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Sunday, November 13, 2005 |
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Sunday, November 13, 2005 |
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An exhibition of Indian paintings in California has opened up new vistas, reports B. N. Goswamy AT the San Diego Museum of Art in California, from where I am filing this column, the current buzzword is "wonder." A major exhibition of Indian paintings, drawn from the museum’s holdings of the late Edwin Binney’s magnificent collection, has just opened here, under the title: Domains of Wonder. Involved as I have been in conceiving and curating the show—and co-authoring a comprehensive catalogue bearing the same name—I hope to be writing on it at some length: but a bit later, for one is too close to the event at this moment, and far too much is happening. What I cannot help drawing immediate attention to, and celebrating, however, is the imagination and the sense of deep engagement with which the exhibition has been mounted and is being showcased. The theme of "wonder" is everywhere: in the storey-high banners outside the museum and in galleries alight with exquisite works of art, in audio-visual presentations and touch-screen computers, in enticing posters and ingeniously designed, wonder-centred objects—jewellery and trinket boxes, scarves and neckties, children’s books and game puzzles, writing papers and bookmarks—that all but fill the shelves of the museum’s gift shop now. No visitor to the museum, or even to the great and sprawling Balboa Park in which it is located, no reader of the local newspapers or journals, can quite ignore the theme—or the show. Everyone has clear options, of course. If one were to dip into the pages of the quarterly journal of the museum, which has just come out, one knows that one can move into different orbits. If jazz interests you, you can listen to the singer Roseanna Vitro’s melodic improvisations or Mulgrew Miller’s compositions on the piano; or, moving into a different area of music, you can attend a performance by Damien Rose on 20 Tibetan bowls—akin somewhat to our own jal tarang—or a Westwind Brass concert. If dance is your first love, Allyson Green will be here with her experiments with light, sound, and movement created with video at the Black Sea in Romania; or Malavika Sarukkai, famed Bharatanatyam dancer, can be seen in a concert in which she will be in space" with her lissome body, as it were. There are film series to be taken in, lectures to be attended, gallery talks to take advantage of. The museum serves as a major hub of art, and there is an embarrassment of riches here. But the likelihood is that you will keep veering, even as you take in other things, and events, towards the domains of wonder that have opened up. In all this, what interests me especially is the series of programmes that have been devised by the Education Department of the museum for involving the young. Unlike with us in India, there has always been a strong emphasis in this country on the museum becoming a primary resource for "art education." The term, one naturally understands, is widely interpreted, for it is not all about studio work, teaching how to paint or print or sculpt, for instance. It is about sensitising young minds to art, releasing their creative energies, opening for them another window through which to look at the world inside and outside of themselves. Here, as a part of what is termed the Museum Art School, a student can develop new skills in any of these fields, come into contact with distinguished professionals, learn how to look and hear the heartbeats of great works of art. Woven into all this activity also, however, is the theme of wonder. Taking for granted the fact that an average American viewer, especially a young viewer, does not know much about the art or the history or the religions of India yet, some of the literature produced is designed to lead the visitor gently, and engagingly, into those little known worlds. Consider these "cards" for instance, bearing reproductions of four paintings that are on view in the Domains of Wonder show. They are all drawn from different periods of Indian art, and represent different styles, and here they are all made to hear different questions, simple and yet designed to stimulate further interest in the works. There is, for instance, that wonderful early Mughal painting from Tuti Nama, illustrating the Panchatantra-like story of the jackal who accidentally fell in a vat of indigo dye, and, having turned blue and thus uniquely different, proclaimed himself the king of the animal kingdom, only to be discovered, and hounded out later, of course. While the painting, as reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition, has a long art-historical entry, here all that the card carries as a bold caption on top is the provocative, if somewhat natural, question: "Why is this jackal blue?" The young viewer’s curiosity is roused but the question is not left hanging in the air. For, at the back of the same card, it is answered. But there not only is the gist of the story given, but also other information; and further questions are raised inducing the viewer to look at the painting and the show with greater care. Thus: "Look at the other animals" expressions. "How do you think they felt about the jackal declaring himself king?" Or, "Look at the throne the jackal is sitting on. Does it look like the thrones that human beings sit on? Look around this exhibition to find images of Indian thrones." Another card, showing that magnificent image of the Pushpak vimana rising in the air, asks the question: "Why is that palace floating?" And, in finding the answer to this question, the viewer is led into the world of the gods, the story of the Ramayana, the fineness of workmanship. As I said earlier, in this manner are minds sought to be touched and stimulated, "magic casements" opened wide. And this is as it should be, for what else are museums for? This article was published on November 6, 2005 |
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