This week’s column focuses on the magnificent exhibition of Kalighat paintings from London’s Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) and Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH). The paintings have travelled to four Indian cities and are, at present, on show at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. It is an exhibition that gives a rare glimpse into the decorative and rather humorous images created by artists belonging to the Patua clan, who lived around the area of the Kalighat Temple in Kolkata in the 19th century. Through these paintings, which are often about sensational stories of the time, one can catch a glimpse of the lifestyle and topics of the period.
The exhibition first opened at the Victoria Memorial Gallery in Kolkata on October 16 last year and, since then, has gone to Mumbai, Hyderabad and has finally reached Delhi. The show is a collaborative exhibition, presenting the finest Kalighat paintings from the collections of the V&A and the VMH. What is important here is that it is for the first time the two museums have worked in partnership and VMH has become a part of the V&A’s ongoing programme of taking exhibitions on India tour.
V&A has the largest single collection of Kalighat paintings in the world and this would be for the first time that highlights from the V&A collection have been shown in India. The exhibits constitute around 100 paintings and besides the early ones, there are 15 contemporary works by artists from rural Bengal, which have been especially acquired by V&A for the exhibition. A handsome publication by Mapin accompanies the exhibition and the ‘best examples from the collection as well as contemporary Kalighat paintings’ illustrate the book, along with supporting text that focuses on style and technique used by the artists as well as the “era in which this painting thrived.”
The art scene in the mid-19th century is said to have evolved from bazaar art that flourished around the Kali Temple at Kalighat in Calcutta. The artists who developed the Kalighat style of painting were traditional scroll painters (Patuas) who developed single pictures in this unique style wherein one or two figures reflected decorative frames of a changing society. They rendered these with strong black outlines made out of lamp black and flat bright colours to create images that offer a valuable insight into “the rapidly urbanising cityscape of 19th century Kolkata” and help us understand the changes in lifestyles and values of that era.
At the exhibition, there are works dating back to the mid-1800s when the subject depicted by the artists usually revolved around gods and goddesses. The style was simple and in keeping with the traditional styles of iconography of the period. These colourful paintings became popular souvenirs and were bought by pilgrims who visited the temple. The style gradually changed as European influences slowly ‘crept in’ and subjects changed to “pursuits such as horse races and hunts.”
But perhaps the most important feature of the Kalighat paintings is the element of satire that slowly crept into the paintings. Artists took up the depiction of ‘colonial affectations adopted by Bengalis’ and the ‘foppish Bengali Babu’, became a common theme, which seen in various positions, with his pets, his wife, playing musical instruments and more but always dressed in style and with curled hair and twirling mustache.
Social issues, such as the notorious 1873 ‘Tarakeshwar Affair’, took the fancy of the artists and luckily for viewers the story was shown in totality. A civil servant was said to have discovered that his 16-year old wife ‘Elokeshi’ was having an affair with the temple priest and in a fit of jealousy beheaded his wife and then gave himself up. A dozen paintings create the whole story from ‘the first meeting of the lovers, to the conviction of the murderer and the priest.’
V&A and the VMH deserve our thanks and congratulations for bringing this exhibition to India, so that the public-at-large have the opportunity of seeing a unique art form, that continues to inspire Indian artists to this day.
(The writer is a winner of many advertisingdesign awards and apainter of repute)
Source: http://www.mydigitalfc.com/news/london-india-journey-kalighat-paintings-173
