Jangarh book blad

Aurogeeta Das trained as a printmaker and completed her postgraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Westminster, London. Her PhD involved extensive research on Indian floor-drawing and floor-painting traditions, a genre of domestic practices that Jangarh had drawn upon to create a transformed ‘contemporary tradition’. In 2005, the Museum of London hosted an exhibition of the artist Bhajju Shyam’s work, titled The London Jungle Book, where Aurogeeta first encountered Pardhan-Gond art. Entranced, she began researching this school of art for her postgraduate dissertation, thus discovering the incredible art and life of Bhajju’s uncle and the founder of the ‘contemporary tradition’, Jangarh Singh Shyam. As she told Jangarh’s widow Nankusia, ‘Jangarh fever’ took hold of her.

Aurogeeta has written for numerous publications, including Wasafiri, Manifesta Journal, Arts of Asia, Etnofoor, New Quest and First City. In 2015, the Tagore Centre in London published her limited edition artist book, If only I were a bird… Aurogeeta has taught at the Universities of East Anglia, Hertfordshire and Westminster and regularly lectures on Indian art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.

She is close to completing research towards a biography of Jangarh.

Robyn Beeche (1945–2015) moved from Sydney to London in the mid-1970s. From catwalk shows to clubs, she captured the leading artists and designers of the time and worked extensively with Zandra Rhodes, Vivienne Westwood and Mary Quant. She is celebrated for her ground-breaking pre-Photoshop photographs of painted bodies, collaborating with legendary make-up artists.

After regularly travelling to India for several years, she permanently relocated to Vrindavan in 1992, and documented the festivals and the Vraj culture of the region. Her photographic works can be found in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

The Robyn Beeche Foundation, which was set up in her memory in 2016, maintains and promotes her photographic archive, and provides charitable support to emerging artists.

T

he rare bond between a painter and a collector develops to the benefit of both, each making the other richer over time. Such was the bond between Jangarh Singh Shyam and Niloufar and Mitchell S. Crites, who were among Jangarh’s major patrons from the 1980s, when few were interested in the art form that Jangarh fathered, which generations of Gond artists would follow. Jangarh’s spark — which came from his artistic genius, his passion for Gond deities and his non-conformist approach — was kept alive by patrons like Crites, who nurtured these qualities with great care.

The Enchanted Forest is an impressive publication that merits prolonged engagement on many levels. As a pioneering piece of art historical documentation and curatorial interpretation, the volume develops a wideranging and insightful appreciation of the diverse oeuvre of Jangarh Singh Shyam. Dr. Aurogeeta Das develops new dialogues between anthropology and aesthetics, between the (global) north and south, and between minority and mainstream cultures. As such, the book will become an invaluable resource for readers, viewers and analysts of indigenous arts globally, as well as of Adivasi and contemporary art in India.

This book explores these and various other aspects in the career of an artist who died too early, before his spark could be fanned into a steady flame. Dr. Aurogeeta Das closely examines the huge body of work Jangarh left behind in The Crites Collection, enriching her study with references to works in other private and institutional collections, such as Bharat Bhavan’s in Bhopal. As such, she captures early practices of collecting contemporary folk and tribal art in India.

Dr. Daniel J. Rycroft, University of East Anglia, Norwich This illustrated volume presents the art of the late Jangarh Singh Shyam, whose sphere of practice extended from the Gond tribal village of his birth in central India to urban centers within the country and Japan. His subjects encompassed village deities, trees, flowers, animals and birds as well as more mysterious forms that emerged from his imagination. The author discusses Jangarh’s themes and styles, including his distinctive pen strokes, flecking, patterning, coloring and drawing processes. Using a range of scholarly or published references, this study offers wider academic and philosophical frameworks within which to consider the influential artist whose legacy lives on in the work of his many followers.

Arpana Caur, artist and co-founder, Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, New Delhi

Navina Haidar, art historian Jangarh Singh Shyam was born in the early 1960s to an impoverished, indigenous family in rural, central India. He flew into and out of the Indian art scene like a bright, yet elusive bird. Nurtured by the renowned artist J. Swaminathan at Bharat Bhavan, the multi-arts centre in Bhopal, Jangarh rose to prominence after participating in a seminal exhibition in Paris. After a relatively brief career spanning 20-odd years, he committed suicide in Japan, while on an artist residency in the remote Niigata Prefecture. His work, which arguably defied established art historical categories and inspired a contemporary school of indigenous painting, continues to attract admirers within India and abroad.

