.Sumitra Mahajan. This award was our third title, since winning the State Tourism Award in May 2015 from our CM, and the State’s coveted Award for Responsible tourism, subsequently.

89

AUGUST

AUGUST

2016

2016

05 07

French artist and sculptor Nicholas Sanhes and his partner Benedicte Graille visited Art Ichol, while they were on a trip sponsored by the French Embassy to explore and understand India and create works for ‘Bonjour India’ festival, 2017.

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

2016

2016

25 25

The centre witnessed a major breakthrough when the Arts council of Northern Ireland in a joint initiative with the British Council invited applications (June 2016) for a funded residency at Art Ichol, from artists working in craft, ceramics, textiles, bronze, stone and wood carving. We were delighted to welcome artist Ellie Niblock to a vibrant Indian experience in a unique creative partnership between India and Ireland. Ellie experimented in chemicals, plastics and ceramics which produced interesting results. ‘Every moment was an experience that will stay with me forever,’ wrote Ellie in her blog on her residency at Art Ichol.

90

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

2016

2016

13 04

Thirty two sculptors including artists Mrigendra Pratap Singh, Vipul Kumar, Bhupesh Kavadia, Nitin Dutt, Gyuzo Choi along with students and carvers began a three week stone sculpting residency at Art Ichol. It was an exciting time with a creative magic dust stirring up!

Thirty two sculptors including artists Mrigendra Pratap Singh, Vipul Kumar, Bhupesh Kavadia, Nitin Dutt, Gyuzo Choi along with students and carvers began a three week stone sculpting residency at Art Ichol. It was an exciting time with a creative magic dust stirring up!

91

SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER

2016

2016

10 24

Baroda based sculptor and artist Sudipta Das creates incredible textures, relief work and shades of colour by hand shredding paper. Sudipta’s process of meticulously tearing and staining paper pieces to create sculpture, form and relief paintings comes from her identification of thousands of tiny emotions, several experiences and various views – social, political, geographical and cultural or ethnic identity. However, often in the grand scheme of things, these minutiae have a completely different connotation.

OCTOBER

OCTOBER

2016

2016

02 12

Disappearing Dialogues - A research residency curated by artist Nobina Gupta. A bonding and interaction of 12 collaborators to study and share observations on environment, culture, heritage, history, tradition, indigenous community, engaging with the locals, over a period of ten days at Art Ichol.

92

NOVEMBER

21 2016

Art Ichol Journal-II was launched by Chief Guest Rajeev Sethi, Guests of Honour Mr. Ganesh Singh, MP, Satna and Mr. Ashwani Lohani, Chairman Air India, at The Amphitheatre, India Habitat Centre. The journal launch was part of the Delhi International Arts Festival.

93

JANUARY

18

Swiss ceramic artist, Jacques Kaufmann visited Art Ichol again to honour and pay homage to the humble brick-makers of Ichol. Here we see his project underway, ably assisted by young architect Kritikha Sriram artist Ramesh Chandra and dome maker Ashok Kumar.

2017

94

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

2017

2017

21 26

Ceramic artist Madhvi Subrahmanian came back to Art Ichol to create her signature works for her forthcoming exhibition in Gallery Chemould, Mumbai.

FEBRUARY

05 2017

Art Ichol begins work on the three Ceramic and Copper Buddha panels of artist Satish Gupta.

95

FEBRUARY

FEBRUARY

2017

2017

08 25

Interactive workshops with Ichol school children, focusing on yoga, acrobatics, visual surroundings, storytelling, rhythm and synchronisation with Akshara Foundation for Arts & Learning, Book a smile, Gillo Repertory Theatre & Art Ichol.

Special thanks to Mridula Chakraborty, Shaili Sathyu, Tanya Mahajan and their dedicated and enthusiastic team.

96

FEBRUARY

FEBRUARY

2017

2017

25 26

(Maihar Art Ichol) MAI Festival presents a historic two-day event, a Hindi Swang Nautanki, ‘Hanuman Ki Ramayan’ and Fareed Haque with Alex Austin and Robert Dicke in a Jazz concert for the first time in the vicinity. Two spectacular nights of drama and music!

97

MARCH

MARCH

2017

2017

02 15

Art Ichol played host to another international Ceramic Residency - Clay Stories with Falguni Bhatt from Kolkata, Mami Kato from Japan, Maria Bosch from Spain, Shampa Shah from Bhopal, Jane Jermyn of Ireland, Lee Middleman from the US, and Ambica Beri and the team Milan Singh, Aankhee Mukherjee, Krithika Sriram, Ravi Kumar, Ramesh Chandra. We also welcomed Shareen Attavar to the studio.

MARCH

MAY

2017

2017

07 07

Young and talented Shivraj came to Art Ichol for three months to begin a new journey in clay and hopefully in his life. His stay was sponsored by Puneeta and Sanjoy Roy of Teamworks and Yuva Ekta Foundation.

98

MARCH

MARCH

2017

2017

20 27

Textile artist Nidhi Khurana and artist Ruchin Soni conducted a natural dyeing workshop with the women of Ichol village

99

APRIL

02 2017

A new story begins at Art Ichol with Sunday Library meetings for Ichol school children.

JULY

JULY

2017

2017

18 25

Disappearing Dialogues - Open Forum welcomes new collaborators at the centre

100

Open Forum

101

AUGUST

AUGUST

2017

2017

18 28

Opening of the Graphic and print studio. Curated by Laxma Goud with RM Palaniappan, Anupam Sud and Viraj Naik.

Excitement of seeing the first print - Laxma Goud, Ambica Beri and Anupam Sud. 102

Photo Credit : Srimallya

103

Photo Credit: Tanya Dutt

Khajuraho-Bandhavgarh Highway, Village Ichol, Maihar, Madhya Pradesh, India HO, Sunderson House, NH7, Rewa Road, Maihar 485 771 Dist: Satna. Madhya Pradesh, India Mobile: +91 98 31 009278, +91 98 31 275666 Email: info@artichol.in www.artichol.in | www.gallerysanskriti.com

106