Books: Home is where the Art Isn't

Two delightful collections tell you how well preserved Indian art is -- abroad.

It is indeed both incredible and embarrassing to be constantly confronted by the fact that the best of Indian art has not only been acquired by museums and private collections abroad but also preserved, presented and promoted in a far better fashion than in the country of its origin. It is not that our museums are bereft of good art, it is just that successive bureaucratic regimes have never allowed professional curating, cataloguing and art book publishing to take root in this country.

The latest cause for red faces and shifty looks are two magnificent, ongoing exhibitions of Indian art in the US. They have resulted in even more significant publications whose area of impact and life span will be much greater than that of the exhibitions themselves. These are the multifaceted and stunning presentation on the concept of the mother goddess, Devi: The Great Goddess, by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and a smaller in scale but equally fascinating exhibition of the Kalighat pata -- Kalighat Painting: Images from a Changing World at the Los Angeles County Museum.

Devi, which brings together related objects from no less than 36 collections in the US, the UK and Switzerland, is conceived and curated by the well-known art historian Vidya Dehejia, associate director and chief curator at the Sackler and Freer galleries of the Smithsonian. The show of Kalighat Painting on the other hand is drawn primarily from a single source, the collection of Davida and Chester Herwitz, and is curated by Stephen Markel. It is of great remorse that Chester -- perhaps the biggest collector of Indian art worldwide and patron saint of many Indian artists including M.F. Husain -- died in a car crash just a few weeks ago. The Kalighat exhibition was perhaps his last major engagement.

That both these showings have had years of imagination, investigation and labour invested in them is obvious when you glance through the resulting publications, now brought to India by Mapin.

Dehejia's Devi: The Great Goddess is a lavishly-produced 408-page book with contributions from a host of experts on south Asian art. It throws light on the subject from many levels and varying points of view. There is Thomas Coburn's recounting of the Devi myth as found in the 5th-6th century Sanskrit text Devi Mahatmya. There is also Tapati Guha-Thakurta's "Clothing the Goddess: The Modern Contest Over Representations of Devi", which tackles the question of the imaging of the goddess in popular 20th century perception and the sexual aesthetic of closeting the goddess in an urban, post-colonial form.

Opening yet another vista of inquiry is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "Moving Devi", which discourses into Devi's many modern personae as an expatriate, a feminist and a Calcuttan, brought up with the subalternist text "Meyerder Brotokatha" (Girls' tales of domestic rituals). Then there is the piece by Dehejia and Sagaree Sengupta on the poetry inspired by the Devi in Tamil Nadu and Bengal. Cornelia Mallebrein delves into tribal deities, the localised village level shrines and practices invoking the mother goddess that lie beyond the pale of Brahminical Hinduism. Altogether an intellectually absorbing and visually riveting book.

In comparison, Kalighat Painting authored by Jyotindra Jain, senior director of the Crafts Museum in Delhi, may seem dwarfed in size, scale and canvas. But that comparison would be unfair. Because Jain's seven-year study of this 19th century pop-art form from the streets around Calcutta's Kalighat temple is meticulously researched and provokingly agile.

The patuas are an artistically ingenious potter caste of Bengal-Orissa who have over the generations added painting, retelling of folklore and toy and icon making to their original craft. In the beginning they limited their narrative pictographs -- called pata (literally: painting on cloth) -- to Hindu mythology and a few local historical legends. However, as they moved to the rapidly growing colonial metropolis of Calcutta from the early 1800s their interface with the sahibs, their lifestyle, their machines and their industry on the one hand and the impact of this colonial culture on the local Indian elite provided for better subject matter.

From their muddy footpaths along the narrow street leading to the most important Kali temple in Calcutta, these poor, wretched, rustic patuas wrought artistic vengeance on the upper-caste Indian elite and the sahibs alike. They also documented from their vantage view of the street the amusing or horrifying tales of the babus, their wives, nautch girls, barbers, priests. Whatever their subject matter they recorded its follies with an incredibly sensuous flourish of form, colour and style. And always with tongue firmly in cheek.

Jain not only contextualises the art of the Kalighat patuas against the backdrop of their times but also places them within the broader social framework. More important, he explains the sources of their pictorial language. The patuas drew their imagery from a host of sources, from the courtly miniature tradition to folk theatre tableux to early photographic studio portraits to European academic art. In turn, the art of the patua influenced not only the commercial advertising of the day but also led to the making of a modern master like Jamini Roy.

The book is profusely illustrated with captivating reproductions of Kalighat paintings drawn from the Herwitz collection of over 500 paintings. Like its twin, it is a delight.

AUTHORSPEAK
CARROLL MOULTON & ERNIE HUSLEY

Cat People
To Kanha in search of tiger and more

CARROLL MOULTON & ERNIE HUSLEY When Carroll Moulton and Ernie Hulsey visited the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh for the first time in 1990 they thought it was one of the best places in the world to spot a tiger in the wild. "In the past nine years we have never altered that opinion," say the New York-based duo, several visits and over 200 tiger sightings later.

Their book, Kanha Tiger Reserve: Portrait of an Indian National Park (Vakils, Feffer and Simons), is more a well-researched guide to what they believe is one of the best-managed parks in the country, rather than a treatise on the endangered animal. "The central dimension of our interest is the park as an institution. After all Kanha and places like it are likely to hold the key to the survival of the tiger in this country," says Moulton. Adds Hulsey: "We wanted to turn the tourists to see the beauty of the park instead of heading straight for the tiger and leaving sore if they didn't see one."

So the book details everything from the climate and accommodation to the ecosystem, tiger-sighting hints and the shaky future of the animal. An unusual section centres on "Kanha's People" -- right from Rehman Khan, the park's best driver whose Gypsy is invariably the first into the park every morning, to Ahmet Sabir, one of the chief mahouts who sits astride the great tusker Shivaji. A vital strength of this national park, the authors believe, are its people. "Kanha has a very unusual set of dedicated people right from the top management down through the ranks to the forest guards who really are the prime protectors of the habitat," says Moulton.

Hulsey has compiled nearly 25,000 images of Kanha mostly in the 2,000 hours of fieldwork. The professional photographer who is also an interior and architectural designer used a Canon 350 to shoot some unusual images of the animal from as close as 10 ft. The two also accumulated miles of video footage, which they use as a notetaking device that contributes to the vivid descriptions of the park and its inhabitants.

The authors say that although there are other Indian parks with more spectacular scenery -- Corbett, Periyar, Ranthambore and Simlipal for instance -- Kanha is the best in terms of tourist infrastructure. The book has essentially been designed for an Indian audience. Says Hulsey: "If people have a love for the animal, that's what is going to save the tiger." Not money.

-Priya Ramani