The Aesthetic of Indian Calendar Art

[Guest guest]

With the New Year now upon us, Usha Bande, a columnist for the

Sunday Tribune of Chandigarh, India, on January 3rd wrote this

interesting rumination upon the popular Hindu religious calendars

that feature the Goddesses, Gods and Epic heroes and heroines of

Hinduism:

 

PICTORIAL ART AND THE INDIAN ETHOS:

Some thoughts on calendar art

 

The innocuous calendar fluttering on the wall is a utility item.

 

Interestingly, over the years it has become not only a decoration

piece that is meant to add colour to the room but also an art object

that displays the taste of the owner. Even today when the calendar

is no longer a part of drawing room decoration of the elite urban

society, it is still a cherished object d'art in towns and villages.

There calendars are exhibited on the walls and preserved for years

for the sake of religious value or even pictorial beauty.

 

Between Divali and the New Year, one encounters a mind-boggling

variety of calendar art displayed in all its garish glory. It is the

time to buy, gift or distribute calendars. The marketing and

shopping of calendars assumes importance during Divali. Every

conceivable spot in shopping centres, on pavements and subways,

glitters with bright poster colours — deep red and green and

electric blue. Large-sized calendars are spread on the pavements or

hung on roadside trees. These mostly have pictures of gods and

goddesses from the Hindu pantheon on glossy paper. The most popular

pictures are those of Lakshmi and Ganesh, followed by Shiv, Hanuman

and others.

 

Originally, decorating the walls with highly prized trophies and

paintings was a western concept. During the colonial period, Indian

royal families and aristocratic and wealthy households took to

commissioning artists to paint exclusively for them. The display of

original art objects functioned as signs of rank, taste and wealth.

To own a Van Gogh or a Ravi Varma piece was a matter of pride. Even

today, some of the museums housed in the royal palaces of Mysore,

Jaipur, Hyderabad and other places are the proud owners of some rare

paintings. The common man, however, was happy with rangoli patterns

and the ritual wall-decorations drawn by the women of the household

as auspicious symbols. Later, techniques of mechanical reproduction

like lithography, oleography and photography became crucial in

generating the colourful pictures. When the posters/pictures began

to be produced on a mass scale, the day-date papers came to be

attached to these.

 

In colonial India, calendar art was not an indigenous popular art

form but a hybrid style produced for British patrons and the

Anglicised Indian elite. It denoted the westernisation of taste of

the bourgeois Indians and the modification of a foreign medium to

suit the Indian style. The credit for popularising calendar art and

taking his paintings to the masses goes to Ravi Varma (1848-1906),

the painter-artist from the royal household of the Travancore state

of Kerala. An artist par excellence, Ravi Varma was the first Indian

painter to master the technique of western oil painting. He also set

up one of the earliest lithographic presses in India. These presses

reproduced Varma's mythological paintings by the thousands. These

reproductions reached Indian homes across the vast span of the land

but at a massive cost to his art.

 

Some of the early calendars demonstrate his graceful portraits of

goddess Lakshmi, the lithe Shakuntala, the beautiful Damayanti and

the harassed Sahirhandri hiding her eyes from the gaze of Keechak.

But unfortunately, the paintings became the objects of the erotic

gaze and his art became synonymous with kitsch. During the freedom

struggle, the common motifs were of mother India and the

traditionally accepted mother-son duo of Yashoda-Krishna.

 

Calendar representation has undergone rapid change over the years.

It is now a popular art form as well as an advertising medium of

sorts. Apart from religious icons and mythological figures, new and

more patriotic and secular themes are displayed on calendars. Large

establishments like banks, insurance corporations, big corporate

houses and airways, and even central and state governments have

entered the field. Though religious themes are still in popular

demand, depictions of Indian textiles, folk arts and crafts, and

places of tourist interest are also gaining ground.

 

During the 60s, popular calendar displays pertained to the slogan

Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan. Pictures of farmers and lush green fields

formed the foreground or there was the Army in action with Patton

tanks in the backdrop. Portrayals of dams and some industrial

establishments and other sites of progress were also trendy. The

secular topics present themes of unity and the equality of all

religions. To emphasise this theme, some calendars portray men and

women wearing different state costumes or people with different

religious affiliations standing within a map of India with a lamp

burning in the middle. The lamp is symbolic and may well refer to

Cardinal Newman's famous poem, so liked by Gandhiji, "Lead Kindly

Light, amid the encircling gloom."

 

One of the calendars I remember that almost became a craze in the

late 1970s and 1980s was an Air India production of the ornaments of

India. Printed on thick, high quality paper, it devoted a page of

considerable dimension to each month. Each page had the picture of

an ornament from one region or state of the country, and provided a

small write-up on the ornament, its significance, and occasion of

wearing it and so on. Others followed suit with attractive pictures

and informative texts on Indian textiles, sarees, shawls, musical

instruments, food, festivals and dances.

 

One more calendar that I have preserved for its high-quality

printing and fascinating crayon paintings pertains to rural scenes

from across the country. There is a hut from Himachal with a slate

roof, and another, with coconut fronds from Goa and the coastal

regions, there is one with wooden planks and cane roofs from Assam

and the North-East and yet another one from Punjab. Each hut has a

typical village scene with women drawing water from the wells or

fishermen at their oars, children playing around and the cattle

ruminating in a relaxed village ambience. Such calendars are a mine

of information apart from being visual delights.

 

One significant change in the calendar was perceptible around the

1970s when some enterprising printer brought out a secular version

that replaced the pictorial calendar. Named Kaal Nirnaya, these

calendars followed the Western date-month pattern but also provided

the Saka Samvat. All the significant festive occasions or

anniversaries, irrespective of religious affinities, are recorded

against each day. There are no pictures to create any controversy.

The back page covers monthly predictions, the Railways' timetable

for the region, cookery and health write-ups and other factual

details of day-to-day importance. Thus, these project a kind of

national ethos.

 

Chic and elegant table calendars and tiny card-like pocket calendars

are also popular these days. Sometimes, the subjects chosen are

socially relevant and even emotionally catching. One such calendar

had postcard-sized paintings by mentally challenged children and

orphans. Their themes spoke of their deep psychic needs and one

could not but feel their pain.

 

Representation of India through the calendar has set a tradition of

its own. It has special relevance for the pluralistic nature of

Indian reality. Calendars are like cultural ambassadors and a person

usually likes to put up only that calendar which is in line with

his/her ideas or philosophy of life.

 

In the present context, however, feminists are sore over the

depiction of women in calendar art and feel that presenting women in

all their feminine charm to the public gaze is an insult to women.

Even the depiction of gods and goddesses on calendars is considered

a humiliating experience by some. What we require is a neutral and

featureless representation with only columns for day-dates. But that

would be so uninterestingly bland and faceless. After all, we like

to partake of the visual pleasure of glancing at some beautiful

image — may be a painting, a landscape or monument or a deity.

 

URL (with illustrations):

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040104/spectrum/main1.htm