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The Act of Drawing As Cultural Translation: Modern Depictions of an Ajanta’S Dancer

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The Act of Drawing As Cultural Translation: Modern Depictions of an Ajanta’S Dancer Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo| Vol. 6 | Núm. 1| 2019|147-182 Sol Izquierdo de la Viña THE ACT OF DRAWING AS Complutense University of Madrid, CULTURAL TRANSLATION: Madrid, Spain MODERN DEPICTIONS OF AN AJANTA’S DANCER Y es que el dibujo no es sólo un conjunto de trazos sobre un papel, sino un proceso de descubrimiento e indagación de la realidad objetiva y, al mismo tiempo, del propio desarrollarse del pensamiento y la creatividad del artista. Es el dibujo ese signo que traduce o tantea de forma inmediata la imaginación, y el dibujante es como el poeta de Shakespeare que busca para esas formas «desconocidas» «un albergue y un nombre».1 Carmen Bernárdez Sanchís 1 Bernárdez Sanchís, Carmen (1991-92). La línea sabia: apuntes sobre algunos momentos de la historia del dibujo. Anales de Historia del Arte, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 3, 96. Carmen Bernárdez Sanchís, in memoriam. Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo ISSN: 2013-8652 online http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/REGAC/index Introduction [Fig. 1.] Wall painting at Cave I, Ajanta, 100 BC – 480 AD, India. A secluded wall painting in the first of the Buddhist caves at Ajanta (India) depicts a jātaka tale in which the figure of a dancer appears surrounded by musicians playing various instruments (Fig. 1). The Ajanta murals became famous, being reproduced and diffused since the caves’ rediscovery by English colonizers in 1819. The first known reproduction of the dancer’s scene is an oil painting (1850-1854) made by the English army officer and draughtsman Robert Gill2, which was later replicated in a full color lithographic plate in John Griffiths’ book The Paintings in the Buddhist Cave-Temples of Ajanta (1896) (Fig. 2). The dancer’s figure was also portrayed by the Bengali artist Samarendranath Gupta (1887-1964) and appears today as an illustration in his book Les 2 Robert Gill, Copy of painting inside the caves of Ajanta (cave 1), oil on canvas, c. 1856, Victoria & Albert Museum. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O115444/copy-of-painting-inside-the-oil-painting- gill-robert/ [Accessed 15 November 2016] 148 Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo| Vol. 6 | Núm. 1|2019|147-182 Izquierdo de la Viña, S. |The act of drawing as cultural translation: modern depictions of an Ajanta’s dancer Mains dans les Fresques d’Ajanta (Fig. 3). Meanwhile, the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) discovered the dancer’s motif reproduced in Griffiths’ book and translated it into two different drawings (Fig. 4 and Fig. 5). These examples show the processes of transfer of an image from the Buddhist wall paintings of Ajanta across different techniques and media, epochs and contexts, within the transregional network of actors that dominated cultural exchanges during the colonial era. [Fig. 2.] Plate 6 in John Griffiths, The paintings in the Buddhist Cave-temples of Ajanta, Khandesh, India. Vol. 1 Pictorial Subjects, 1896. Chromolithographic reproduction of Robert Gill, Copy of painting inside the caves of Ajanta (cave 1) , oil on canvas, 1856. (Bibliothek des Museums für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Sol Izquierdo) Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo| Vol. 6 | Núm. 1| 2019|147-182 149 [Fig. 3.] Samarendranath Gupta, Illustration of the book Les mains dans les fresques d'Ajanta, 1922, page 24. 150 Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo| Vol. 6 | Núm. 1|2019|147-182 Izquierdo de la Viña, S. |The act of drawing as cultural translation: modern depictions of an Ajanta’s dancer [Fig. 4.] Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Tanzende Königin Sivali und Musikerinnen, 1911, pencil on paper, 28,1 x 23,2 cm, Brücke-Museum, Inv.Nr. 2/13 (Brücke-Museum, Photo: Roman März). Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo| Vol. 6 | Núm. 1| 2019|147-182 151 [Fig. 5.] Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Two Flutists and Dancer, 1910, pencil and ink on paper, 26 x 33,6 cm. (Gordon, Kirchner in Dresden, Fig. 56). Both Samarendranath Gupta and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner used drawing to embody the newly discovered dancer’s image of the Buddhist wall painting. They depicted details such as the hands’ positions by marking them with clear and fine contours – like in Gupta’s illustration – or drawing several figures playing their instruments with rapid strokes – as in Kirchner’s. As Carmen Bernárdez writes, the act of drawing implies “a 152 Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo| Vol. 6 | Núm. 1|2019|147-182 Izquierdo de la Viña, S. |The act of drawing as cultural translation: modern depictions of an Ajanta’s dancer process of discovery and inquiry”3 that reflects the artist’s creativity, as well as their own personal and distinct historical contexts. Thus, these two examples drawn by Indian and German artists embody the different gazes that perceive the Buddhist murals and