The Lives of the Hindu Gods in Popular Prints: The Ownership of Imagery
Michelle Cheripka Yousuf Saeed Dr. Mary Storm India: National Identity and the Arts Program, New Delhi Spring 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3 INTRODUCTION 4 THE GODS IN (ART) HISTORY: The Historical Context of Hinduism, Art, and Ravi Varma 7 Hinduism in the Nineteenth Century 8 Power and Patronage as the Catalyst for and Keeper of Art 10 Ravi Varma’s Legacy: Lithographic Prints as a Fulcrum of Fine Art and Hinduism 11 Ownership of the Art of the Gods 13 THE SACRED: Images of the Gods in Modern Temples 14 Modern Temples: A Survey of ISKCON Temple and Chhatarpur Mandir 15 Shri Hanuman Mandir: The Sanctification of a Roadside Shrine 18 THE SECULAR: The Museum and Collector’s Perception of Art and Religious History 20 Out of the Picture: A Look at the National Gallery of Modern Art 21 On Collecting Ravi Varma 24 THE SACRED IS SECULAR: The Mass Production of Religious Images 26 Brijbasi Art Press, Ltd.: The Modern Day Printing Press 27 The Plurality of Mass Produced Images and their Interpretations 29 The Politics of Interpretation: Hindutva Appropriations of a Universal Message 31 CONCLUSIONS 34 Fluidity of Space 35 Analogues as Analogous 36 Delhi 36 BIBLIOGRAPHY 38 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 40 APPENDICES 42 GLOSSARY 48
1
ABSTRACT
When Ravi Varma first began his printing press in 1892, he created a series of chromolithographic prints that depicted the Hindu gods and other Indian mythological figures.1
These images, some of which were based on his original oil paintings and commissioned work, made both the gods and fine art accessible to the masses, thereby challenging distinctions between sacred and secular spaces.
This study explores the legacy of his mass produced images in Delhi and its surrounding areas by looking at the different spaces they inhabit today. In particular, my research focuses on: the temple as a space for the sacred; the museum and private collection as a space for the secular; and the modern day printing press (and the spaces those images permeate) as a space for the sacred secular. How do these spaces mediate our engagement with a (religious) image, and how do these images determine how we perceive our environment? I argue that ownership of an image enables you to own the interpretation of that image and then examine the consequences of various attempts to do so.
1 Priya Maholay Jaradi, Parsi Portraits from the Studio of Raja Ravi Varma (Mumbai: Jenaz Printers, 2011), 26.
2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’ve always skipped past the acknowledgements section whenever I’ve read a book, so I won’t blame you if you do the same. But it would be unfair not to recognize that the work that went into this paper extends far beyond the words you’ll read on these pages. The paper before you has been consolidated and transformed, pared down from a multitude of conversations and experiences; it is the product of thoughts inspired by people who are smarter than I am combined with some detours that kept me sane. I want to express my sincere thanks to the following for their help along the way:
To Storm ji, for your intellectual generosity, endless patience, insightful feedback, and constant reminders to cut the faff and to stay away from the airyfairy world of my own thoughts. You have made me a decent writer, a sensitive researcher, and a cultured dessert aficionado. I wish I had the words to express my gratitude for everything you’ve done for me.
To Yousuf Saeed, who has been generous with his insight, advice, and address book. You have been an incredible mentor and this project would have been exponentially harder and far less meaningful had I not had your guidance.
To Annisah, Brenton, Gen, Joyce, Lawrence, and Sarah, for listening to me work through my ideas, for putting up with my camera dangling in front of your face all semester, and for making me laugh. I’m grateful that we had the chance to do this wonderful and crazy thing – to experience this wonderful and crazy place – together.
To Mama, Papa, Kayleigh, and Michael, who, despite being continents and oceans away from me, have supported me through every step of this journey. You’ve made all of this possible.
To Shantideva, for inspiring patience, both within myself and with others.
To the SIT staff – Arjun ji, Fatimah ji, Guy ji, Kuldeep ji, Prahlad ji, and Savita ji. You’ve fed me, clothed me, and taught me so many different things that have allowed me to open myself up to India. Thank you for laughing only a little bit when I thought the Hindi word for ‘city’ was nadi instead of nagar.
To Columbia University, for having the good sense to include this program on the list of approved study abroad courses, but also for teaching me to think critically about everything I learn.
To SIT, for creating and supporting a program that has been so inspiring and lifechanging.
To Delhi and to India, for allowing me to make a home here and for teaching me about the world and about myself. I will miss you more than you know.
3 INTRODUCTION
Walking throughout Delhi, it is impossible to escape the gaze of the gods. A tile of Shiva watches passersbys on the street; Hanuman stares at you from the front of autorickshaws; a picture of Laxmi oversees a shop’s every transaction from her perch near the cash register. These gods are not simply a part of the visual imagery in Delhi; they are active participants in everyday life here. Their presence mediates the way in which a person interacts with their environment; conversely, space also mediates how you engage with the image before you. So what does it mean that these images are both a part of private art collections and also taped to a rickshaw?
The disparity between these spaces – and the presence of these images within them – can be traced back to Raja Ravi Varma, a nineteenth century artist who began a printing press in
Mumbai in 1892. Since then, the visual vocabulary of calendar art, bazaar images, and temple icons has changed; though some retain the formal elements used by Varma, such as photorealistic, threedimensional renderings of the gods, they are not all depicted in this way.
Yet they have all inherited an important quality: they create fluidity between spaces. Meaning is created in the production of an image, but it is also created when an image is taken out of circulation and a person owns it, subsequently placing it into a specific environment and a specific context. As they pass from one person’s hands to another’s, that person engages with it in a new way, finds a new use for it. She puts it somewhere and thereby determines its meaning; its message expands.
On a site visit at a local temple, a man asked me about my research and I explained to him my interest in religious images in different spaces and contexts. He proceeded to tell me that
I could observe and observe and observe, but I will never come to any conclusions: every person
4 has a different way of interacting with images and religion. On some days, surrounded by my piles of books and pages of notes, or looking at an advertisement featuring a picture of Laxmi’s face, I tend to agree with him. On those days, I repeat to myself: one month is not enough time for research. But the seeming impossibility of being able to synthesize this information, and the infinite ways that the images have been used, is part of the reason why this research is important.
How can images be universal and yet still so highly personalized? Who has access to art and religion? How does ownership of a physical object give us the power to perceive and create meaning out of the world around us?
I began my research by going back to the types of spaces that Ravi Varma’s artwork first disrupted: I conducted observational fieldwork in temples and museums, and compared this to my observations of everyday life in Delhi. In order to contextualize my findings, I spoke with several people whose backgrounds and/or professions speak to their interpretation of these different sacred and secular artistic spheres: among them were art collectors, restorers, devotees, scholars, calendar distributors, and shopkeepers. In the discussion that follows, I chose to focus on several specific physical spaces as an entrypoint to talk about how we view art and religion.
In order to convey my ideas about these places more clearly, I created a spectrum that visualizes these spaces in terms of the extent to which they are sacred or secular (fig. 1).
“Sacred” spaces refer to places that are infused with religious significance and therefore dictated by Hindu practices, such as the temple. “Secular” is not atheist by definition – atheism being the absence of a Hindu theology – but rather encompasses spaces that do not explicitly incorporate religion in their aims and practices. The space in between these two extremes will then be referred to as the “sacred secular” that combines elements of both types of spaces. For example,
5 the streets of Old Delhi might be thought of as a secular space, but the prevalence of god posters and other religious imagery embeds a deity that sanctifies the space. Though it is a simplified representation of a complex idea, I use this diagram to illustrate how these images transcend space, pushing us to reconsider the various ways we define it.
