Visiting the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) at
Bangalore has always been a happy experience, especially because I get to see
the works of Goan artists like F. N. Souza and V. S. Gaitonde. The NGMA’s most
recent exhibition, however, focused on an artist whose legacy is far more
nationally known, and not least for nationalistic reasons. On display were a
rare collection of lithographic prints by Ravi Varma (1848-1906), whose fame is
largely attributed to the popularity of his depiction of gods and goddesses
from the brahmanical canon. The images of the goddesses Saraswati and Laxmi,
popular on calendars in many households today, are largely the result of
Varma’s representation of them. Places like NGMA
should ideally be hosting cutting-edge modern art, so one wonders why the
administrators are happy to fall back on century-old work by Varma. The NGMA
seemed to be trying to justify Varma’s presence by claiming him as ‘modern’
artist, which he is clearly not. At best, Varma’s work can be classified as
neo-classical; painting ‘Indian’ themes in a European style, which was in
fashion at that time.
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| Painting by Ravi Varma |
Varma’s paintings continued to influence
contemporary visual culture in India, as they formed the basis on which many
artists and television serial-makers, like B.R. Chopra of Ramayana and Mahabharata
fame in the 80s and 90s, imagined the characters of gods and goddesses for
their projects. Apparently, even Anant Pai, the creator of Amar Chitra Katha
comics (which retold brahmanical Indian stories and mythological tales), asked
the comic book artists to look at Ravi Varma’s paintings and draw their images
in a similar vein (Pathak, July 2, 2016).
In discussing the legacy of Varma, art historian
Niharika Dinkar in her article “The Enduring Myth of Ravi Varma” (2010) ,
writes that he “was by no means an exceptional painter, but his aristocratic
background and proximity to royal patrons granted him a profile quite unlike
those of artists from more modest backgrounds”. It was Ravi Varma’s upper caste
and class location that led to his popularity in India. Dinkar further argues
that “the heroic narrative that has canonised him in the popular imagination as
the ‘painter prince’ seized upon precisely these elements, establishing him as
a worthy native who could equal the colonial master.” Varma’s work was part of
the nationalistic project of framing Indian modernity in the early twentieth
century, as it was used as a medium through which a ‘glorious’ Indian past
could be imagined. The advancement of upper-caste Hindutva ideology in his art
is also the reason why Varma continues to be popular today.
A typical reaction to Varma’ art is epitomised by
Krishna Iyer to the news of the exhibition at NGMA. Regarding Varma’s work he
writes, “Great Artist. I recall my mother, when asked to describe the qualities
of a beautiful girl, said she must have all the characteristics of a Ravi Varma
painting. Such was his reputation as a painter” (The Hindu, April 24,
2016). Such reactions lead us to question the intentions of
NGMA, given the values explicit in the artist’s work. Varma’s stereotypical
imagining of Indian women, in the early twentieth century, wrapped in expensive
silk sarees (which are still out of
the reach of most), has been embedded deeply in the psyche of the average
Indian, as is seen in the opinion of Iyer’s mother. It is interesting that Iyer
did not profess his own independent opinion but, rather, chose to abide by his
mother’s. So much of such ‘saree-beauty-Indianness’ is embedded in saas-bahu relationships that it has
perpetually been the fodder for soap-operas across all TV channels in India -
stories which usually revolve around ‘traditional’ mothers-in-law domesticating
the ‘western’ attired (and therefore ‘modern’) daughters-in-law.
The problem with nationalistic Indian
modernity is the singularity of imagination that marginalises other cultures in
India, including that of Goan Christians, and thereby marks them as
anti-national. Often in a bid to ‘appear’ Indian, marginalised populations have
to perform their allegiance to the nation by dressing in sarees and other similar traditional forms of attire. In fact, T.
B. Cunha offers advice of this nature in his book Denationalization of Goan (1944) when advising his readers on how
to demonstrate their loyalty to the Indian Nation through their garments. It is
interesting how the patriarchal state has always burdened women with displaying
the markers of identity.
In his essay “Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatus” (1970), French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser
argues that the Nation-State operates in many subtle ways in advancing its
dominant ideology. The larger argument for the promotion of Varma’s works in
India today is that institutions like NGMA function as Ideological State Apparatuses
(ISA) that endorse the idea of upper-caste Hindu nationalism. Which is also why
there is a desperation to claim upper-caste Varma as a “great modern artist”.
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| NGMA - Bangalore |
While the Varma exhibition has been given high curatorial priority,
important works of the Modernists,
Indian artists like F. N. Souza, V. S. Gaitonde, and M. F. Husain are left
neglected in the deepest corners of the gallery. There is neither sufficient
lighting there to appreciate the art, nor the right conditions to maintain them
for posterity. As per Dinker, “at [the] contemporary moment… the elite and
popular are increasingly intertwined”, and because what is popular today is
nationalistic art, places like NGMA work as ISAs, and continue to ‘rediscover’ (the neoclassical)
Varma as a ‘modern Indian artist’ once too often.
[This article first appeared on The Goan, on August 28, 2016]