Exploring his aesthetics, thematic engagements and art historical relevance, this book focuses on Niloufar and Mitchell S. Crites’ collection of Jangarh Singh Shyam’s paintings and drawings in New Delhi.

JANGARH SINGH SHYAM the enchanted forest

Abhinav Goswami is a temple priest, photographer and student of archaeology who lives in Vrindavan.

ISBN: 978-93-5194-132-3

Paintings and Drawings from the Crites Collection

Aurogeeta Das

CONTENTS Preface by Mitchell S. Crites 9 Chapter 1

Patangarh to Paris, New Delhi to Niigata

13

Images I 41 Chapter 2

Samvega, Aesthetic Shock: Jangarh’s Artistic Evolution

63

Images II 85 Chapter 3

The Enchanted Forest: Jangarh’s Thematic Range

107

Images III 129 Catalogue Raisonné

Paintings and Drawings from the Crites Collection 151 Glossary 184 Bibliography 190 List of Exhibitions 195 Acknowledgements 198 Index 201

CONTENTS Preface by Mitchell S. Crites 9 Chapter 1

Patangarh to Paris, New Delhi to Niigata

13

Images I 41 Chapter 2

Samvega, Aesthetic Shock: Jangarh’s Artistic Evolution

63

Images II 85 Chapter 3

The Enchanted Forest: Jangarh’s Thematic Range

107

Images III 129 Catalogue Raisonné

Paintings and Drawings from the Crites Collection 151 Glossary 184 Bibliography 190 List of Exhibitions 195 Acknowledgements 198 Index 201

Jangadh brings a vibrance and a luminosity to his work all his own.There is a great power and promise in the work of this young tribal artist.

J. Swaminathan (Introduction to Dhoomimal exhibition, 1984)

figure 0.3 Jangarh Singh Shyam with his site-specific mural at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1989 Photograph: Prakash Hatvalne, courtesy the photographer

10

11

Jangadh brings a vibrance and a luminosity to his work all his own.There is a great power and promise in the work of this young tribal artist.

J. Swaminathan (Introduction to Dhoomimal exhibition, 1984)

figure 0.3 Jangarh Singh Shyam with his site-specific mural at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1989 Photograph: Prakash Hatvalne, courtesy the photographer

10

11

figure 1.8a (left) Untitled (Flowerpot) Poster colour on paper, Patangarh, 1981 Collection: Vivek and Jaya Vivek, Bhopal Photograph: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy the collectors

figure 1.8b (right) Untitled (Elephant Ride) Poster colour on paper, Patangarh, 1981 Collection: Vivek and Jaya Vivek, Bhopal Photograph: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy the collectors

plant, along with six birds, a monkey, a big cat, Hanuman again (wielding a mace and carrying the Dronagiri mountain) and a figure (torso and head) sporting what seems to be a bearskin hat (figures 1.8a–1.9).

On the strength of these paintings, Jangarh was invited to Bhopal, where Swaminathan, recognising his potential, created a job for him in Bharat Bhavan. In return for the regular pay cheque, all Jangarh was required to do was continue being an artist, and this is where he learnt printmaking, amidst various eminent visiting and resident artists.11 Artists the world over will recognise and appreciate the fortune Jangarh had in being privy to financial security, meagre though it may have been for a young man with a wife and two sisters to support (Tully 1992: 277), for, as a young boy, Jangarh had eloped with Nankusia, a girl from a neighbouring village, and had thus married as a teenager.

Swaminathan has quite rightly been credited with guiding and nurturing Jangarh’s inborn talent, and additionally, for creating working conditions that were favourable to the early growth of Jangarh’s artistry.