their pictorial translations made in Kolkata and Dresden. This paper examines the concept of cultural translation and models how it could be used to analyze processes of transcultural interaction. It also discusses the repercussions of using cultural translation as a methodological tool. This is exemplified through the case study of the reception of the Ajanta paintings in Indian and German modern art during the early 1900s. Through an interdisciplinary and transcultural approach to the case study, traditional Western categories of the historical discourses are challenged. Accordingly, the paper deals first with the formulation of the concept of translation, starting from Walter Benjamin’s critique to its use for the study of history and culture from the postcolonial perspective of Dipesh Chakrabarty. At this point, I echo the warnings of Doris Bachmann-Medick and Mieke Bal regarding the necessity of methodologically reflecting on how to apply this concept in the humanities and particularly within intercultural encounters. After a theoretical introduction to the concept of cultural translation, I focus on the aforementioned depictions of the Ajanta’s dancer by Gupta and Kirchner and briefly analyze their processes of reception, examining concisely the configuration of the dancer’s drawings in relation to the artists’ ideals and experiences. In this analysis, the concept of cultural translation serves to illuminate a transmedial, translocal and chained processes of transcription and re-codification of images in relationship with the modern artistic contexts of Kolkata and Dresden. 3 Bernárdez Sanchís, La línea sabia, 96. Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo| Vol. 6 | Núm. 1| 2019|147-182 153 REVOLVING AROUND THE CONCEPT OF TRANSLATION From Benjamin to Chakrabarty Etymologically, the word “translation” refers to the act of moving or carrying something across from one place or situation to another. It also evokes the acts of transferring and transforming, as well as interpreting or recreating.4 The concept of translation has crossed disciplinary boundaries of literature and linguistic studies to the field of cultural studies, developing as an analytical tool that sheds light on how artifacts and artworks result from cultural interactions. A pioneering essay dealing with the concept of translation is Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers (1923), in which Walter Benjamin confers a new task to the translator, i.e. being responsible for the continuity of the artwork’s existence (Fortleben). It means that, the survival of the artwork’s essence (Wesen) depends on its translations, as well as the interpretation of new meanings by the future generations. In his essay, Benjamin wrote: Ist doch die Übersetzung später als das Original und bezeichnet sie doch bei den bedeutenden Werken, die da ihre erwählten Übersetzer niemals im Zeitalter ihrer Entstehung finden, das Stadium ihres Fortlebens. In völlig unmetaphorischer Sachlichkeit ist der Gedanke vom Leben und Fortleben der Kunstwerke zu erfassen.5 4 Buden, Boris, et. al. (2009). Cultural translation: An introduction to the problem, and Responses, Translation Studies, 2:2, 196. Di Paola, Modesta (2018). Traducción visual. Epistemología de la traducción en las artes visuales. Boletín de Arte, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 18, 2. 5 Benjamin, Walter (1972). Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers. In: Gesammelte Schriften Bd. I V/1, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 10-11. See an English translation: “For a translation 154 Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo| Vol. 6 | Núm. 1|2019|147-182 Izquierdo de la Viña, S. |The act of drawing as cultural translation: modern depictions of an Ajanta’s dancer Therefore, translation acquires a new function, and the once traditional notion of “original as superior” is challenged by translation’s capacity to produce new meanings, as Benjamin states: Die wahre Übersetzung ist durchscheinend, sie versteckt nicht das Original, steht ihm nicht im Licht, sondern läßt die reine Sprache, wie verstärkt durch ihr eigenes Medium, nur um so voller aufs Original fallen.6 Authors dealing with the concept of translation, such as Boris Buden, consider that Benjamin undermined the notion of original and, consequently, scrapped the whole binarism of traditional translation theory.7 From a postcolonial perspective, Homi Bhabha coined in The Location of Culture (1994) the concept of cultural translation in order to criticize the essentialist notion that cultural identities belonged to a unique original. Bhabha paraphrased a famous Benjamin’s quote with these words: unlike the original where fruit and skin form a certain unity, in the act of translation the content or subject matter is made disjunct, overwhelmed and alienated by the form of signification, like a royal robe with ample folds.8 comes later that the original, and since the important works of world literature never find their chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life. The idea of life and afterlife in works of art should be regarded with an entirely unmetaphorical objectivity.” Benjamin, Walter (2002). The Task of the Translator.
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