April 13, 1998

Lacing pungent wit with vivid imagination, the folk art documented the entire gamut of Bengali life.

By S Kalidas

In bright colours and bold lines they put to paper the raunchy gossips of the bazaars. Voluptuous sundaris of Bow Bazar, unfaithful wives and errant husbands were all grist to their creative mill. Under the shadow of the famous Kalighat Temple flourished the art of the patuas, as these folk artists are called. They documented the entire gamut of Bengali life, from the perceived antics of gods and goddesses to the foibles and frailties of the Calcutta babus. The patuas were a school of anonymous artists who appropriated stories, styles and used their sarcastic wit to subvert the sacrosanct.

Last week, as Calcutta's Indian Museum opened an exhibition of 45 patuas from the collection of an early 20th century folk-art aficionado Gurusadan Dutt, viewers got to see this increasingly rare art form which colonial art historians disparagingly referred to as bazaar art. While this might be the first time this genre has been spotlighted in the land of its birth, the Kalighat pat won recognition by the European art establishment a long time ago. "The first exhibition of the pat was held in Prague in 1872," says historian R.P. Gupta, himself an avid collector.

"It's a shame that more foreigners have heard about the art of the patuas than Indians," says Indian Museum's director Shayamalkanti Chakravarty. Tracing the influence of the Kalighat pat on artists like Jamini Roy, he says, "It's time art lovers realised who the forebears of modern Indian art really were." This is not to underestimate the popularity of the pat paintings. Modestly priced as they were for a few paise each, they were snapped up by pilgrims visiting Kalighat Temple. Their appeal, however, was restricted to the lay lower classes. Neither Calcutta's degenerate babudom nor its "Renaissance" elite cared much for them. But foreigners were quick to appreciate their sardonic humour and the artistry of their graceful lines.

The most characteristic feature of the pat painting was its flowing lines. With time, the patuas of southern Bengal evolved a simple system of assembly-line production. While the head of each patua family drew the outline of the main image, others filled in the details. "It's easy to tell a fake from a true pat from the outlines," says Chakravarty. "They were at once sharp and luxurious. The women were rounded and erotic, though the eyes always had a melancholy look." Gupta, who picked up most of his collection in the '60s for Rs 10 apiece, says: "The Kalighat pat stood out in their time from similar schools in Orissa or Rajasthan for their ecclecticism and contemporaneity." The series on Sundaris, showing actresses and tawaifs, are sensual images. Often, the patuas irreverently distorted stereotypes. A Ravan depicted wearing high boots is but one example. From the 1860s onwards, the pats took to depicting sordid scandals. High-born men are shown being submissive to raunchy courtesans. Mager Bhera (The Whore's Goat) shows a babu being led on a leash by his voluptuous mistress.

Many pats centred around the infamous Elokeshi incident. When her husband went to work, the 16-year-old Elokeshi responded to the overtures of a mahant. In 1872, Bengal was rocked by her brutal death at the hands of her enraged husband. While the press followed the case in vivid detail, the patuas ran the whole gamut with a 16-part series.

Apart from a lone painting of Rani Laxmibai, it's intriguing why the patuas chose to steer clear of political issues. Dutt feels the pat were probably finished by the turn of the 19th century. "The last man who remembered the tradition was Sirish Chandra Chitrakar," recalls Chakravarty. "In 1982, he made a pat on Yashoda suckling an infant Krishna and when I wanted to pay, he refused the money." He died a few years later, and with him another art form vanished from India.

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