Acknowledgement of Swaminathan’s remarkable ability to recognise and encourage natural talent has frequently 26

overshadowed Vivek’s initial discernment of Jangarh’s potential.Vivek and others, such as his wife Jaya (a sculptor known as Jaya Vivek), Harchandan Singh Bhatty (then a student fresh out of art college and currently deputy director of Bharat Bhavan), Yusuf (formerly head of the printmaking department at Bharat Bhavan, known by his first name only), Mushtaq Khan (formerly archivist at Bharat Bhavan), and the artist and writer Akhilesh were all part of these collection efforts but were assigned

by Swaminathan to four-five different teams who were responsible for separate districts. Bhatty recalls that the guru had given them a set of instructions about how to approach the rural — and the tribal — people they encountered on such trips, as well as what not to do (interview with author, 2014). Notwithstanding such instructions, how to detect talent is not really something that can be taught and it is to Vivek’s credit that he was able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Swaminathan was astute in selecting recent art college graduates and young artists for such a task, for they undoubtedly brought a fresh lens to the process. They were also all — almost without exception — local to Madhya Pradesh and therefore already familiar with the state.

The Rediscovery of Indigenous Arts in India

figure 1.9

It is important to outline the cultural and political milieu in which Swaminathan’s team of researchers discovered Jangarh’s creative genius, for this encounter between Jangarh and Vivek, as well as Jangarh’s subsequent employment at Bharat Bhavan, were made possible by a number of factors.

Indeed, Jangarh’s work has sometimes seemed as though it emerged from a vacuum. In truth, a broad historical movement had begun to spread, which proved fortuitously conducive to the birth of Jangarh’s art, as we know it.

By 1981, there was already a precedent for the discovery of so-called folk and tribal arts, which — for a number of complex reasons — are increasingly referred to more broadly as indigenous arts (see Das 2014).

As early as 1934, in the Mithila region of Bihar, in north-eastern India, British colonial official William G. Archer was inspecting the aftermath of a disastrous earthquake, when he spotted stunning murals on interior domestic walls that had fallen down in the quake. These ritual murals were traditionally created to bless newlywed couples in the conjugal chamber, known as the kohbar ghar.

Although he photographed the murals, it was not until 1949 that Archer published an article about them in the Marg ¯ journal, read by cultural activist and writer Pupul Jayakar and several other like-minded people. By the mid1950s, there was wider interest in Archer’s discovery but it was in 1966–67, when the Mithila region was struck by a severe drought and was suffering from famine, that Jayakar, then chair of the Handloom Development Board and the Handloom and Handicrafts Export Corporation, hit upon the notion of asking Mithila’s women to start painting on paper regularly. Her idea was to create an urban art market for commercially saleable paintings, to provide the stricken families with an alternate source of income. The artist and researcher Bhaskar Kulkarni was dispatched to encourage the women in Mithila to transfer their ritual paintings to paper.12 The early proponents of Mithila painting included the wonderfully gifted Yamuna Devi, Sita Devi, Ganga Devi, Baua Devi, and Urmila Devi (only Baua and Urmila are still alive). Contemporary Mithila art on paper ranges from traditional kohbar ghar compositions to socially engaged commentary, the latter often with a strong feminist focus.

Indeed, myriad groups in the region tackle a wide spectrum of subjects that include myths and local legends.

Untitled (Hanuman with the Dronagiri Mountain and Sanjeevani Plant).

This work is an iteration of Jangarh’s Patangarh painting on paper of Hanuman.

Poster colour on paper, Bhopal, circa 1981 Collection: Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal Photograph courtesy Harchandan Singh Bhatty and the museum

In 1969, roughly two years after Mithila art’s initial transfer to paper, Lalit Kala Akademi’s researchers began to prepare for an exhibition of votive offerings and icons, in the national capital. One must bear in mind that India, during this period of post-Independence, was still grappling with issues of cultural identity and aesthetic coherence, especially as these related to the conditions of modernity and contemporaneity; as a young nation, it was also seeking national art parameters. The Akademi’s researchers travelled extensively across the modern nation-state of India, to collect objects and gather knowledge about little-known aesthetic traditions, in the process realising that there was an urgent need for their systematic documentation and study.

So the following year, a policy was formed to fulfil this need, written into the Fourth Five-Year Plan (a national planning document, which factored in policies for the arts).13 Within the structure of such efforts, again, it was Bhaskar Kulkarni who encouraged mural painters in the Warli community of Maharashtra, western India, to transfer their ritual paintings onto paper.

