Is it possible to be modern without referencing tradition as a point of departure? Can tradition be a grounding force instead of imposing fetters on the imagination? How do we distinguish between rejection and reconfiguration, invention and appropriation? These are fascinating questions to ponder while reading Anuradha Ghosh’s book Jamini Roy: A Painter Who Revisited the Roots (2022), published by Paper Missile, an imprint of Niyogi Books.
This is a well-researched and easily readable biography of artist Jamini Roy (1887-1972), who was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1955 and had his artworks declared as a “national treasure” by the Government of India in 1976. Ghosh, who is an Associate Professor of English at Dinabandhu Andrews College, Kolkata, wrote most of it “during a period of total lockdown in Bengal” during the COVID-19 pandemic when she could not visit libraries, galleries and museums in person. This gap was filled in by generous collectors and curators who helped the author with images, archival material, and scanned copies of books and articles. She was also able to interview Roy’s grandson – Debabrata – for this book.
Ghosh is curious about Roy’s reputation as “one who drew his inspiration for his major body of works from the folk arts of Bengal”, so she digs into this facet of his work intensely. She finds that Roy, who was born in Beliatore, a village in the district of Bankura in West Bengal, was “surrounded” by a “highly distinctive artistic and artisanal culture” from an early age. Bankura is famous for “its exquisite terracotta toys, figurines, panels and the traditional pats.”
The author helps us appreciate the thematic concerns in Roy’s work by giving us a glimpse of significant childhood influences. She writes, “His father had opted for a farmer’s life, having given up his government job and deciding to settle in the village, and grew different kinds of crops…even their clothes were spun by local weavers from the cotton his father grew.” Roy’s family kept cattle. They used edible oil processed from their own mustard crop for cooking. He grew up watching potters make earthenware, and idol-makers fashion idols of Durga. He was exposed to the myths, songs, dances and rituals of the Santhals who lived in the region.
The impact of this cultural immersion can be seen in Roy’s work, which frequently features animals such as cows, bulls, horses, tigers, elephants, and cats. Ghosh also points out “the profound influence of the alpana, the homespun designs drawn on floors with rice paste, using a wisp of cloth and a singer finger.” She writes, “In Bengal, the alpana belonged exclusively to the domain of women, and was usually connected to rituals and bratas (fasts).”
By giving us a detailed picture of Roy’s formative experiences, Ghosh affirms that an artistic education does not take place only in an art school with a formal curriculum, courses to enroll in, and specializations to choose from. Art is organically woven into the fabric of life, especially when it comes to societies that are not steeped in “an urban-industrial culture”. Thankfully, she does not romanticize him as a son of the soil; she notes how he became “the proverbial urban gentleman in his later years” by associating with “intellectual glitterati”.
According to the timeline provided in this book, Roy joined the Government School of Art and Craft in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1903. He got admitted in the ‘Fine Arts’ section that was “run in the Western academic mode, stressing on naturalism and verisimilitude” rather than the department teaching ‘Indian Style of Painting’. To keep us from judging Roy too harshly for his choice, Ghosh informs us that students from the Fine Arts section “could find employment relatively easily in various government survey departments”. Economic reasons may have prompted Roy to seek admission in this section. He was living in a single room in North Calcutta with his elder brother. Students from the Fine Arts section also got opportunities to earn through private commissions for painting portraits alongside studies.
Ghosh strikes a balance between showing how the formal study of art benefited Roy, and how it imprisoned him. Life in the big city was quite different from the rural environment he had grown up in. He called himself “a caged bird”. There was a weariness in him, longing for the stress-free life he had left behind in his village. Apparently, he registered and de-registered a few times, and eventually did not get a formal degree from the institution.
She points out that Roy turned to folk art in his “quest for wholeness and simplicity” but also makes room for us to think critically about Roy’s self-identification as a folk artist. The rural people whose forms, motifs, colours and patterns Roy sought inspiration from remained faceless and nameless for the art world that celebrated him when he showed his work in London, New York, Washington DC, Ohio and Florida. What was rooted in community, relationships and interdependence was transformed into the signature style of a master.
This book raises important questions about how an “aura” is created around the “unique singularity of an artwork” and what “an urban-capitalist mediation” does to folk art. It also encourages us to think about “the demands of the market” that shaped Roy’s artistic output. According to Ghosh, Roy’s extensive work with the figure of Jesus Christ in his paintings has been attributed by some critics to the “ready market” that Roy found among “the Christian British and American soldiers who thronged Calcutta during the Second World War”.
He was commissioned to make portraits of several “prominent personages” such as Jadunath Sarkar, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay,
Rabindranath Tagore
, and M.K. Gandhi. Ghosh wants to caution us against reducing Roy’s work to “an attempt at mainstreaming the marginal”. She reminds us of the distinction between what is sold in the art gallery and at the handicraft fair; and how “value” is determined in both cases. Roy’s artworks were “directed at an almost exclusively urban clientele” and his patrons were people with “intellectual capital” who could “firmly and unwaveringly situate his works within the grand narrative of Indian art”.
The book ends with miniature reproductions of some of his artworks, and an invitation to think about how we would like to situate Roy’s work given that critics have noted Gandhian underpinnings, Vaishnavite leanings as well as Marxist sympathies. Is it possible that he was all this, and more? Or does the lens we choose has to say more about us, and less about him?
Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator who tweets @chintanwriting
Read all the
Latest News
,
Trending News
,
Cricket News
,
Bollywood News
,
India News
and
Entertainment News
here. Follow us on
Facebook
,
Twitter
and
Instagram
.