New Narratives in the Art of the Miniature
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FABULAR NEW NARRATIVES IN THE ART OF THE MINIATURE FOREWORD Change does not occur in a vacuum. Every step we take is There are some intriguing contradictions in this show. informed by one that has gone before; every move towards The contrast of an elegant, serene setting with the bold the future owes a debt to the past. statements on display; the cohesive character of a show peopled by a diverse group of artists; a contemporary Art is no exception. creative passion inspired by a traditional artistic past. I believe these contradictions will draw people into the show The tradition of the miniature is intrinsic to our cultural and leave them mesmerised. heritage. Characterised by fineness of detail and vivid imagery, these paintings are not only exquisite works of art In essence, this is the aim of the Harmony Art Show, but a valuable chronicle of our histories; snapshots, as it which has never been defined by prevailing market were, of civilisations in the making. trends or themes. In the past 16 years, our endeavour has remained the same: to evoke a greater interest in art In 2009, Harmony Art Foundation was proud to showcase among those who have been immune to its magic, and the miniature as an enduring legacy in a show that sought to enable the artist and art lover to find each other. In the renew our pride and engagement in this rich tradition. This process, we have strived to break down the barriers and year, with Fabular Bodies: New Narratives in the Art of the boundaries associated with art, making it accessible to Miniature, curated by Gayatri Sinha, we take a step forward, people from every walk of life,while recognising to celebrate the miniature as inspiration for contemporary promising talent and giving it a platform to shine alongside creative inquiry. established artists. Guided by the precision and skill required by the miniature This process continues with Harmony Art Show 2011. What’s tradition yet unfettered by themes and materials, the artists more, by using a tradition close to their hearts—and ours—to have given free rein to their impulses, with astonishing results. fuel their creative fires, our participants are able to traverse With the use of media as diverse as painting and sculpture new routes, explore new trails, roam far and wide, yet find to comics and even computer-generated storyboards, their their way home, to the heart. works constitute a powerful commentary on the world today, drawing attention to a range of concerns from identity, alienation and loss to dislocation, poverty, the politics of gender and religion, and the march of ‘modernisation’. Tina Anil Ambani 3 HARMONY ART SHOW 2011 NEW NARRATIVES IN THE ART OF THE MINIATURE ithin the Indian subcontinent seated on a floor rather than up against a wall, the miniature the miniature is the art form of presupposes not only leisure but an intensity of detail, a discovery and reconstruction. compact narrative, a formal aesthetic. It is tempting to locate As a genre in painting it has the miniature within a poetic imaginary, of the geographies transcended the quest for an of the fabulous Guler tree, and corpuscular Persian clouds as Indian identity, the guiding if they pass into the domain of the ‘modern’. Equally we may somewhat doomed principle of evoke the rich tradition of poetry and the ghazal, power and artistic endeavour through the 1960s and 70s. In contemporary patronage, love and beauty by the poets of the subcontinent: Wart, the miniature as a fragment of history has assumed a Ghalib and Faiz, Kaifi Azmi and Amrita Pritam. For an protean authority, one that absorbs with supple ease the art art form survives not only in its stylistics and form but in of visualising social polity within accepted tropes of beauty. mapping the hermeneutics of a culture of viewing. Now as the borders of art continually shift, it has dislodged associations of the court and the bazaar; it has unwrapped As it passes into the late 20th century the miniature within the unforeseen potential and moved into the domains of video Indian context does not have a defined academic status. Nor and digital art, animation and illustration. does it assume any overtones of a ‘national’ art form, with a potential for subversion. 1 Rather, the miniature has been A painting from the British Library collection titled The Scribe a curiously absent category even within the aggressively resonates within our context. In this painting by Daulat, two argued case for indigenism and the passionate quest for a figures occupy the foreground. Against an alcove of beautiful national art identity. Within the intense and hard fought craft objects—much like a Mughal cabinet of curiosities— battles of Indian modernism, the miniature earned back- they examine several painted folios. The significance here handed recognition. As the inspiration in the forefront of the lies in the fact that Daulat the artist is sharing the painting practice of the Bengal school, its use in the 20th century was with a scribe Abdur Rahim Ambarin Qalam; together, they seen as the antithesis of modernity. may collaborate on a manuscript. What were these worlds that they shared and what words would they have strung around Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941) drew heavily on the Rajput these fine lines and bejewelled forms? Or more important, miniature, even as she redefined the courtly subject as what portent may be seen in these confabulations between common, and thereby accessible. In Sher-Gil, the fair nayika master artist and scribe? How far would the skeins of their clad in fine muslins is transformed into thekhadi- clad woman artistic vision spin and weave, and where did a severance of the working classes, her charpai and grinding stones appear to mark new histories? marking the life and rhythms of rural India. National Award- winning artists of the 1940s and 50s, including Jyoti Bhatt As the shared and quiet moment of investigation between and N S Bendre, created a peculiar pastiche of miniature folk Daulat and Abdur Rahim Ambarin Qalam reveals, the themes in post-cubist compositions, with only partial success. examination of the miniature is a leisurely process. Seen It was in the early 1960s that J Swaminathan reinvigorated the 5 HARMONY ART SHOW 2011 romance and authority of the genre, anticipating the individual Through a vigorous embrace of calendar and cinema images, brilliance of Bhupen Khakhar, Manjit Bawa, Arpita Singh, the city and sub-continental geo politics, Indian painting and a later slew of artists. Within this generation Gulam and has used a number of stylistic devices. Among these the Nilima Sheikh were to demonstrate a passionate and poetic miniature has not been dominant but adaptive. Its vivid study of the form, lending it an expansive authority. chroma, social typologies, and flat image field have in fact provided an alternative to leading art styles, presenting in the As a point of entry into this exhibition, let us imagine a process a worldview that makes a back-handed gesture to the conversation between Jagdish Swaminathan and Gulam past, even as it negotiates a possible future. Sheikh; perhaps not unlike the one between Daulat and Abdur Rahim Ambarin Qalam. It would be sometime in hat is conspicuous about the miniature is the early 1960s, in many ways a watershed decade in its resilient usage, and adaptability to a the history of modern India. Partition, the formation of time of fraught discourse—one without progressive art movements, the great cinema and poetry the certainties of an aesthetic grandeur of the 1950s lay behind; the death of Nehru, the wars with and heroism. If Gulam Sheikh used the China and Pakistan, the student and Naxal movements Wform to create cosmogonies of travelling philosophies, saints lay ahead. At this moment Swaminathan and Sheikh, as and a lost humanity, Nilima Sheikh has grounded her work ideologues of Group 1890, envisioned a third space for in a lingering contemporary disquietitude, even through Indian art, one that moved in a loop above and beyond her quiet insistence on the inviolability of human dignity. the schools of Paris and New York, to India’s painterly She uses the intense lyricism of the style, its mellifluous resources within a post-modern, politically informed set lines and serene expansive landscapes to draw images of of practices. Through the heat of polemic what float up a terrible violence. For several years, Nilima Sheikh has to the surface are the warm tones of an Indian palette, flat worked with texts that create a bridge between two major perspectives, motifs and symbols—all of which re-invoke, sites of irresolution: the Partition of India, and Kashmir. The among other forms, the Indian miniature. Two decades plaintive beauty of her work and her highly aestheticised after Amrita Sher-Gil, the miniature returned to the art interpretation of histories, narratives and poetry give her studio, a gesture so modest and demure that it ill prepared painting an aching beauty—one so fragile that it is difficult us for the floodgates that would open in the 1970s and to hold. In the present series she returns to Kashmir through beyond: Swaminathan’s evocations of the Basohli colour a text dedicated to artisans, and the deliberated rhythms of field, and its echo in the work of Manjit Bawa and Gogi the work pushed out of the urban context. The artisan stands Saroj Pal, Gulam Sheikh’s perspectival play with dense to be memorialised through such a contemporary enterprise, and simultaneous urban vistas heralding the city as one that revisits a colonial view of the traditional workers of complex subject, and Nilima Sheikh’s elaboration of the Kashmir.