Separating space into these categories (sacred, secular, and sacred secular) is admittedly a reductionist characterization of these locations, as is limiting each of these to a few specific examples. I do so acknowledging our own ability to move in and between these spaces. Each person comes to a space with a different context and a different mindset, which necessarily informs our understanding: as a selfidentified agnostic and nonIndian, I certainly have a different approach to viewing a temple than a Hindu devotee. My purpose is to focus on what the space is trying to tell us about the image we see there; to examine how and why these images permeate these vastly different physical places. In particular, I want to explore how ownership of an image pushes us to interpret what we see, both inside and outside of the frame.
These images are everywhere, creating a continuity between the temple, roadside shrine, rickshaw, shop, advertisement, calendar image, and museum. And yet the interpretations of them become divisive; though the gods are the same, their meanings are different. Images that have been made to be accessible have become exclusive.
6 THE GODS IN (ART) HISTORY THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF HINDUISM, ART, AND RAVI VARMA
“The images are the same, but they have different lives.” Shukla Sawant2
“Just as the image viewed needs to be understood in terms of its movement, the sites of its journey, from where it is viewed, also need to be differentiated.” Christiane Brosius and Melissa Butcher, Image Journeys3
4
2 Shukla Sawant (Associate Professor at the School of Art and Aesthetics, Jawarhalal Nehru University), interviewed by Michelle Cheripka at JNU, 26 March 2015. 3 Christiane Brosius and Melissa Butcher, Image Journeys: AudioVisual Media & Cultural Change in India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999), 25. 4 Ravi Varma, Lakshmi. 1894. Chromolithograph, 35.8 x 25.0 cm. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. From: The Art Gallery of New South Wales, http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/103.2011/.
7 PREFACE
In order to understand precisely why Ravi Varma’s prints are significant, it is first necessary to understand the historical context in which they were originally situated. Prior to the dissemination of (chromo)lithographic prints and oleographs, Hinduism was mediated exclusively through the Brahmanical caste and art was controlled by royal or British patronage.
Ravi Varma, whose career began through private commissions for the Travancore court, later opened his own printing press and mass produced oleographs, many of which depicted Hindu gods and goddesses. Thus, he challenged the ideas of ownership and spatial authority by making artwork of the gods more accessible.
HINDUISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
It is difficult to define Hinduism as a religion, seeing as “there is no single devotional perspective.”5 Etymologically, ‘Hinduism’ can be understood as the “ism” of the people who live on the Southern side of the Indus River. It was a term first used by Muslim foreign invaders in order to group together the disparate religious sects they encountered in India. There were some similarities in ritual and traditional practices across these cults, and temples dedicated to certain gods, such as Krishna or Saraswati, could be seen across the country; however, there was no single pantheon in way it is understood today.
The modern pantheon includes millions of panIndian and regionally specific deities was shaped in part by the British. When the British established political power, they instituted a
JudeoChristian framework by which to understand Hinduism; consequently, the various sects were further unified into a single religion. This syndicated Hinduism:
5 Kim Knott, Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 6.
8 “seeks historicity for the incarnations of its deities, encourages the idea of a centrally sacred book, claims monotheism as significant to the worship of deity, acknowledges the authority of the ecclesiastical organization of certain sects as prevailing over all and has supported largescale missionary work and conversion.”6
It is precisely these qualities that made nineteenth century Hinduism exclusive. It emphasizes singularity: a centrally sacred book (the Vedas), monotheism (Brahma as the father of all gods), and one ecclesiastical organization (the Brahmins). The last qualification is a significant one, as it concentrates all religious authority and power in the hands of a single entity: the Brahmins.
The Brahmins understood, gathered, controlled, and disseminated religious information.
The Vedas, for example, were written in Sanskrit and thus inaccessible to the illiterate masses.
The Brahmins were educated to read and understand these “literary expressions of an elite” and so they were responsible for passing down the knowledge contained within these sacred texts.7
Fundamentally, the Brahmins’ role, then, was to “keep divine revelation alive; they also carry out rites to sustain the world and to maintain the relationship between humanity and the gods.
They are associated with dharma, which is sometimes translated as religion, but more properly as truth, law, duty, or obligation.”8 In other words, the Brahmins were the only caste who had direct access to a divine presence and were responsible for mediating a devotee’s relationship with a deity. By doing so, they could maintain harmony of the world itself.
Hinduism was grounded in the space where Brahmins can exercise control: the temple. A temple is the embodiment of a divine presence and is, at its core, a place touched by sacredness.
It is the place where the gods are most present, as is represented by the idol located there. It was
6 Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’ (Cornwall: Routledge, 1999), 104105. 7 Ibid, 66. 8 Knott, Hinduism, 21.
9 also the only place that you could experience darśan in the nineteenth century. This type of darśan, however, was limited to a specific group of people: the castes able to enter the home of the divine, and those who could afford a pilgrimage to visit the site in question. Not only did this serve to heighten the Brahmins’ authority, but it also restricted who was able to acquire divine intervention and made it difficult for regional deities to be worshipped by many.
POWER AND PATRONAGE AS THE CATALYST FOR AND KEEPER OF ART
Indian art history has long been closely tied to those who have political power. Asoka’s conversion to Buddhism in the third century BCE, for example, led to a rise in architecture featuring Buddhist symbols; Mughal rule introduced Persian influences into the visual arts. Over the course of the 1800s, the British imperial framework influenced Indian artwork in the form of patronage and aesthetics. At this time, artwork was elitist, limited to commissions from royal or wealthy patrons. A person of status, like a king or a Parsi, would employ an Indian artist to paint an image, typically a portrait. Once completed, this painting would then be kept in a private collection or given away as a souvenir of India. By providing the funding for a particular type of artwork, patrons served as the judge for Indian culture and other art mediums and subject matter were implicitly relegated to the position of ‘craft’ or ‘folk’ art.
I want to expand the definition of patronage here to include education and preservation, which are two ways of supporting artwork while maintaining authority over these forms of expression. The British introduced collectives like the Fine Arts Society and the Bombay Art
Society, which taught Indian artists how to incorporate Western techniques into their work.
Many of these artists went on to create art exclusively for these elite groups. By stepping into a pedagogical role, as well as a financial one, Victorian aesthetics and European imagery pervaded
10 artwork and perpetuated a specific kind of imagery. This effectively divorced Indian artists from their original cultural contexts, asking them to abandon traditional Indian styles, their cultural heritage, in favor of this new way of seeing.
Importantly, the British also introduced museums to India. Although art forms had been preserved by various individuals or institutions over time, the museum was the first formal institutions that assumed the role of preserving art while simultaneously making a value judgment about that artwork. I will discuss in more detail the ways in which museums construct narratives surrounding their exhibitions, but for now it is enough to mention how these attitudes towards artwork and the formal relationships that defined the art world shaped perceptions of art.
In The Predicament of Culture, James Clifford asserts: “The good collector (as opposed to the obsessive, the miser) is tasteful and reflective. Accumulation unfolds in a pedagogical, edifying manner.”9 If we take the museum as a collection of art and its curators (both the people who made the museums and the British ideology that shaped them) as collectors, then the introduction of museums did not merely attempt to demonstrate not only the best of Indian art: it validated the colonial project as a whole in terms of artwork.
RAVI VARMA’S LEGACY: LITHOGRAPHIC PRINTS AS A FULCRUM OF FINE ART AND HINDUISM
Ravi Varma was a selftaught artist from Kerala who was active in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although not formally educated in an artistic school, he was born into royalty and was accepted as a member of the upper classes. His patrons included a multitude of royal courts including that of Baroda, Hyderabad, and Travancore. His mastery of oil painting and
European Victorian aesthetics reinterpreted the way in which people perceived Indian subject
9 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 220.