As in Mithila, among the Warli tribal people, it was the women who traditionally created murals to celebrate marriages and festivals, especially the former.Yet here, very quickly, it was a male painter, Jivya Soma Mashe, who rose to prominence for creating detailed, entrancing paintings that had, in effect, departed from the ritually codified visual tableaus habitually created by his community’s women.

Mashe was an exception. As a young child, he had lost his mother and when abandoned by his family, he retreated 27

figure 1.8a (left) Untitled (Flowerpot) Poster colour on paper, Patangarh, 1981 Collection: Vivek and Jaya Vivek, Bhopal Photograph: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy the collectors

figure 1.8b (right) Untitled (Elephant Ride) Poster colour on paper, Patangarh, 1981 Collection: Vivek and Jaya Vivek, Bhopal Photograph: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy the collectors

plant, along with six birds, a monkey, a big cat, Hanuman again (wielding a mace and carrying the Dronagiri mountain) and a figure (torso and head) sporting what seems to be a bearskin hat (figures 1.8a–1.9).

On the strength of these paintings, Jangarh was invited to Bhopal, where Swaminathan, recognising his potential, created a job for him in Bharat Bhavan. In return for the regular pay cheque, all Jangarh was required to do was continue being an artist, and this is where he learnt printmaking, amidst various eminent visiting and resident artists.11 Artists the world over will recognise and appreciate the fortune Jangarh had in being privy to financial security, meagre though it may have been for a young man with a wife and two sisters to support (Tully 1992: 277), for, as a young boy, Jangarh had eloped with Nankusia, a girl from a neighbouring village, and had thus married as a teenager.

Swaminathan has quite rightly been credited with guiding and nurturing Jangarh’s inborn talent, and additionally, for creating working conditions that were favourable to the early growth of Jangarh’s artistry.

Acknowledgement of Swaminathan’s remarkable ability to recognise and encourage natural talent has frequently 26

overshadowed Vivek’s initial discernment of Jangarh’s potential.Vivek and others, such as his wife Jaya (a sculptor known as Jaya Vivek), Harchandan Singh Bhatty (then a student fresh out of art college and currently deputy director of Bharat Bhavan), Yusuf (formerly head of the printmaking department at Bharat Bhavan, known by his first name only), Mushtaq Khan (formerly archivist at Bharat Bhavan), and the artist and writer Akhilesh were all part of these collection efforts but were assigned

by Swaminathan to four-five different teams who were responsible for separate districts. Bhatty recalls that the guru had given them a set of instructions about how to approach the rural — and the tribal — people they encountered on such trips, as well as what not to do (interview with author, 2014). Notwithstanding such instructions, how to detect talent is not really something that can be taught and it is to Vivek’s credit that he was able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Swaminathan was astute in selecting recent art college graduates and young artists for such a task, for they undoubtedly brought a fresh lens to the process. They were also all — almost without exception — local to Madhya Pradesh and therefore already familiar with the state.

The Rediscovery of Indigenous Arts in India

figure 1.9

It is important to outline the cultural and political milieu in which Swaminathan’s team of researchers discovered Jangarh’s creative genius, for this encounter between Jangarh and Vivek, as well as Jangarh’s subsequent employment at Bharat Bhavan, were made possible by a number of factors.

Indeed, Jangarh’s work has sometimes seemed as though it emerged from a vacuum. In truth, a broad historical movement had begun to spread, which proved fortuitously conducive to the birth of Jangarh’s art, as we know it.

By 1981, there was already a precedent for the discovery of so-called folk and tribal arts, which — for a number of complex reasons — are increasingly referred to more broadly as indigenous arts (see Das 2014).

As early as 1934, in the Mithila region of Bihar, in north-eastern India, British colonial official William G. Archer was inspecting the aftermath of a disastrous earthquake, when he spotted stunning murals on interior domestic walls that had fallen down in the quake. These ritual murals were traditionally created to bless newlywed couples in the conjugal chamber, known as the kohbar ghar.

