Promoting friendship through Indian art

Mehru Jaffer, Contributor, Jakarta

Despite the delays inherent in the art of globetrotting, the relationship between the people of Indonesia and India was probably far more intense in the past.

Apart from trading goods with each other, there was a hectic exchange of ideas as well. Today, this precious bond is reduced to most Indonesians enjoying Indian films, while many Indians fail to realize that there is much more to this archipelago nation than Bali.

"I was aware that Indonesia was a great center of traditional arts and crafts, but I know little about the country's contemporary art," admits Jaya Mani of Art and Facts, a Bangalore based art gallery in South India.

It is Nimi Banerjee, a friend and art collector herself who finally invited Jaya to visit. An Indian expatriate here, Nimi has been looking at Southeast Asian art for years, and is full of admiration for the work from back home.

It was her dream to share the art of Indian painting with friends in Jakarta.

Together with Suman Gopinath, a curator, the three women delved into the exciting and vast world of Indian art for a couple of months to finally choose the works of 19 contemporary painters for an exhibition here.

The most exciting thing about of the collection is that it gives a bird's eye view of what artists are doing in different parts of the country, especially in the southern provinces.

This is a change from times when artists based only in New Delhi or Bombay ruled the world of art in India.

It is the revolution of information technology that was responsible for waking up the sleepy town of Bangalore in the early 1990s to transform it into the Silicon Valley of the region.

Ever since that happened, residents in the area are beginning to enjoy similar importance to those talented ones living in better-known towns of Calcutta, Bombay and New Delhi.

Raja Ravi Varma died in 1920. Although Varma was considered the country's first modernist painter to come from the southern Indian state of Kerala, some of India's best-known and most expensive painters continue to be northerners.

This time around, more than half the artists to be displayed here are from different parts of South India.

Amongst them is JMS Mani who creates quite a storm on canvas in his desire to go back to the very root of the beauty of the people of the Dravidian race.

After the blue-eyed, blonde-haired looks of the pale-faced Aryan became the rigid standard for judging beauty, both the appearance and lifestyle of the dark-skinned Dravidic people remained in the shadows for centuries, thanks to the more aggressive assertions of the mixed breed of North Indians.

In his art, Mani seems to return to the bowels of the Deccan plateau in search of the very seed and soul of his ancestors.

The result is a swirl of impressionist strokes that tell tales of many a generous mouth, luscious limbs bathed in liquid ebony, and clad in the primary colors of red, green and yellow.

Another favorite is Bhaskar Rao, who prefers to scale down his colors to countryside greens and dusty, off-whites of the rural landscape in a more colorful contrast with the work of his brother, Ramesh Rao.

S.G. Vasudev is seen once again trying to create a balance in the environment around him. The youngest participant of the lot is Aziz T.M., whose work comes in lengthy panels to make sense of life, while Laxma Goud continues to decipher, in a most erotic way, the secret language between women and nature.

Also interesting is the work brought here by four women painters, among whom Arpana Caur is the most famous. Arpana is responsible for having liberated the image of women sewing quietly within parameters of femininity to place outdoors, so that they can embroider larger destinies.

Sultana Hasan, a housewife turned painter is most sought-after today for her psychedelic portraits mostly of women in neon purples, shocking pinks and lively greens.

The exhibition also brings with it glimpses of the deep tension that Indian painters continue to experience between innovation and tradition. The mood is definitely modern, but one that extends back to a millennium old values.

Some, like Yusuf Arakal, have no qualms about taking inspiration from traditions as well as modern mannerisms. In the past, the master painter has admitted to being inspired by images from Van Gogh to Modigliani to Picasso.

This is only natural, as India has been exposed to western influences since the year 1600, when the British East India Company first opened offices in Calcutta. Over the years, the English found the art of the natives inferior but was happy to patronize local handicrafts.

By the 1900s, it was difficult for the Indian elite to draw a definitive line between western academic traditions, and the landscape of urban India. Western influences showed up in the work of Raja Ravi Varma, who struggled throughout his life to make sense of everything that touched his life.

Later, Ram Kinker rejected all slavish imitations of both traditions, and modern ways.

His work contains the vibrancy of rural life, inspired in the early years of his career by the struggle against colonialism, and the peasant movement of the 1930s and 1940s, but in a language very much his own.

Immediately after independence from British colonial rule in 1947, art works became extremely eclectic and experimental under the more innovative influence of European and American art movements.

But even in the thick and thin of this process, to this day what is most obvious is the indigenous artist's son going in search of his own roots, even as he longs to remain part and parcel of the global village.

--The Dance of the Indian Brush opens on April 12, and welcomes visitors on April 13 and April 14 between 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. at Leboye Gallery, Kemang Selatan 99A.

For further information, call 7199676 and 7657507.