11 matter; it is for this reason that Ravi Varma is considered by many, especially scholars and museum curators, to be the father of Indian modern art. The formal elements of his work are certainly important: his attention to landscape ; the photorealism and dimensionality gave the gods the appearance of being human. Some of these formal aesthetics are still prominent today in various depictions of the Hindu gods. I would argue, however, that his historical importance is not because of his oil paintings and the style in which they are created, but rather the mass production of his art, and particularly his artwork depicting Hindu gods and religious figures.10
As early as 1890, he began creating and distributing mass produced images that depicted subject matter ranging from Saraswati (fig. 2) to a forlorn woman (fig. 3).11 Many of the chromolithographs and oleographs produced by the Ravi Varma Art Press are nearly identical to the oil paintings he created of the same subject matter. Compare, for example, his oil painting of
Laxmi (fig. 4) with its oleograph counterpart (fig. 5). The images are strikingly similar, in dress, posture, and iconography.12 The reduplicated works allow the image created to be seen more than once and in different contexts: the oil painting can remain within the context of private commissioned works, but the same image, the same subject matter, can be seen by many more, even if it doesn’t move out of the private collection. Moreover, the prints were able to make affordable and accessible realistic renderings of the gods. The temples no longer were the
10 It is important to note here that Ravi Varma was not the only artist who was instrumental in providing widespread access to the gods. In fact, his printing press was ultimately a commercial failure, while other presses like the Calcutta Art Studio thrived. I focus on Ravi Varma’s contribution, however, because of his ability to straddle these two spheres of ‘fine art’ and mass media. For a more complete account of the historical trajectory of these prints, refer to Christopher Pinney’s Photos of the Gods. 11 Christopher Pinney, Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 62. 12 Shukla Sawant, interviewed by Michelle Cheripka at JNU, 26 March 2015. Scholars like Christopher Pinney accuse this transition to lithography of degrading the quality of the image, of ‘flattening’ it. While these prints do not have as much detail as their painted counterparts, this is a byproduct of the technological processes involved in lithographic printing.
12 singular house of the deities: it was possible for a person to hold them in her hands. Ravi
Varma’s legacy is that he took fine art out of the hands of a selective few while taking the gods out of the temple. His ability to straddle two artistic spheres – ‘high’ art and mass media – challenges our categorization of mediums and images, and therefore how we value them.
OWNERSHIP OF THE ART OF THE GODS
The dissemination of lithographic prints in the early twentieth century marks several important shifts in religious and art history in India, centering around the idea that any person could now own art of the gods. It changed the course of bhakti and reimagined how to define art. By providing equal access to these images, which presupposes an inherent affinity between different kinds of people, Ravi Varma challenged caste hierarchy and artistic elitism. Because these images were circulated and transported, they broke down the exclusivity of both the temple and collections, merging the identities of both: secular became irrevocably mixed with sacred.
This new secularsacred kind of space quickly expanded, the pervasiveness and aesthetics of the image allowing them to quickly be appropriated for various purposes: a poor Hindu in
Madhya Pradesh could now afford a relationship with the gods in his own home while the British could plaster Vishnu to the front of a wrapper in order to sell cigarettes (fig. 6). The potential for anyone to own these images conflated different spaces, the consequences of which are still prevalent today. Ownership is powerful. It enables you to construct a narrative about what is inside the frame in order to understand and interpret what is outside of it. By possessing something, whether it is an image or an artifact, you possess the ability to construct an identity for the image impose it on that image; you can construct an identity for yourself through this process and in relation to that image.
13 THE SACRED IMAGES OF THE GODS IN MODERN TEMPLES
“The rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the single image of a cathedral.” Antoine de SaintExupéry, The Little Prince
“These lesser reproductions may be the small mementos of our great journeys, but we also expect them to bring into our lives something of the grace that pertains to the larger images and figures they reproduce, something of the aid and succor they reputedly grant to others.” David Freedberg, The Power of Images13
13 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 121.
14 PREFACE
Through a survey of several temples, including the Chhatarpur Mandir Complex and
ISKCON temple, it is possible to gauge the ways in which sacred spaces ask people to engage with images. I consider these temples because they lie close to the extreme of the sacredsecular scale and thus illustrate some of the main characteristics of sacred spaces. Comparing these temples to Shree Hanuman Mandir, a roadside shrine that became a temple, Ravi Varma’s legacy becomes clearer: Hinduism has accommodated a popular piety and has become more immediately accessible on a daily basis, creating sacred spaces within secular ones.
MODERN TEMPLES: A SURVEY OF ISKCON TEMPLE & CHHATARPUR MANDIR
Though the Hindu pantheon has arguably become more unified over the course of the past century, Hinduism remains, more or less, a compilation of different sects. This is in part due to the specific traditions of each one, but also because there is no strict “communal” aspect to
Hinduism; it is not necessary to congregate or worship with others in order to maintain a relationship with the gods. I take into consideration two unique temples that both feature common characteristics of sacred spaces. Chhatarpur Mandir is a complex that houses about twenty temples, located just south of Delhi. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness
(ISKCON) is a strand of Hinduism that worships Krishna as the supreme deity. Regardless of the differences between the temples and the devotees who visit them, the temple continues to serve as a space where Hindu devotees can come in communion with a particular deity.
Temples are often located at a site of religious significance, and the structure built there marks a particular space that has been sanctioned or inhabited by the deity in question. This happens in two ways. First, the temple is physically separated from its surroundings. In order to
15 visit both ISKCON temple and the Chhatarpur Mandir complex, you have to walk through a gate, get your bags checked by security, and cross some distance before you reach the temple entrance; ISKCON temple, for example, is located at the top of a steep hill (fig. 7). This spatial separation distinguishes an explicitly sacred space from a secular one (the street), but it also requires a certain level of premeditation in order to visit the place. You must seek out the temple in order to enter it. It is an experience you choose and try to capture. The temple structure itself acts in the same way. The structure with its four walls encloses the space that is most sacred, where the idol resides. Along with this differentiation comes a tacit agreement to follow the rules the temple establishes once you step inside its gates.
Temples force you to acknowledge a separation of space and the rituals solidify the way that you think about the images there. These rituals establish a precedent for how to interact with the space. As I sat on the ground at ISKCON temple, I watched as devotee after devotee repeated some variation of the same set of gestures: they performed pradakshina; bowed their head before the deity; closed their eyes as they murmured something that could only be heard by the idol; touched the ground or the stretch of marble before the idol before reaching up to touch their own head. Simultaneously, I listened as others sang along to the Hare Krishna mantra as incense floated through the air. The entire temple experience is a corpothetic one, commanding full physical, mental, and emotional attention of each person who visits it.
By its very definition, corpothetics does not allow for ownership, but instead assumes an equality between an image and the person viewing it. The temple even goes as far as to prohibit taking ownership of its images. Chhatarpur Mandir posts signs within the temple prohibiting its visitors from taking photography, thereby preventing someone from a) taking ownership of the
16 image through a photograph and b) the possibility of distancing themselves through the very act of photography. In other words, the prohibition on photography mandates that the person who visits the sacred space of the temple, meaning the inside of it, must engage with their environment – the Brahmins and the idols – in the present moment.
The temporality of one’s experience precludes the possibility of ownership. Of course,
Brahmins are still present in order to mediate a devotee’s interactions with the deity, but they do not explicitly express their authority over Hinduism. The temple asks you acknowledge the dichotomy between sacred and profane.
SHRI HANUMAN MANDIR: THE SANCTIFICATION OF A ROADSIDE SHRINE
There are many roadside shrines in Delhi – small framed photographs of gods with ornaments hung upon them. Some of these shrines stand next to the mirror of a street barber or behind a chaiwala’s cart. Often, though, these small images stand alone, becoming a fixture in those places. By placing a religious image into a secular space, on the street, the two by four inches it takes up, and slowly the space around it, becomes sacred, as well. Part of the power of the Hindu images is their ability to create one space within another.