Although he photographed the murals, it was not until 1949 that Archer published an article about them in the Marg ¯ journal, read by cultural activist and writer Pupul Jayakar and several other like-minded people. By the mid1950s, there was wider interest in Archer’s discovery but it was in 1966–67, when the Mithila region was struck by a severe drought and was suffering from famine, that Jayakar, then chair of the Handloom Development Board and the Handloom and Handicrafts Export Corporation, hit upon the notion of asking Mithila’s women to start painting on paper regularly. Her idea was to create an urban art market for commercially saleable paintings, to provide the stricken families with an alternate source of income. The artist and researcher Bhaskar Kulkarni was dispatched to encourage the women in Mithila to transfer their ritual paintings to paper.12 The early proponents of Mithila painting included the wonderfully gifted Yamuna Devi, Sita Devi, Ganga Devi, Baua Devi, and Urmila Devi (only Baua and Urmila are still alive). Contemporary Mithila art on paper ranges from traditional kohbar ghar compositions to socially engaged commentary, the latter often with a strong feminist focus.

Indeed, myriad groups in the region tackle a wide spectrum of subjects that include myths and local legends.

Untitled (Hanuman with the Dronagiri Mountain and Sanjeevani Plant).

This work is an iteration of Jangarh’s Patangarh painting on paper of Hanuman.

Poster colour on paper, Bhopal, circa 1981 Collection: Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal Photograph courtesy Harchandan Singh Bhatty and the museum

In 1969, roughly two years after Mithila art’s initial transfer to paper, Lalit Kala Akademi’s researchers began to prepare for an exhibition of votive offerings and icons, in the national capital. One must bear in mind that India, during this period of post-Independence, was still grappling with issues of cultural identity and aesthetic coherence, especially as these related to the conditions of modernity and contemporaneity; as a young nation, it was also seeking national art parameters. The Akademi’s researchers travelled extensively across the modern nation-state of India, to collect objects and gather knowledge about little-known aesthetic traditions, in the process realising that there was an urgent need for their systematic documentation and study.

So the following year, a policy was formed to fulfil this need, written into the Fourth Five-Year Plan (a national planning document, which factored in policies for the arts).13 Within the structure of such efforts, again, it was Bhaskar Kulkarni who encouraged mural painters in the Warli community of Maharashtra, western India, to transfer their ritual paintings onto paper.

As in Mithila, among the Warli tribal people, it was the women who traditionally created murals to celebrate marriages and festivals, especially the former.Yet here, very quickly, it was a male painter, Jivya Soma Mashe, who rose to prominence for creating detailed, entrancing paintings that had, in effect, departed from the ritually codified visual tableaus habitually created by his community’s women.

Mashe was an exception. As a young child, he had lost his mother and when abandoned by his family, he retreated 27

IMAGES I by

J AN G ARH SIN G H SHYAM from the

CRITES COLLECTION Photographs by Robyn Beeche and Abhinav Goswami

40

41

IMAGES I by

J AN G ARH SIN G H SHYAM from the

CRITES COLLECTION Photographs by Robyn Beeche and Abhinav Goswami

40

41

figure 1.15

Seegra Khet Mein Scarecrow in the Field Ink on paper 1989, 38 x 28 cm JSS-1989-010

42

figure 1.16

Bade Dev The Great God Ink on paper 1990, 35.5 x 28 cm JSS-1990-012

43

figure 1.15

Seegra Khet Mein Scarecrow in the Field Ink on paper 1989, 38 x 28 cm JSS-1989-010

42

figure 1.16

Bade Dev The Great God Ink on paper 1990, 35.5 x 28 cm JSS-1990-012

43

figure 1.24 figure 1.23

Sanpharki Sanp

Untitled

Sanpharki, winged snake

(Snakes, birds and insects in the grass)

Ink on paper 1991, 35.5 x 28 cm JSS-1991-012

Ink on paper circa 1992–95, 35.5 x 28 cm JSS-005

50

51

figure 1.24 figure 1.23

Sanpharki Sanp

Untitled

Sanpharki, winged snake

(Snakes, birds and insects in the grass)

Ink on paper 1991, 35.5 x 28 cm JSS-1991-012

Ink on paper circa 1992–95, 35.5 x 28 cm JSS-005

50

51

figure 2.14

Ratmai Murkhudi Murkhudi, Mother of the Night Ink on paper 1993, 56 x 38.5 cm JSS-1993-003

