Book title: Kalighat Paintings Editor: Sushashini Sinha and C. Panda
Pages: 112
Price: Rs 995
It has taken a while for many exhibitors in India to accept that the experience of art need not end with a visit to the exhibition. A seriously researched catalogue is not just a necessary accompaniment to the exhibition but a valuable acquisition in itself. That the exhibition of Kalighat pats in the Victoria Memorial Hall in October- December 2011 should ultimately generate a catalogue that has almost made the waiting worthwhile is good news. Kalighat Paintings, is, like the exhibition, a joint venture of the Victoria and Albert Museum, from where most of the pats came, and the Victoria Memorial. It contains, apart from reproductions of the exhibits with detailed captions, four illuminating articles.
The history of pats in Bengal is both complicated and piquant. Emerging from the traditional performative scroll-narrative form in the districts to become delicate and brilliant single-piece works by artists who migrated to the burgeoning city to settle around the Kalighat temple and depicted deities, scenes from the epics, babus, bibis and other characters who coloured the contemporary canvas with their follies and scandals, as well as creatures both natural and fabular, the pat has travelled down to the present, modulating old traditions in both its scroll as well as single-piece forms.
The article, “Kalighat paintings in the V&A collection”, by Suhashini Sinha captures this history. It is the context to the 100 years of Kalighat pat culture represented in the exhibition and so in the catalogue. Equally interesting are the travels of the Kalighat pats on another level — from Kalighat to the distant corners of the world. Without the interest and earnestness of major collectors such as John Lockwood Kipling and W.G. Archer, the latter in collaboration with Mukul Chandra Dey, the V & A would not have acquired such a magnificent array of pats. The stories of the collectors are as interesting as Sinha’s analysis of the collection.
Piyasi Bharasa narrates the history of the Victoria Memorial Hall’s acquisitions, and discusses a recent reclassification of 24 works. Although fewer in number, these include almost all types of pat in terms of medium and theme, ranging from line drawing and painting to woodcut and lithograph. A babu holding a hookah in the company of a courtesan (left), from the 1880s, is from this collection.
Jyotindra Jain’s article, “Kalam Patua: From the interstices of the city”, is an excursion into the art, attitudes, training and aspirations of the modern patua. The modern pat, recalling rural tradition in style and approach and Kalighat satire in its moral commentary and mischievous fantasy, suggests that rejuvenating a dying tradition can be fun. Sneaking in to the mirror (top, centre), by Kalam Patua shows a woman, resembling a 19th-century bibi, fantasizing about her admirer as she dresses.
An unusual contribution to the volume is the “Materials and techniques of Kalighat paintings” by Michael J. Wheeler and Lucia Burgio. It describes the process and results of a scientific analysis of pigments with nine works as samples. These include two hand-coloured woodcuts and span the 19th and early 20th centuries. This article is a true gain for researchers and restorers.
The Kalighat patua’s catholic imagination is expressed rather whimsically in The coronation of Rama (bottom centre), from around 1860. The bright pigments and delicate lines capture a Ram and Lakshman in the 19th-century shamla, while Sita is depicted as a traditional Lakshmi figure. The event is framed by theatrical curtains, as is, even more fittingly, the scene of Elokeshi’s decapitation by her husband, Nabin (right), circa 1875-1890. After the Murder is paradoxically both gory and cheerful, with an extra dimension added by an apparently philosophical Nabin watching his wife’s head fall off.
BHASWATI CHAKRAVORTY
Published on February 24; 2012
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120217/jsp/opinion/story_15142319.jsp#.T3-U6IGsm9s
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