Walking along Mata Mandir Road in New Friends Colony, Delhi, it is possible to see a number of temples – small structures that are squeezed in between shops and apartment buildings, just feet away from a Baskin Robbins and a Cafe Coffee Day. One of these temples is
Shri Hanuman Mandir, a modest temple made up of white tiles that surrounds a tree (fig. 8).14
Before the temple was constructed in 1980, it was a roadside shrine which amassed more and more pictures as the years went on.15
14 These tiles are identical to the ones embedded in walls throughout other parts of the city, which will be discussed in “The SacredSecular: The Mass Production of Religious Imagery.” 15 Yousuf Saeed, conversation with Michelle Cheripka, 21 April 2015.
17 One man stops his motorcycle and performs pradakshina for several minutes, while another passerby quickly steps inside the temple and touches the deity before continuing along his way. Whereas it is necessary to seek out ISKCON Temple or Chhatarpur Temple, this temple is embedded within the street, one you can encounter and visit without premeditation. The location is one of convenience, embedded in the landscape of the everyday, and thus it makes
Hanuman present. He is not separated by a gate or by distance, but becomes an immediate presence in daily activities. It creates a fluidity between secular spaces (the street) and religious ones (the temple).
In The Power of Images, David Freedberg asserts:
“images can become the objects of devotion, or work miracles, without the kind of sanctification embodied in consecration rites… Consecration appears to play little role in their animation. But in an extended sense they are all consecrated – by removing them to shrines (often specially constructed), by washing them, anointing them, crowning them, or garlanding them.”16
Freedberg suggests that interaction with images makes the meaning of them, thereby indirectly sanctifying them. In other words, the image is what you believe it to be. I would extend this argument to include space. If you believe a space to be sacred, it acquires a sacredness itself.
This is precisely what happened with Shri Hanuman Mandir. What started with several individual images grew to include more; the space became sanctified through communal ownership and participation in its rituals and practices.
Richard King argues that “attempts to preserve the autonomy of religion can also lead to the marginalization of religion since it becomes separated from these other realms [like that of politics].”17 I will discuss the realm of politics in “The Sacred is Secular,” but Shri Hanuman
16 Freedberg, The Power of Images, 96. 17 King, Orientalism and Religion, 11.
18 Mandir, temples located in shops (fig. 9), and other worship spaces constructed across Delhi, are proof that Hinduism has expanded because of its ability to adapt to different spatial spheres; it has adapted to the visual imagery that has become so important since the prints first flooded the market in the early 1900s. It pulls the temple closer to the middle of the spectrum. You no longer need to seek out spaces for worship because they are readily available to you.
19 THE SECULAR THE MUSEUM AND COLLECTOR’S PERCEPTION OF ART AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY
“The foremost responsibility of the National Gallery of Modern Art is to ensure quality and to set and maintain standards of excellence. The aesthetic and educational purposes are not only defined in the aims and objectives of the National Gallery of Modern Art, but efforts are also being made so that they become implicit in its organization and pervade all its activities. Above all, the National Gallery of Modern Art helps people to look at the works of modern art with greater joy, understanding and knowledge by extending their relationship with our daily life and experiencing them as vital expressions of the human spirit.” National Gallery of Modern Art18
“And so the disciple learns how to die and how to come to life again.” Sanimuinak
19
18 "About NGMA." National Gallery of Modern Art. National Gallery of Modern Art, 12 May 2014.
20 PREFACE
In the nineteenth century, artwork was contained within the private sector and supported by a patronage system: a commissioned work of art, once completed, would be viewed by the elite only. In other words, the people who drove the market for artwork comprised the audience for those paintings. Though private collections are still present, and something I will discuss in this section, I will focus primarily on Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern art – the museum space. Through an analysis of its treatment of Ravi Varma’s original oil paintings and its artwork depicting the Hindu gods, it is possible to see how the museum attempts to create a secular space through wall captions, displays, and visitor restrictions, thus making images exclusive.
OUT OF THE PICTURE: A LOOK AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART
Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) was founded in 1954 with the intent to collect significant modern and contemporary Indian art. As per its mission statement (see page
21), the NGMA sees itself as the determinant that establishes and maintains the standards for great art. In other words, it decides what is ‘great’ in order to inspire future generations of artists.
Interpretation of each piece is, of course individualized. When looking at a set of paintings, I consider the color and realism of the scene depicted, just as my friend begins to talk about the picturesque and the sublime. While I stand before Ravi Varma’s Untitled (fig. 10) for at least twenty minutes, there are others who breeze by it, uninterested and unaffected.20 You bring your own context to an image or a museum, which informs your interpretation:
“Just as the image or object appears in its own physical setting, viewers also bring their own frames of assumptions,
20 According to the wall text, this artwork is named “Untitled,” and so I will refer to it as such in this paper. However, this art piece is actually titled “Krishna as Envoy.” The reason for this drastic name change is unclear, but it serves to secularize the painting, deemphasizing Krishna as the subject of the piece. Coincidentally, this is the only one of Ravi Varma’s paintings that includes a Hindu god or mythological figure.
21 understandings, needs, expectations, and hopes to what they see. The viewer’s frame is not just a set of interpretive strategies, but something more global and more diffuse: an outlook on the cosmos, on divinity, on human life and its possibilities, and on the role of images in a world so constituted.”21
And yet, the NGMA attempts to frame the way in which you see each image, tries to filter your own interpretations through its own. If this interpretation is meant to be the authority on what can be defined as ‘good art,’ then what does this interpretation push us to see?
Among the collections on display are six of Ravi Varma’s original oil paintings, including Girl Holding Hookah and Broom (fig. 11) and Woman Holding Fruit (fig. 12). Each of these commissioned works features a secular subject: a person or an image that you may have encountered in nineteenth century India. The museum exhibits only exotic scenes of Orientalist interest. Equally important to the works displayed in a museum are those that are omitted, and the NGMA excludes two important aspects of Ravi Varma’s work: his lithography and his religious imagery. Though several oleograph prints made by other artists are on display, Varma’s collection is limited to his oil paintings. The prioritization of this medium over his lithographic prints, the prioritization of secular subject matter over religious ones, implicitly creates a hierarchy among the types of work he produced.
A museum necessarily decontextualizes a work of art by placing it alongside other paintings and sculptures, by removing it from its original location. Wall captions serve to recontextualize and provide a history for an artwork or time period; but the narrative the NGMA chooses to construct surrounding Ravi Varma is one of an “academic artist.” It describes his sociopolitical background and asserts his importance within Indian art history by discussing the
21 Richard Davis, Lives of Indian Images (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1999), 9.
22 nationalist implications of his work (fig. 13). There is mention of his oleographs, but the emphasis is on his commissioned works. We are meant to understand Ravi Varma as a secular artist.22 The museum wants to create distance between Ravi Varma and his popular imagery.
Christopher Pinney suggests that institutions like the museum have an anxiety about how to define themselves. The museum must validate its existence but it does so through exclusionary measures. Institutionally, the NGMA tries to emulate the Western tradition of separating religion in order to maintain impartiality. But this goes beyond a mere assertion of a ‘secular’ space; the museum tries to be atheistic. If a museum is able to shape (art) history, the one it tries to establish is absent of a religious sentiment. The collection of Kalighat, Bengal, and Tanjore paintings all feature deities, but they are grouped under the rubric of “Traditional Arts.” Religious understanding and context are abandoned. The museum expects you to leave behind corpothetic interpretations and expectations of darśan. This treatment – the secularization of the religious – attempts to make a work of art relatable to all, regardless of their religious background, their context. Instead, it propagates and asks you to accept a universal narrative of the nation and its history. If the
NGMA sees itself as helping to create an affinity between people and artwork, it is clear that there is no place for the gods in “our daily life” or in our “vital expressions of the human spirit.”