90

figure 2.15

Ban Manse Forest Man, or Chimpanzee Ink on paper 1993, 56 x 38.2 cm JSS-1992-015

91

figure 2.14

Ratmai Murkhudi Murkhudi, Mother of the Night Ink on paper 1993, 56 x 38.5 cm JSS-1993-003

90

figure 2.15

Ban Manse Forest Man, or Chimpanzee Ink on paper 1993, 56 x 38.2 cm JSS-1992-015

91

In addition to the word ‘beej’, these artists believed that Jangarh’s deity may relate to Bidri because, as they put it, “The figure and movement here recalls the way that Jangarh showed Thakur Dev and Bada Dev [both major deities].

If there were any other kind of Thakur Dev, then this is how Jangarh would have shown the deity. [Our deities may be formless but] the feeling, the conception matches” (interview with author, 2016). That the Pardhan-Gond artists should be able to relate concepts of the deities as described in oral traditions with Jangarh’s visual depictions is fascinating, and lends some credence to Vajpeyi’s theory.

It is not just the feeling and conception of Gond deities that Jangarh tried to capture, though perhaps it is no accident that of all Hindu deities, Jangarh most often depicted Hanuman (the monkey-god), Ganesh (the elephant-headed deity) and Shiv (whose symbolism includes the snake and whose manifestations include Pashupatinath, the protector of all creatures in the animal world), reflecting Jangarh’s attraction to zoomorphism.4 It is worth recalling that it is, of course, due to a mural painting of Hanuman that Jangarh’s talent was first noted in Patangarh. He would make several paintings of Hanuman throughout his career. In an ink drawing, Jangarh figuratively shows Hanuman as a Hindu deity, following the traditional Hindu iconography, i.e. without a hint of any elements that may be recognisably derived from Gond mythology (Crites Collection JSS-1990-014). Flying with his tail extended behind him, Hanuman wears anklets, kneelength lower garments (with the piece of cloth that hangs between the legs fluttering behind), armlets, bracelets, an upper garment, necklace and a crown (since he is a prince of the monkeys). In one hand, Hanuman carries a mace and in the other, he supports Dronagiri, the sacred mountain of herbs, since he does not know how to identify on it the medicinal, life-restoring herb sanjeevani (scientific name: Selaginella bryopteris), which he is tasked with bringing back in order to revive Lakshman, brother of the exiled king Ram in the epic Ramayana. So, while the form above Hanuman might look like an ethereal cloud, in fact, it is a mountain and it is the forms below Hanuman that are likely to be clouds. Note that sanjeevani, which literally translates to ‘one that infuses life’, has apparently been used as a traditional remedy, especially by tribal peoples.

Jangarh, with his knowledge about plants and trees, may well have been aware of this. In some myths, the wind god 118

Vayu is said to have been responsible for Hanuman’s birth, so some consider Hanuman as Vayu’s son, in which case the mace Hanuman carries gains significance, given that Vayu’s other son, the Pandava Bhim, also carries a mace.

This is a common enough composition among artists of myriad genres, including popular illustrators, such as those employed by children’s comic books.

When Jangarh regularly illustrated Chakmak, a semididactic children’s publication brought out by the Eklavya Foundation in Bhopal (1985 onwards), while retaining his distinctive idiom, he also adapted it to incorporate ‘illustrative’ elements, making it more suitable for narrative, since it was designed to ‘illustrate’ and ‘illuminate’ a text. So, such an image of Hanuman could have easily been found in a children’s magazine such as the hugely successful Amar Chitra Katha, which popularised Hindu and even — on occasion — indigenous mythology.

Several works by Jangarh variously feature Shaivite symbols, including, in this collection, JSS-1989-001 and JSS-1991-006 and in a work titled Shiv (figure 3.22, Crites Collection JSS-1989-006). The Shaivite symbols he used to interpret the Hindu god of dissolution ranged from a trishul (trident), which in its turn symbolises triads (e.g. temporal: past, present and future or creation, preservation and destruction/dissolution); the linga (male phallic symbol) by itself or merged with the yoni (vulva), which symbolises female deities’ procreative powers and in particular, Devi or Shakti, Shiv’s consort and the mother goddess in Hindu philosophy; the dumroo (hand-held drum with which Shiv is said to have created primordial sound) and the snake, which Shiv wears coiled around his neck three times, possibly symbolising Shiv’s power, temporal triads, as well as regeneration. In a silkscreen print by Jangarh titled Siva (figure 3.3, British Museum 1988,0209,0.7), Shiv’s figure is obscured by a coiled snake, his forehead smeared with the three sacred lines; also featured is a faint suggestion of the river goddess Ganga (the Ganges) spouting from his jata (top-knot), whose force Shiv stems; and his trident by his side, to which his dumroo is tied. This print is zoomorphic, dominated by the snake; Shiv’s face almost pales in comparison to the serpentine form.

