The Peacock and the Cobra: James Prosek Among the Arts of South Asia
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The Peacock and the Cobra: James Prosek among the Arts of South Asia November 27, 2013–April 2014 Wood Gallery 227 Philadelphia Museum of Art IHA_James_Prosek_FINAL_materials_11-27-13 copy.docx 1 [INTRODUCTORY TEXT] The Peacock and the Cobra, a portfolio by artist and naturalist James Prosek (American, born 1975), forms the centerpiece of this exhibition. Also on view are a variety of painted pages and other objects from the Museum’s rich collection of art from India and Pakistan. While Prosek is not himself South Asian, the narratives that compose The Peacock and the Cobra invoke a range of ideas and images from the subcontinent. The artist, a keen observer of nature, is best known for his portrayals of fish and animals, real and imagined. His technique—most often finely detailed watercolor—is closely akin to the realistic portrayals of local flora and fauna created by Indian artists for British patrons during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yet Prosek also playfully inverts the documentary tradition of natural history painting. The portfolio takes the form of a colonial-era matchbox from Multanshire, a fictional amalgam of a South Asian and British region. Hybridity, a term used both in biology and in cultural studies, holds a special fascination for the artist. In the final folio of The Peacock and the Cobra, Prosek portrays the two creatures fusing into a single being. Although legendary antagonists, they are surprisingly alike: the peacock’s sinuous neck echoes the cobra’s body, and both are known for their aggressive posturing and hissing battle calls. Prosek’s visual reflection on their combined form is both thoughtful and provocative, and experiencing the work in a South Asian context probes the unexpected cultural dialogue that constitutes global art in a modern world. IHA_James_Prosek_FINAL_materials_11-27-13 copy.docx 2 Peacocks and Cobras in South Asia The Indian or blue peafowl is native to South Asia, found in domestic settings as well as in the wild. With their strident call, loudest when they mate during the monsoon season, peacocks symbolize unrequited love and longing. Their many-“eyed” tails and bright blue bodies speak, in the Hindu world, of divine power and beauty; they often appear in depictions of the blue-skinned god Krishna, the god Karttikeya (Shiva’s son), and Saraswati, goddess of wisdom. Through Middle Eastern legends and Christian symbology, they are associated with immortality. They also represent royalty, from the peacock-feather fans held by an Indian king’s attendants to the famous Mughal Peacock Throne. Cobras, including the common Indian cobra and the enormous king cobra, are found across the subcontinent. All are noted for their characteristic motion of rearing up and spreading their hoods when startled. The symbolism of cobras, and snakes in general, is even richer and more profound than that of the peacock. Revered and feared, they rule the underworld and guard wealth. They shelter the Buddha and the Jain savior-saint Parshvanatha during their meditation, and they ornament fierce gods including Shiva. Thanks to their ever-regenerating skins, cobras also symbolize renewal and rebirth, especially across the Middle East and the Christian world. During the eighteenth- and nineteenth- century colonial expansion, Europeans came to associate these animals with Asia and so both peacocks and cobras came to represent the exotic. IHA_James_Prosek_FINAL_materials_11-27-13 copy.docx 3 The Peacock and the Cobra 2008 Cardboard box, clear glue, crushed walnut shells, wooden matchstick with plastic tip, five intaglio prints (plates 3 and 4 are hand colored) printed on Magnani Pescia paper, one linoleum cut printed on Moriki Japanese paper James Prosek American Born 1975 The Peacock and the Cobra is an artist’s book that includes five prints stored in a portfolio box that resembles an oversized Indian-made matchbox. The vivid prints depict the conflict between a peacock and a cobra. While the pairing is not unknown in art (peacocks do hunt serpents and arranged fights between the animals are considered a sport), the scenes here veer toward the fantastic. Each print captures a moment in a loosely poetic narrative: a view of succulent mangos hanging from a tree, the surprising emergence of a cobra from the fruit, the tense meeting of the two creatures, the cobra’s body tightly coiled around the bird’s neck. The final, startling image reveals a mythological amalgam of bird and snake, a beast with the head and tail of a peacock and the hood and serpent body of a cobra. This imaginary intermingling of species to create a hybrid is a recurring theme in James Prosek’s work. Artist, writer, filmmaker, and naturalist, Prosek bases his representations of animals on extensive research and fieldwork. Yet in works such as this book, he moves beyond documentation to explore notions of taxonomy, nature, and