Moreover, the images of our daily life (i.e. popular images) are not included in the display, and the museum also makes several attempts to exclude its collections from our daily life. As I stood before Ravi Varma’s artwork, camera phone poised to capture the paintings so I could look back on them throughout my research, a security guard warned me that photography
22 In an interview with Rupika Chawla, an art historian who has restored many of Varma’s original oil paintings, she warned me against thinking of him as a Hindu artist, continually referencing the other types of paintings he had created.
23 was strictly prohibited. The prohibition elucidates a feature of the museum: it perpetuates its power by maintaining authenticity. The museum houses the original work and disallows any derivatives. The act of taking a photograph would allow for the possibility to disseminate artwork, but it could also potentially deter you from visiting the museum. The NGMA imposes a temporal and aesthetic relationship between the viewer and artwork, preventing a potential transfer of ownership (of the image and therefore its authenticity and narrative). The assumption is that open access would invalidate the museum’s purpose and existence.
ON COLLECTING RAVI VARMA
Any person can collect art – most people do, whether formally (as part of a private collection) or informally (for personal or aesthetic reasons; this includes a child’s artwork taped to a fridge or posters hung in a cafe). Throughout my research, I have met a number of people who own Ravi Varma prints, from computer engineers to art collectors. Viewing a collections is similar to a museum experience in that you are presented with a compilation of different prints, images, or objects which have been brought together in a unique way. However, a collection lies closer to the middle of the sacredsecular spectrum in comparison to museums: a collection is highly individualized, compiled based on a variety of highly subjective factors, including a collector’s aesthetic taste or historical interests.
The different reasons for acquiring these prints highlight the relationship between ownership and interpretation of images. Once the images are in a single person’s hands, she chooses who else has access to it. Some collectors choose to keep these prints in their own collections and so they are not seen by many. Others, feel an obligation to exhibit the work they’ve accumulated. For example, Priya Paul’s collection, which includes twentieth century
24 prints, advertisements, labels, etc., comprises the majority of Tasveer Ghar’s online archive.23
Tasveer Ghar is a digital database of South Asian popular images and includes a number of essays that explores their significance. The transition from a personal collection to an open access platform gives the images new life and enables wider dissemination and interpretation. In fact, the Priya Paul collection inspired several visual essays that discuss how popular, massproduced images contribute to India’s visual culture.
The very act of collecting signifies that these images have value, and they acquire even more simply by being collected. Notably, this value is not economic, seeing as the market value for these prints is not high. The market value for these prints is not high, as far as collecting and dealing them goes. Whereas original paintings of Ravi Varma’s can sell for millions of dollars, his prints can be acquired for a few thousand rupees, and that estimate assumes the condition is pristine. But they retain a sense of historical importance. Previously mass produced imagery has been elevated to the status of high art – something worth collecting. The very fact that they are collected is important. It says that this image, this small part of history, is worth preserving.
This pushes us to consider the visual imagery that surrounds us today. There comes a certain assumption with mass produced imagery that it is disposable: it is on a matchbox, calendar, or poster and it is easily replaceable – if not by that exact image, then by one similar to it. Are they works of art, or are they merely items of utility? Why is it important to preserve and to study them? Forces us to question how we define art and what we deem to be worth collecting. These types of collections redefine the very way that we think about art history.
23 Yousuf Saeed. "The Priya Paul Collection of Popular Art at Tasveer Ghar." Tasveer Ghar: A Digital Archive of South Asian Popular Visual Culture. Tasveer Ghar, n.d. Web. 01 May 2015.
25 THE SACRED IS SECULAR THE MASS PRODUCTION OF RELIGIOUS IMAGES
“People don’t imagine anything – we imagine for them… It is not what people want to see. It is what we want to show them. We are making the image – how it should look like, how it should change.” M.L. Garg24
“The idea of a ‘mass’ allows for the simultaneous existence of its opposite, the elite… class, social religious, ethnic, national cultures all impact on viewers who ‘arrive at the text equipped with their own knowledge and accounts of experience and cannot only use them to produce new interpretations but to resist the text’s positioning’.” Christiane Brosius and Melissa Butcher, Image Journeys25
24 M.L. Garg (Managing Director, Brijbasi Art Press Limited), interviewed by Michelle Cheripka at Brijbasi Art Press, 13 April 2015. 25 Christiane Brosius and Melissa Butcher, Image Journeys, 16.
26 PREFACE
The previous sections of this paper focus on the two extremes of the sacredsecular spectrum, and demonstrate how they have moved closer to a middle ground, a realm that is both sacred and secular. In this section, I look at the middle ground itself. I use the term ‘secular sacred’ in a broad sense, which includes any space that allows for the presence of mass produced images of the Hindu gods. Though this encompasses a wide range of environments (and images), all of which I cannot discuss in this paper, I use this to emphasize the multitude of meanings that the gods have acquired, and to demonstrate more clearly how these images make spaces fluid.
Here, more so than the secular or sacred space, there seems to be a divide between the production and consumption of mass produced images. The distinction is important because it highlights the different meanings these objects acquire when ownership of them changes.
BRIJBASI ART PRESS, LTD.: THE MODERN DAY PRINTING PRESS
Established in 1993, Brijbasi Art Press, Ltd. has become one of the leading printing presses in India, producing everything from posters to calendars, stationery to books. The company holds most of the Northern Indian market for calendar prints. In many ways, Brijbasi can be understood as the modern day equivalent of the Ravi Varma Art Press: it mass produces images of the gods and makes them affordable to all. In fact, images of the Hindu gods are the most popular items sold. During my conversation with M.L. Garg, Managing Director of
Brijbasi, he pulled out catalogue after catalogue, pointing out the different calendar images and styles that the company has produced over the years.
Brijbasi does, indeed, manufacture a wide range of styles: some versions of Radha and
Krishna, though photoshopped, are clearly in the Ravi Varma lineage (photorealistic, elaborate
27 backdrops, etc.) while others are geometric and more abstract (closer to M.F. Husain’s renderings). Many of the images look familiar, ones I had seen on calendars from years past, even though Mr. Garg insists that they are all new and different, but admits that there is little flexibility in the imagery Brijbasi uses, especially the ones produced on a mass scale. There is a positive feedback loop in this industry: customers are accustomed to seeing a particular type of image of the gods and use this for worship (e.g. Ravi Varma’s photorealistic impressions or B.G.
Sharma’s color palette); because this is what they’re accustomed to, it is what they will continue to buy; because they buy these images, Brijbasi will continue to produce them in large quantities
(thereby making them more affordable than the abstract versions). The only flexibility seems to be in the ornamentation of the deity, but its bodied essence must remain the same. That same type of image and its visual vocabulary is seen repeatedly in different places: homes, supermarkets, clothing stores. It syndicates the visual imagery of different gods and subsequently the Hindu pantheon. However, it raises the question: to what extent is Brijbasi responding to the market and to what extent is it shaping it?26 Mass production is necessarily an imposed mass interpretation, but whose interpretations (and expectations) do we see? Because Brijbasi owns the means of production, it establishes what images it wants to produce and therefore dictates what we are able to see on a wide scale.