In the most striking interpretation of Shiv in the Crites Collection titled Shiv Shesh Nag (figure 3.23, Shiv and Shesh Nag, the many-headed king of the snakes, Crites Collection JSS-1990-006), Jangarh creates a dominant figure in the

centre, which appears all the more powerful due to its symmetry. Legs astride, cut off at the thighs by the lower edge of the ‘frame’, arms stretched out in a strongman posture, with two chains dangling, one hand holds a trident and the other an axe, both Shiv’s attributes. The hooded, scaled snakehead is shown with tiny serpentine eyes, a marking on the forehead and instead of a forked tongue, a tripartite tongue, perhaps because Shiv is associated with triads.

The head includes large ears, and as such it is hard to say whether this is a zoomorphic Shiv or an anthropomorphic Shesh Nag cobra.This work is an excellent example of how Jangarh invested so many of his creatures with animism.

The snakes that float around this Shiv Shesh Nag appear to be radiating the deity’s energy. Without their tails, the snakeheads might have resembled avian heads, perhaps not quite as surprising as it might seem, given that birds’ ancestors were dinosaurs, which were at least part reptilian.

The bottom-most snake, which goes out of the frame and comes back in, demonstrates Jangarh’s compositional playfulness.

The two base colours — mud brown and yellow ochre — recall Jangarh’s early mural painting experiences, since both correspond to two of the five materials traditionally smeared on domestic walls by the Pardhan Gond, one of them being peeli mitti (yellow earth). It is not often that Jangarh used two base colours. This is also Jangarh’s pointillism at its best. Note the various colours he uses for the snakes: a dull brown, almost burnt umber, which provides a subtle foil for the brighter white, fuchsia, leaf green and the occasional cadmium red around the pupils, made brighter by placing the red dots on a white line. He also uses cadmium red along with white and yellow dots on a black base for the Shesh Nag’s body, repeating it again and this time combining it with white and Prussian blue dots for the chains dangling from Shiv’s arms. The same colour combination is repeated for the axe in Shiv’s right hand, and then again, with yellow added, for the tripartite tongue, the ears and the hood. Note how he switches the colours around, by applying cadmium red, yellow and white dots on a base of Prussian blue for the trident, displaying considerable dexterity as a colourist.

While one might argue that Jangarh was merely a brilliant colourist and a genius at pattern, clearly the other animistic elements here belie such a conclusion. Moreover, pattern here goes beyond the decorative, to ‘animate’ the

painting, making it pulsate with palpable energy to the point that it makes this work truly hypnotic. It is almost as though the dots are meant to be protons, neutrons and electrons, all combining to compose atoms, which in their turn create molecules, which lead, finally, to forms as we see them here. Such an evocation aptly reflects the god of ‘dissolution’, which extends beyond destruction to become a necessary stage in the cycle of regeneration.

figure 3.3 Siva Silkscreen on paper, circa 1982–88, 50 x 38 cm Collection: The British Museum 1988 0209,0.7 Photograph © The Trustees of The British Museum

119

In addition to the word ‘beej’, these artists believed that Jangarh’s deity may relate to Bidri because, as they put it, “The figure and movement here recalls the way that Jangarh showed Thakur Dev and Bada Dev [both major deities].

If there were any other kind of Thakur Dev, then this is how Jangarh would have shown the deity. [Our deities may be formless but] the feeling, the conception matches” (interview with author, 2016). That the Pardhan-Gond artists should be able to relate concepts of the deities as described in oral traditions with Jangarh’s visual depictions is fascinating, and lends some credence to Vajpeyi’s theory.

