Indian minatures on display in Dallas

[Guest guest]

Small Indian paintings pack cultural punch

 

November 20, 2007

By Charles Dee Mitchell

 

[For the art aficionados in the crowd :-) ]

 

In 16th-century India, the painters who worked under the

patronage of Mughal emperors and the royal families of

other Indian states were highly regarded but poorly paid.

Although they were the companions to royalty, they

remained members of a caste that included such artisans as

woodworkers. Their situation and status, however, did not

prevent them from producing masterpieces for more than

three centuries, miniature paintings that honored their

patrons, celebrated court life and brought to life the stories

of such Hindu epics as the Ramayana.

 

" Domains of Wonder, " which opened Sunday at the Dallas

[Texas] Museum of Art, brings together more than 100

masterworks from this period. The paintings are part of the

1,400 works that make up the Edward Binney III collection

of Indian painting held by the San Diego Museum of Art,

and the DMA has been able to flesh out the exhibition with

two smaller shows.

 

From its own holdings, the DMA has mounted " Indian

Miniature Paintings From the David T. Owsley Collection. "

It's also hosting " When Gold Blossoms: Indian Jewelry

From the Susan L. Beningson Collection. " The three

exhibitions combine scholarship and visual delight in ways

seldom found in a museum.

 

A master signed an individual work, but many hands

worked on each painting shown in " Domains of Wonder. "

They were produced in workshops that, depending upon the

area, were either professional organizations or family

operations where traditions were passed down for

generations. They went through up to seven stages in

creation. They were drawn, burnished, redrawn, painted and

finally detailed. The largest painting at the DMA is no larger

than 24 by 36 inches, but even a complex small painting less

than one-quarter that size could take a full year to complete.

 

Most of the paintings are either portraits or religious scenes,

but the high level of observation and narrative skill

embodied in the works is best on display in an unusual work

from 1600 called The Enraged Elephant.

 

The image has no precedent in literature and probably

records an actual incident of an elephant that breaks its

chains and rampages through the countryside. One of its

tenders flees in panic, but its rider stays on its back flailing

helplessly with what looks like a comically small goad. The

setting includes a stream running through rocks and pooling

at the bottom of the picture. Blossoming trees are fully

detailed, as is all the gear on the elephant's massive body.

Love, fascination and respect for the natural world run

throughout Indian painting, and here the painter expands the

natural world to include the frightening but majestic energy

of this unloosed elephant.

 

The religious world of India presents to this day a mix that

includes Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Islam. All these

traditions are on view in the paintings at the DMA, but the

most dynamic narratives and memorable images come from

the Hindu traditions. Worship in the Hindu world can

involve meditation, dance and lovemaking, all activities that

make their way into paintings.

 

Krishna, always easy to spot with his blue skin, appears

frequently, whether spying on his beloved from behind a

tree or cleaving demons in half with a discus. Shiva, known

as the Destroyer, also plays a range of roles that includes

that of affectionate companion who picks fruit for his

beloved and lies beside her on a tiger skin.

 

More obscure personages also put in striking appearances.

The Goddess Varahi has 10 arms and the head of a boar. In

each arm she holds one of her attributes, which include a

sword, a lotus blossom and her bowl for drinking wine. She

rides a tiger, whose tongue and tail are each extended with

fierce pride. Varahi will strike Western viewers as a

supremely strange creature, but it is important to remember

that such paintings are devotional images, used for

meditation as well as aesthetic delectation.

 

Varahi is an extreme example of the sorts of challenges

posed by this art, challenges that often frustrate Western

audiences. Admittedly, the names are hard to pronounce and

the narratives illustrate obscure episodes from an unfamiliar

mythology. And their almost uniformly small size makes

them difficult to see.

 

Keep in mind, though, that as elegant as the installation at

the DMA is, this is not how these works were intended to be

viewed. The princes who commissioned them held them in

their hands and spent hours savoring the details of both the

narrative scenes and the handling of materials that went into

their making.

 

That experience is no longer available to the viewer; only by

taking your time can you come to appreciate these works

that as one of their first patrons described them can be " a

delight to the eye, a comfort to the mind. "

 

 

" Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian

Painting " continues through Jan. 27 at the Dallas Museum

of Art. Accompanying exhibitions are " Indian Miniature

Paintings From the David T. Owsley Collection " and " When

Gold Blossoms: Indian Jewelry From the Susan L

Beningson Collection. "

http://www.dallas museumofart.org

Exhibit info:

http://www.guidelive.com/portal/page?_pageid=33,97347 &

_dad=portal & _schema=PORTAL & item_id=61524

Article:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/D

N-dma_1120gl.ART.State.Edition1.36bafe5.html