The museum places significance on an artist or time period and therefore claims of originality and authenticity: “this is the original painting,” it seems to say. Brijbasi, on the other hand, is necessarily derivative: its intention is to create many of one image. Its effectiveness is dependent upon it. In other words, its affordability is correlated with its ability to create millions
26 Special thanks to Lindsay Shapray’s ISP, “Postcards from Varanasi” for raising these types of questions.
28 of copies of one image. At the start of our conversation, Mr. Garg posed the question: “Why is this calendar art? Why is this not art? By using the word calendar art, we are degrading the art.” 27 The qualification is one I have heard throughout many of my conversations and begs the question of how we define art. Mr. Garg himself offers conflicting interpretations of whether or not this is art. He sees these prints as artwork, but claims that there are no artists since everything has become computerized. He says that any image can be used for worship, but deems artwork like Husain’s ‘ultra modern,’ which wouldn’t be popular with devotees (and is therefore why they sell modern art of the gods in smaller quantities). His conflicting opinions is indicative of a wider question that we must address when talking about ‘calendar’ art: what qualifies as art and how does this dictate where the line is drawn between visual culture and art history?
Visiting both the printing press in Noida and its local branch in Old Delhi, a significant aspect of these prints becomes even clearer: the transfer of ownership leads to the transfer of meaning, specifically in how an item is used (and therefore interpreted). In both Brijbasi offices, images of the gods are stacked on the floor in piles (fig. 14); the god is a piece of paper, one of many, a commodity to be sold. Once you hand over sixteen rupees and the customer takes possession of the image, though, it becomes individualized and therefore sanctified. It is not put on the ground because it is a god and that would be disrespectful. The economic exchange translates to an exchange in the meaning and value of the image, too.
THE PLURALITY OF MASS PRODUCED IMAGES AND THEIR INTERPRETATIONS
When I asked Mr. Garg about the value of these images, he describes the shortness of human memory. The reason calendar prints are popular because they provide the cheapest form
27 M.L. Garg, interviewed by Michelle Cheripka, 13 April 2015.
29 of continual marketing while giving people the opportunity to see the gods; they serve multiple purposes. He claims that people buy calendars not just for the gods, but for their functionality.
Christopher Pinney told me that people do not want to worship these images, but rather want intervention in their everyday lives.28 This intervention comes in many forms and shift along the sacredsecular spectrum depending on their use and owner:
a) Prints in private puja rooms: These prints are closer to the ‘sacred’ section of the scale, as they are objects of worship. This function is closely related to the use of the prints when they were first distributed by Ravi Varma. When the image is moved into a person’s shop, the image is still a symbol for auspiciousness (many shopkeepers begin their day with a puja to Ganesha), but also verifies the authority and values of the shopkeeper. c) Calendars: A calendar can act as a decoration, advertisement, and tool, as can be seen in the above discussion of Brijbasi Art Press. b) Tiles seen alongside sidewalks: These images are placed on the street in order to prevent public urination. c) Advertisements: Around Delhi, Shiva, Laxmi, and Krishna’s faces are featured prominently in store fronts and on packaging for puja items.
There are two types of ownership at play here: individual and communal. Prints are placed in small shrines within a home alongside photographs of family members or ritual objects; they become a vehicle for darśan, but also incorporate the deity into a familial setting. The marketing aspect of the printed images is complex: deities and their iconography are appropriated for business purposes, either in an attempt to attribute meaning to the company or to incentivize a person to buy a puja item. Elsewhere, I argue that these images take on characteristics of the space they are in, but the prints also impose ones on the space itself. The tiles on the sidewalk are public art; they do not belong to any one individual. In fact, they seem
28 Christopher Pinney (Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London), interviewed by Michelle Cheripka in Delhi, India, 26 March 2015.
30 to take ownership of the space itself. The tiles dictate our actions as we pass through that stretch of sidewalk. It is disrespectful to urinate on the gods and so the street remains clean. In this sense, the images function as a moral mediator for the purpose of social welfare.
The insertion of religious imagery effectively inserts religious ideas into a space, but it also has the potential to create new spaces. Take, for example, a chaiwala’s shop in Chawri
Bazaar, Old Delhi (fig. 15). This shop is not an enclosed one, but rather a part of the alleyway.
The chaiwala posted bright posters behind his stand: their bright color potentially attracts the attention of those who pass by, but they are also placed in such a way that it sections off the space he uses. The 1.5 meter stretch of the alley becomes a shop. Implicitly, it becomes a space that is sanctified and accepted by the gods.
The prints seem to be about more than utility. Calendars remain on the wall well past the end of the calendar year and even kitschy prints given as gifts are not thrown away. The object believed to be disposable gets incorporated into the structure of the space in which it lives and into the lives of the people who own it; in this way it extends its life and its message. But if
Hindu art is present everywhere, does this mean that these communal spaces, even Delhi as a whole, is Hindu?
THE POLITICS OF INTERPRETATION: HINDUTVA APPROPRIATIONS OF A UNIVERSAL MESSAGE
The beauty of images is also its drawback: they can be reused and repurposed for any number of reasons. The gods can advertise cigarettes (fig. 6) and Vishnu can become the poster boy for soap (fig. 16). People have also appropriated Hindu images and their messages in order to support their political aims. The Hindutva is a rightwing Hindu nationalist movement that has grown over the course of the twentieth century; the predominant Hindutva party in modern
31 politics is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Through the use of iconography and reliance on mass media images, the Hindutva have validated their political objectives and have tried to extend their power into sacred and secular spaces.
Iconography has long been a visual tradition in India, providing the illiterate masses with the vocabulary to read images; the underlying assumption here is that that image can be read by anyone, regardless of class, caste, or education. Symbols stand in for a greater concept: a parrot stands in for love and an elephant represents stability. Each of the gods has their own iconography that makes them identifiable: Laxmi is surrounded by coins and Saraswati always holds a sitar in her hands. Iconography is powerful because it uses a predetermined definition in order to attach meaning to a different concept or entity. The lotus flower is a symbol for regeneration and purity; it is also the symbol for the BJP (fig. 17). The use of this religious image attaches those meanings to the political party itself, indicating that the renewal of India lies with them. Christiane Brosius and Melissa Butcher identify how the Hindutva appropriate imagery, so it is worthwhile to quote the passage in full:
“Images and metaphors play an important role in the visualisation of Hindutva, they are basically a selection of items and issues chosen and incorporated in a dynamic process of inclusion and exclusion, forming the stock vocabulary to be employed accordingly. It is significant that images and their interpretations regarding dharmic values are essentialized. This is a mode of delegating authority and legitimization to certain forms of agency involved in setting up a seemingly coherent line of argument. To be believed and incorporated into everyday life, values need to be shown and represented in a familiar and easily consumable form.” 29 [emphasis added]
29 Christiane Brosius and Melissa Butcher, Image Journeys, 102.
32 The essentialized nature and claims to authority can be seen most clearly in the
Hindutva’s treatment of M.F. Husain. Husain was a Muslim artist who was a part of the Bombay
Progressives. He painted a variety of subjects – all abstract – he came under attack for depicting
Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude; the Hindutva claim that he ‘hurt Hindu sentiment’ by painting the gods in this way.30 This interpretation is founded upon the visual vocabulary of Ravi
Varma’s prints, which have influenced mass produced religious imagery today. Take his depiction of Saraswati (fig. 18) in comparison to Ravi Varma’s (fig. 2). Repeated exposure to these images that permeate the sacredsecular sphere have made this type of depiction the standard against which other interpretations are judged. Despite the fact that Husain’s painting retains the same iconography, such as the peacock and sitar, it does not look like the Saraswati we have become accustomed to, the one painted from Ravi Varma’s perspective. This version of the Hindu gods, with naturalistic faces, embellished saris, and extravagant jewelry, have become the standard for the gods that we see today in our everyday lives.