It is not just the feeling and conception of Gond deities that Jangarh tried to capture, though perhaps it is no accident that of all Hindu deities, Jangarh most often depicted Hanuman (the monkey-god), Ganesh (the elephant-headed deity) and Shiv (whose symbolism includes the snake and whose manifestations include Pashupatinath, the protector of all creatures in the animal world), reflecting Jangarh’s attraction to zoomorphism.4 It is worth recalling that it is, of course, due to a mural painting of Hanuman that Jangarh’s talent was first noted in Patangarh. He would make several paintings of Hanuman throughout his career. In an ink drawing, Jangarh figuratively shows Hanuman as a Hindu deity, following the traditional Hindu iconography, i.e. without a hint of any elements that may be recognisably derived from Gond mythology (Crites Collection JSS-1990-014). Flying with his tail extended behind him, Hanuman wears anklets, kneelength lower garments (with the piece of cloth that hangs between the legs fluttering behind), armlets, bracelets, an upper garment, necklace and a crown (since he is a prince of the monkeys). In one hand, Hanuman carries a mace and in the other, he supports Dronagiri, the sacred mountain of herbs, since he does not know how to identify on it the medicinal, life-restoring herb sanjeevani (scientific name: Selaginella bryopteris), which he is tasked with bringing back in order to revive Lakshman, brother of the exiled king Ram in the epic Ramayana. So, while the form above Hanuman might look like an ethereal cloud, in fact, it is a mountain and it is the forms below Hanuman that are likely to be clouds. Note that sanjeevani, which literally translates to ‘one that infuses life’, has apparently been used as a traditional remedy, especially by tribal peoples.

Jangarh, with his knowledge about plants and trees, may well have been aware of this. In some myths, the wind god 118

Vayu is said to have been responsible for Hanuman’s birth, so some consider Hanuman as Vayu’s son, in which case the mace Hanuman carries gains significance, given that Vayu’s other son, the Pandava Bhim, also carries a mace.

This is a common enough composition among artists of myriad genres, including popular illustrators, such as those employed by children’s comic books.

When Jangarh regularly illustrated Chakmak, a semididactic children’s publication brought out by the Eklavya Foundation in Bhopal (1985 onwards), while retaining his distinctive idiom, he also adapted it to incorporate ‘illustrative’ elements, making it more suitable for narrative, since it was designed to ‘illustrate’ and ‘illuminate’ a text. So, such an image of Hanuman could have easily been found in a children’s magazine such as the hugely successful Amar Chitra Katha, which popularised Hindu and even — on occasion — indigenous mythology.

Several works by Jangarh variously feature Shaivite symbols, including, in this collection, JSS-1989-001 and JSS-1991-006 and in a work titled Shiv (figure 3.22, Crites Collection JSS-1989-006). The Shaivite symbols he used to interpret the Hindu god of dissolution ranged from a trishul (trident), which in its turn symbolises triads (e.g. temporal: past, present and future or creation, preservation and destruction/dissolution); the linga (male phallic symbol) by itself or merged with the yoni (vulva), which symbolises female deities’ procreative powers and in particular, Devi or Shakti, Shiv’s consort and the mother goddess in Hindu philosophy; the dumroo (hand-held drum with which Shiv is said to have created primordial sound) and the snake, which Shiv wears coiled around his neck three times, possibly symbolising Shiv’s power, temporal triads, as well as regeneration. In a silkscreen print by Jangarh titled Siva (figure 3.3, British Museum 1988,0209,0.7), Shiv’s figure is obscured by a coiled snake, his forehead smeared with the three sacred lines; also featured is a faint suggestion of the river goddess Ganga (the Ganges) spouting from his jata (top-knot), whose force Shiv stems; and his trident by his side, to which his dumroo is tied. This print is zoomorphic, dominated by the snake; Shiv’s face almost pales in comparison to the serpentine form.

In the most striking interpretation of Shiv in the Crites Collection titled Shiv Shesh Nag (figure 3.23, Shiv and Shesh Nag, the many-headed king of the snakes, Crites Collection JSS-1990-006), Jangarh creates a dominant figure in the

centre, which appears all the more powerful due to its symmetry. Legs astride, cut off at the thighs by the lower edge of the ