Of Piety and Splendor: An audio visual engagement with the Bikaner School of Painting

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Take a second look. It is imagination you are looking at, an imagination both individual & collective: fluent, expressive, very contemporary, ancient. It is more than a little mysterious.

Objectives:
  • Beginning towards research & documentation, transmission, promotion & conservation of the diverse heritage of the painting style
  • Document and disseminate forgotten forms, materials and processes of the painting style as a repository of cultural ways and values
  • Celebrate time-honored indigenous skills and practices as perceived in the life of individual painters such as Mahavir Swami[1], a master craftsman, awarded by the President of India and others
  • Create a research led base for exploring new paradigms of growth and knowledge forms vis-à-vis the narrative led technique of the painting style
  • Create a basis for an inter-disciplinary process spanning craft skills, performance arts, new media and architecture in a way as to best utilize these heritage resources towards newer knowledge forms- may be a graphic novel, media installations, sound art, tactical media forms, and collaborations between artists, media practitioners and software programmers
  • Underscore the problematics of patronage vis-à-vis the art of painting
  • Study the negotiations between the static and dynamic nature of the visual; the miniature v/s the film

A little like an image embedded in a hologram, the Bikaner style of painting remains generally obscured from view, when the history of painting in India is studied.

It is only when the parchment that is the past is taken in the hand and lightly moved, in the manner of a ‘beam of coherent light’ needed to train upon a hologram, that this presence reveals itself. Then some historical developments start to make sense, and the role of a number of emphatic figures can be seen in true perspective.[2]

The art of miniature painting gained popularity in Bikaner in the 15th century; a phenomenon ascertained by the influence of Jainism that time. The miniature artists, usually of the Usta and Matheran communities, used to paint both specially treated paper and the surfaces of walls. Today the artists still practicing, paint exclusively on paper and are known for their fine brush-strokes and subtle shading.

Traditionally, the Matheran or Mahatma community was renowned for their mineral painted elaborate depictions of religious themes on painstakingly prepared walls of houses and temples. In some of the temples thus ornamented, images of the patrons and their families were also included as were the names of the painters. The paintings of the
matherans also utilize the embossing techniques of the Usta; thus gold and silver is occasionally used to enhance a painting. In older temples such as the Madan Mohan Mandir, the 200-year-old paintings reveal the aesthetic sensibilities of this community and the religious context of their work in spite of layers that were later retouched.[3]

The Bikaner painting is stylistically and technically closer to the Mughal style of painting than to the Rajput school of painting, not barring the distance of more than a thousand kilometers- with its extremely sophisticated works with delicate lines and tonal range normally encountered in the Mughal paintings.

It appears that quite a few leading painters made redundant due to the shift of interest in architecture by Shahjahan’s, took service with such gifted patrons of Art as Karan Singh. One of them was Ali Raza who painted brilliant paintings of Lakshmi Narayana and the portrait of Karan Singh, carried fine draftsmanship, perfect technical execution and maturity of Mughal Art in Bikaner. The other famous Painter was Rukh-ud-din who brought to Bikaner a number of Deccani Art Elements, particularly the technique of rendering fountains and court scenes, pictorial quality and perception of nature and nature based background.[4]

Another level of engagement points towards the vital issue of patronage, whether feudal or the state. In contemporary polemic times, where the miniature tradition is preserved only through its tourist industry of reproduction, the issues of patronage assume interesting significances. Also, the links between art and culture politics, and between indigenous and global aesthetics, position this art form which challenges common assumptions about this art.

Contemporary Splendors
Mr. Mahavir Swami has dedicated his entire life towards reviving and developing the Bikaner Style of Painting. Way back in 1986, he was awarded the title of Master Craftsman from President of India on a painting called “Buffalo Fight”. The painting is very much influenced with the style of Great Mughal Court Painter Miskin.

The paintings of Mahavir Swami are strongly influenced by his studies of the Mughal Style of Painting. His subject matters are often drawn from the lifestyle of Saints, Sages, Yogi, Yogini, and Sufi. He likes to contemporarize and prefers to explore new subjects, new contexts and new forms of expressions. This finds expressions in his paintings on daily life- Indian Games, Indian women, and relevant social issues.

The research shall explore and locate other artists of same prominence and include the same in its purview.

Of Methods and Processes
The proposal aims to begin with an engagement with the artist, Shri Mahavir Swami, through a series of interviews, in an audio visual format, towards understanding his personal reflections on art, society, culture, forms, old and new, through his paintings.

Engagements that immediately cross the mind are-
What is the ‘Mughal’ in his 21st century paintings? Where is the 21st century in his Mughal style Miniatures? What are the crossroads that he has passed through- economic stability and others? What is the importance of ethical values vis-à-vis the dynamics of ‘original’ and ‘fake’?

These reflections are interspersed with the historical continuities of the Mughal, Rajput and Bikaner schools of painting, reflecting the intersections of influences, local and global, political and social, and the economics of scale.

Output ends in the questions!
The end product is an audio visual reflecting the following:
·        A productive dialogue across academic specialties- the dialogue of the researcher and the film practitioner- a wish to encourage the probing of limits and ability to ask new questions from all possible frames of engagement. The audio visual is a negotiation across boundaries- an important and distinctive feature of the new media
·        Mapping personal journeys of the artisans, Mahavir Swami and others, in conjunction with the larger historical- spatial narratives
·        The engagement between the medium of the static visual (i.e. miniature painting) and the dynamic visual (i.e. cinematic medium) and the questions that arise out of the altercations between the two
·        Dis/ locating the miniature tradition in the throes of ‘medieval’, ‘modern’, ‘post modern’ and/ or ‘postcolonial’, and resulting paradox of marginalization and empowerment that seems to coexist in the ideas of representation
·        Understand the present, a phenomenon very new and yet very chaotic, which is both autobiographical and societal, at the same time. This also means an understanding of the self, the individual, in the context of himself, the society, the changing circumstances, and the universe


[1] http://www.mahaveerswami.in/ (site under construction)
[3] http://www.cohands.in/handmadepages/pdf/98.pdf
[4] In conversation with Anurag Swami, son of Mahavir Swami

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