The Hindutva have not merely emphasized the sacredsecular space; they have infused it with politics. The ability for anyone to own and interpret these images have led to a mass interpretation, thereby enabling the Hindutva to attempt to lay claim on the extremes. Husain’s work was intended for the museum, a space secular by the definition I’m using in this paper. And yet the Hindutva believe that they can dictate what occurs in the realm of high art and that
Hinduism can be the state of the nation.
30 Randeep Ramesh, “Artist cleared of insulting Hindu faith.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. 9 September 2008.
33 CONCLUSIONS
“You create your own space in your mind – each one of us perceives art with a different feeling, a different spatial relationship. You inhabit it.” Sushmita Jha31
“The destiny of a man changes every day. Today he is something, tomorrow he is something else. The destiny of the gods also changes.” M.L. Garg32
33
31 Sushmita Jha (Private Art Collector), interviewed by Michelle Cheripka at Chittaranjan Park, Delhi, 9 April 2015. 32 M.L. Garg, interviewed by Michelle Cheripka, 13 April 2015. 33 Shri Krishna Leela, artist unknown, published by S. S. Brijbasi and Sons, Delhi, on sale in the 1990s. From: Kajri Jain, Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 121.
34 THE FLUIDITY OF SPACE
Ravi Varma’s historical and artistic legacy lies in the mass production of religious imagery and subsequently individual empowerment through ownership of art. Often, this empowerment is dependent on the location in which the image, or owner of that image, is situated, but the continued mass production of god posters, calendars, etc. have created a fluidity between separate types of spaces. It has merged the secular with the sacred, thereby forcing us to confront the categories that we use to distinguish among these different spheres of engagement.
Images take on the characteristics of the space that they live in. At the extremes of the spectrum, the space itself creates expectations for the way in which a person should engage with the image; the image itself becomes sanctified or secularized. Mass produced imagery, on the other hand, allows for individual interpretation in regards to where an image is placed and what its message should be. These types of images bridge the secular with the sacred, however, allowing temples to become more accessible, and allowing for private ownership of artwork.
Ravi Varma oil paintings are copied as lithographic prints that have come to reside in private art collections; these images become reinterpreted and mass produced; the mass produced images are used in different ways, including in places of worship. This type of permeation allows for cohesiveness and continuity, creating a visual narrative across time, space, and religion.
ANALOGUES AS ANALOGOUS
By nature of being on a spectrum, at least for the purposes of this paper, sacred and secular spaces seem to be diametrically opposed to one another. Indeed, the museum attempts to distance itself as much as possible from the temple. And yet, these two types of spaces are more alike than they might initially appear. Each one physically owns the image of the god there and
35 prevents it from being owned by others through acts of photography. Because of this, they each create a temporal experience that isolates your visit from daily activities, demanding full attention. They do so by determining how you engage with the image. If they are similar, then how can that redefine the way that we interact and engage with these places? What does it mean that the secular space is almost identical to the sacred?
Aside from its devotional component, temples serve museum functions, as well, since it contains sculptures and paintings. It ‘collects’ and preserves an image that has significance for its viewer and for history. Considering the aesthetics of the image, as a museum does, it is possible to see what type of devotional experience the temple attempts to evoke through its portrayal of a deity. But you also don’t need to recontextualize in order to engage with it: a statue of Laxmi is capable of participating in darśan regardless of whether the devotee knows who created it. On the other hand, the museum has become a kind of temple, a sanctified space that displays something
‘great.’ Whereas the temple has become more accessible, however, the museum remains exclusive, especially in terms of who is able to visit and how the image can be seen. In this light, the museum space should reconsider how it asks people to engage with artwork, potentially tapping into an interactive and multisensory experience. By considering these two types of spaces, we can broaden our engagement with the gods and with artwork in general.
DELHI
My observations were drawn from Delhi and its surrounding areas, which pushes us to consider what these observations mean in the context of the city as a whole. What does it mean that these different spaces, power relations, and forms of viewing are present here? As the capital of India, Delhi serves as a locus of Indian politics, power, and culture, so the responses here to
36 religion, art, and visual culture are worthwhile to consider so as to address some of the ways in which we perceive India.
The pervasiveness of Hindu print images points to a strong visual culture and prominent
Hindu community (the majority of Indians identify as Hindu). There are a number of other religions here, as well – Islam, Jainism, Christianity, and Buddhism are just a few among many of the other religions practiced throughout the country. This would not seem apparent walking throughout Delhi. Is there a reciprocal respect for other religious traditions as there is for
Hinduism? The Hindutva is a major political power, which makes its attack on (Muslim) artists like Husain troubling: it rejects forms of visual representation in a democratic country and dismisses the plurality of cultures and religions that exist within India. Moreover, it indicates an ignorance of its own religious art history.34 Secular institutions like the NGMA attempt to divorce religious perspectives from viewing artwork, which effectively limits our abilities to interpret art. More importantly: as a representative of Indian culture, it speaks for the nation when it determines what art can be considered worthy of placement in its museum.
Delhi’s response to these prints either tend towards imposing Hindu imagery and religion
(e.g. the Hindutva’s authoritarian understanding of religious imagery) or by denying Hinduism altogether (e.g. the NGMA’s response). Just as the prints have found a middle ground in creating sacred secular spaces, the people here – the art historians, the Hindutva, the Hindu devotees, the tourists, etc. – must broaden understandings of art and visual culture; of the relationship between ownership and interpretation; in so doing, we might be able to better understand how to perceive art, religion, one another, and ourselves.
34 Hindu gods and goddesses are commonly depicted nude, with these portrayals often used in worship practices. For example, the temples at Khajuraho date back to the twelfth century.
37 BIBLIOGRAPHY: PRIMARY SOURCES
Chawla, Rupika. Interview by Michelle Cheripka. Delhi, India. 7 April 2015. Garg, M.L. Interview by Michelle Cheripka. Noida, India. 13 April 2015. Jha, Sushmita. Interview by Michelle Cheripka. Delhi, India. 9 April 2015. McIntyre, Guy. Interview by Michelle Cheripka. Chhatarpur, India, 15 April 2015. Pinney, Christopher. Interview by Michelle Cheripka. Delhi, India. 26 March 2015. Prakesh, Om. Interview by Michelle Cheripka. Delhi, India. 9 April 2015. Sawant, Shukla. Interview by Michelle Cheripka. Delhi, India. 26 March 2015.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: SECONDARY SOURCES
Babb, Lawrence A. and Susan S. Wadle, eds. Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1998. Bala Krishnan, Usha. “Dazzling Baubles: Gems and Jewels in Princely Portraits,” in Portraits in Princely India: 17001947, ed. Rosie LlewellynJones. Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2008. Brosius, Christiane. “Celebrating More than the New Year.” Tasveer Ghar: A Digital Archive of South Asian Popular Visual Culture.
38 King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’. Cornwall: Routledge, 1999. Knott, Kim. Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Mathur, Saloni. India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan Private Limited, 2011. Mirzoeff, Nicholas, ed. The Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge, 1998. Mitter, Partha. Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013). Otto, Rudolf. Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism. London: Quest English, 1987. Pinney, Christopher. “The Look of History: The Power of the Aesthetic” in New Cultural Histories of India: Materiality and Practices, ed. Partha Chatterjee, Tapati GuhaThakurta, and Bodhisattva Kar. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pinney, Christopher. Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. London: Oxford University Press, 2004. Ramachandran, A. “Raja Ravi Varma – The Marketing Strategies of a Modern Indian Artist” in Indian Art: an Overview, Gayatri Sinha, ed. New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2007. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. “Of Gods and Globes: the territorialization of Hindu deities in popular visual culture,” in India’s Popular Culture: Iconic Spaces and Fluid Images, ed. Jyotindra Jain. Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2007. Ramesh, Randeep. “Artist cleared of insulting Hindu faith.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. 9 September 2008.