the arts. Gift of the Jones Wajahat Family Collection, 2013-3-1a–m Shiva in the Form of Sharabha 1830 Opaque watercolor and gold on cloth India (Rajasthan, possibly Jaipur) This image narrates an unusual tale of Hindu sectarian rivalry. In order to subdue Narasimha, the fierce man-lion avatar of the god Vishnu, the god Shiva took the form of Lord Sharabha, an enormous, multi- limbed lion-bird. Here Sharabha wears Shiva’s characteristic cobras all over his body. In addition, Shiva’s sectarian mark appears on his forehead and Shiva himself emerges from his flaming heart. Rather than Narasimha, however, Sharabha grasps many tiny man-lions in his multiple talons. IHA_James_Prosek_FINAL_materials_11-27-13 copy.docx 4 A Sanskrit inscription in the upper part of the page elaborates: The mantra (sacred phrase) for contemplating Venerable Lord Sharabha is as follows: He has a dark complexion, he is great, he moves easily. He has the sun, moon, and fire as his eyes; and holds a discus, thunderbolt, trident, arrow, pestle, mace, skull, bow, conch, plough, serpent, and other weapons. He destroys enemies. You must worship him. I worship him, he who is the king of the birds. This is the mantra for meditating on Venerable Lord Sharabha. Gift of Herbert Gordon Zahn, 1978-124-1 A Simurgh Attacking a Gajasimha Carrying Elephants Early 19th century Opaque watercolor and gold on paper India (Rajasthan, Jodhpur) With the yellow body of a lion, four golden wings, and a bright red elephant’s head, the hybrid animal, a gajasimha (elephant-lion), flings around seven small elephants using claws, trunk, tusks, and tail. Swooping down from above is a fabulously colored phoenix-like bird, a simurgh, which upends four more elephants in its tail feathers. The ferocity of the battle is evidenced by the simurgh’s beak sunk deep into the gajasimha’s back, and the elephant’s wounds where the larger beasts grasp them. In Islam, the simurgh represents union with the divine. The motif was brought from Persia to India as early as 1600, where it may have merged with the sunbird Garuda, the vehicle of the god Vishnu. Stella Kramrisch Collection, 1994-148-400 Kamadhenu, The Wish-Granting Cow c. 1825–55 Opaque watercolor and metallic pigments on paper India (Rajasthan, Jodhpur or Nathdwara) This vision of Kamadhenu, the wish-granting cow of ancient Hindu legend, combines a white zebu cow with the crowned, frontal female face, colorful “eagle” wings, and peacock tail of Buraq, the animal that the prophet Muhammad rode to heaven on his night journey (Miraj). From at least the fifteenth century, Persian paintings showed Buraq with a horse’s body, wings, and a woman’s face; the peacock tail may have been an Indian addition. Popular portrayals of Kamadhenu in India today often show her in this Indo-Persian composite form; this may be one of the earliest images to merge the visual characteristics of the Hindu Kamadhenu with the Islamic Buraq. IHA_James_Prosek_FINAL_materials_11-27-13 copy.docx 5 Stella Kramrisch Collection, 1994-148-401 Fan c. 1820–30 Goose feathers tipped with peacock feathers, painted in gouache; pierced bone sticks and guards China Produced in the eighteenth century for European and American markets, feather fans were popular export items from China. This particular type of fan, made of goose feathers tipped with the eye of a peacock feather and mounted on pierced bone sticks, first appeared during the early nineteenth century. The goose feathers are painted with Cantonese-style flowers, pomegranates, and a butterfly, typical export decoration that characterized the work of porcelain painters and watercolorists. Like European collectors based in South Asia, those in what was known as the “Far East” were amassing parallel collections of decorative and other seemingly exotic goods. Gift of Mrs. Henry W. Breyer, Sr., 1967-17-23 Teapot c. 1890–1900 Silver with repoussé work, ivory India (Bhowanipore, Kolkata, West Bengal) Grish Chunder Dutt Indian Active late 19th to early 20th century Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), in the eastern Indian region of Bengal, long served as the British colonial capital. For most of the nineteenth century, silversmiths in Kolkata catered to British tastes, producing wares with simple lines and minimal embellishment. However, in the months leading up to the great Calcutta International Exhibition of 1883, a community of artisans pioneered a new type of luxury silverware covered with detailed depictions of rural scenes and festivals. This design shift may have been driven by a desire to fashion a more distinctly recognizable mode of silverware for the global market. Ironically, these images were largely inspired by paintings and photographs produced by British travelers to the region, displaying an idealized view of village life that IHA_James_Prosek_FINAL_materials_11-27-13 copy.docx 6 fused the pastoral with the exotic. In this teapot, an “exotic” cobra wraps around the handle above a body covered in peaceful rural scenes.