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Lot Essay
Madhya Pradesh also brought about a basic shift in my painting again. The live and vibrant contact with tribal cultures triggered off my natural bent for the primeval, and I started on a new phase recalling my work of the early sixties. If my work of the early sixties anticipated the journey of the eighties, my present phase recapitulates my beginnings.
- Jagdish Swaminathan, 1993
Jagdish Swaminathan was an outspoken advocate of indigenous art in India. In his own practice, he rejected academism, the modernism that the Progressive Artists’ Group had so strongly embraced, and the sentimentality of the Bengal School. For Swaminathan, art was meant to reveal the essence of existence, which he found to be a defining characteristic of indigenous and folk art.
“Swaminathan’s aesthetic, which held that folk art, tribal art, and urban art are all equally valid versions of the contemporary, might appropriately be termed a ‘post-colonial aesthetic’” (V. Dehejia, ‘Text Decoded’, Beyond the Legacy, Washington, 1998, p. 202). The present lot is a significant example of this unique ‘post-colonial’ aesthetic. A series of intersecting lines and undulating forms stand out boldly against the earthy tones of the background. The viewer’s gaze wanders from the central grid to the surrounding markings that evoke fragments of primeval script. Swaminathan’s vocabulary and approach to art in these works from the early 1990s was largely based on his observations of the artist traditions of tribal communities in central India. The artist recalls, “When provided with paper, what they turned out was so unexpected that we were dumbstruck. Instead of making chauwks or animal and human forms or ritualistic symbols, they invariably produced doodles with rudiments of the Dev Nagri script interspersed with animal, human and vegetative forms: Without any written language of their own, they perhaps realised the power of the written word in their contact with the police, the forest guards and the entire oppressive machine, and they were magically invoking it for self protection and for amelioration from their sorry plight” (Artist statement, ‘Pre Naturalistic Art and Post Naturalistic Vision: An Approach to the Appreciation of Tribal Art, Demography of Tribal Development’, The Perceiving Fingers, Bhopal, 1987, p. 56).
These ‘doodles’ are what inspired Swaminathan, who adopted them in his own work, including the present lot. Here, both natural and script-like forms can be identified among the blue and black markings used by the artist. The influence of indigenous and folk art on his work is further accentuated by the artist’s use of an earthy, raw palette which is elevated by his unique technique. Frequently, Swaminathan would use his hands to paint in an organic effort to understand, believe and reveal better than the brush. Even in highly abstract works such as the present lot, this connection enabled Swaminathan to create a meditative space where reality, memory and imagination converge.
- Jagdish Swaminathan, 1993
Jagdish Swaminathan was an outspoken advocate of indigenous art in India. In his own practice, he rejected academism, the modernism that the Progressive Artists’ Group had so strongly embraced, and the sentimentality of the Bengal School. For Swaminathan, art was meant to reveal the essence of existence, which he found to be a defining characteristic of indigenous and folk art.
“Swaminathan’s aesthetic, which held that folk art, tribal art, and urban art are all equally valid versions of the contemporary, might appropriately be termed a ‘post-colonial aesthetic’” (V. Dehejia, ‘Text Decoded’, Beyond the Legacy, Washington, 1998, p. 202). The present lot is a significant example of this unique ‘post-colonial’ aesthetic. A series of intersecting lines and undulating forms stand out boldly against the earthy tones of the background. The viewer’s gaze wanders from the central grid to the surrounding markings that evoke fragments of primeval script. Swaminathan’s vocabulary and approach to art in these works from the early 1990s was largely based on his observations of the artist traditions of tribal communities in central India. The artist recalls, “When provided with paper, what they turned out was so unexpected that we were dumbstruck. Instead of making chauwks or animal and human forms or ritualistic symbols, they invariably produced doodles with rudiments of the Dev Nagri script interspersed with animal, human and vegetative forms: Without any written language of their own, they perhaps realised the power of the written word in their contact with the police, the forest guards and the entire oppressive machine, and they were magically invoking it for self protection and for amelioration from their sorry plight” (Artist statement, ‘Pre Naturalistic Art and Post Naturalistic Vision: An Approach to the Appreciation of Tribal Art, Demography of Tribal Development’, The Perceiving Fingers, Bhopal, 1987, p. 56).
These ‘doodles’ are what inspired Swaminathan, who adopted them in his own work, including the present lot. Here, both natural and script-like forms can be identified among the blue and black markings used by the artist. The influence of indigenous and folk art on his work is further accentuated by the artist’s use of an earthy, raw palette which is elevated by his unique technique. Frequently, Swaminathan would use his hands to paint in an organic effort to understand, believe and reveal better than the brush. Even in highly abstract works such as the present lot, this connection enabled Swaminathan to create a meditative space where reality, memory and imagination converge.