39 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
With all of the information I collected, I could have written a number of ISPs. Below is a list of areas for further study that arose during my own research:
“The Lives of the Gods” examines the pervasiveness of Hindu religious imagery in different
spaces, but the importance of visual culture is an inherent part of all religions within India.
Conversations with Yousuf Saeed, who has conducted extensive research on Muslim
devotional art, encouraged me to think about how my research applies to other religions.
How do these different visual cultures compete and/or coexist with one another? What does it
mean for other religions that Hindu religious imagery has become identified as “Indian”?
How do aniconic religious traditions, such as Islam, negotiate this visual arena?
Ravi Varma’s style was derived from Victorian portraiture. In fact, the portrayal of Bharata
Mata, as depicted by artist, can be seen in the lineage of his work. How did this formal style,
taken from a European tradition, come to be synonymous with nationhood when nationalism
at the time was focused on movements like Swadeshi? How is the relationship between nationalism and Hinduism visually represented? For instance, Sumathi Ramaswamy’s essays
helped me to see the relationship between Hindu deities and nationhood through cartographic
mapping in twentieth century popular imagery.
The images of the gods conflate spaces between art, religion, and the market. Related to this
idea is that of how religion influences economic practices. Todd Albertson’s The Gods of Business explores precisely this idea. How does religious history and tradition influence economic interactions today?
40 This project considers the role that ownership plays in terms of how to interpret an image,
but there was neither the time nor space to talk about the deities themselves as a group that is
able to take possession of images and material objects. The Indian legal system recognizes
deities who inhabit an icon as having personhood. Most famously, perhaps, is the case of
Ram Lalla at Ayodhya, where a group was able to argue for land ownership on behalf of the
god.35 How are religious figures treated in secular spaces? What are the implications of
giving a god personhood? Where does the line fall between gods and persons?
In “The Sacred is Secular,” I introduce the notion that copyright regulations are lenient in
India. How do artists perceive the inevitable derivation of their artwork? How do attitudes
towards authorship compare to those of the nineteenth century, when artists first began to
sign off on the works they produced?
35 Venkatesan, J. “Suits on behalf of deities can’t be treated as timebarred.” The Hindu. 3 October 2010.
41 APPENDICES
Fig. 1. Religious Space Spectrum
Fig. 2. Ravi Varma, Saraswati (lithograph)36 Fig. 3. Ravi Varma, Manorama (oleograph)37
36 Ravi Varma, Saraswati, late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Print, 50 x 30 cm. Collection: J. and J. Jain, Delhi. From: Jyotindra Jain, Indian Popular Culture: ‘The Conquest of the World as Picture’ (Kolkata: Apeejay Press, 2004). Cat. No. V.17. 37 Ravi Varma, Manorama, late nineteeth or early twentieth century. Oleograph. Available from: BarodaArt, http://www.barodaart.com/item_fullview.asp?idno=209&aidno=94 (accessed 3 May 2015).
42 Fig. 4. Ravi Varma, Laxmi (oil on canvas)38 Fig. 5. Ravi Varma, Standing Lakshmi (chromolithograph)39
Fig. 6. Ravi Varma and other artists, Fig. 7. Pathway leading to ISKCON temple Hindu mythological pictures as cigarette advertisement40
38 Ravi Varma, Laxmi, 1896. Oil on canvas. Maharaja Fatehsingh Museum & Laxmivilas Palace, Baroda Collection. 39 Ravi Varma, Lakshmi. 1894. 40 Ravi Varma and other artists, early twentieth century. 3.5 x 6 cm (each). Collection: Siddharth Tagore, Delhi. From: Jyotindra Jain, Indian Popular Culture: ‘The Conquest of the World as Picture’ (Kolkata: Apeejay Press, 2004). Cat. No. I.12.
43 Fig. 8. Shri Hanuman Mandir Fig. 9. Temple located within a shop in Old Delhi
Fig. 10. Ravi Varma, Untitled Fig. 11. Ravi Varma, Girl Holding Hookah (oil on canvas)41 and Broom (oil on canvas)42
41 Ravi Varma, Krishna as Envoy, 1905. Oil on canvas. Sri Jayachama Rajendra Art Gallery. 42 Ravi Varma, Girl Holding Hookah and Broom. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.
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Fig. 12. Ravi Varma, Girl Holding Fruit (oil on canvas)43
Fig. 13. Wall text describing Ravi Varma at the NGMA
43 Ravi Varma, Woman Holding Fruit. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.
45 Fig. 14. God posters at Brijbasi Art Press Ltd., Fig. 15. Chaiwala in Old Delhi Old Delhi
Fig. 16. Advertisement for Sunlight Soap44 Fig. 17. BJP symbol
44 Ravi Varma, 1880s. 65 x 50 cm. Collection: J. and J. Jain, Delhi. From: Jyotindra Jain, Indian Popular Culture: ‘The Conquest of the World as Picture’ (Kolkata: Apeejay Press, 2004). Cat. No.VI.3.
46 Fig. 18. M.F. Husain, Saraswati
47 GLOSSARY bhakti ( ) religious devotion भि त bazaar art artwork that includes popular imagery that might be sold in a local bazaar (i.e. god posters, calendars, etc.) calendar art similar to bazaar art, it is the artwork displayed on calendars corpothetics terminology drawn from Christopher Pinney’s The Photos of the Gods, corpothetics is a practice surrounding religious images that “entail[s] a desire to fuse image and beholder, and the elevation of efficacy as the central criterion for value”45 chaiwala ( ) a street vendor who sells tea चायवाला chromolithograph a lithographic print produced in color; see definition for lithography darśan ( ) Diana Eck perhaps provides the most comprehensive explanation for this दशन ritual tradition in Hinduism: it is “religious seeing, or the visual perception of the sacred;”46 “darśan is sometimes translated as the ‘auspicious sight’ of the divine, and… reminds us that for Hindus ‘worship’ is not only a matter of prayers and offerings and the devotional disposition of the heart. Since, in the Hindu understanding, the deity is present in the image, the visual apprehension of the image is charged with religious meaning”47 Hanuman ( ) Hindu god who is the supreme devotee of Rama हनमु ान Hare Krishna the Hare Krishna movement is one that identifies Krishna as the supreme ( ) deity; it is also a mantra repeated by devotees within a temple (this mantra हरे कृ णा can be heard at ISKCON temple) Laxmi ( ) Hindu goddess of spiritual and material wealth ल मी lithograph the process of printing artwork or text onto paper or other materials mandir ( ) temple मं दर mantra ( ) a word or sound that is repeated in order to help with concentration in मं meditation nadi ( ) river नद nagar ( ) city नगर oleograph a print textured to resemble an oil painting Orientalism a Western system of seeing and interacting with the East; Edward Said provides the most comprehensive definition for Orientalism: it is a “distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction…. but also of a whole series of ‘interests’ which… is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different… world”48
45 Christopher Pinney, Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 194. 46 Diana L. Eck, Darśan: Seeing the Divine Image in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 3. 47 Ibid. 48 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 12.
48 Parsi a community in South Asia descended from Iranis; the Parsis were Persian immigrants into India who comprised the wealthy elite pradakshina the circumambulation of sacred spaces ( ) द णा Saraswati ( ) Hindu goddess of wisdom, knowledge, music, and arts सर वती shri ( ) derived from Sanskrit, shri is attached to the name of a god or goddess in ी order to signify veneration Swadeshi ( ) an economic strategy in the nationalist movement in the early twentieth वदेशी century that encouraged Indians to boycott foreign goods Victorian the style of artwork created under the reign of Queen Victoria of England characterized by its revival of classicism and separation between art and daily life Vishnu ( ) one of the the three supreme Hindu deities; Vishnu is known as the व ण ु preserver or protector
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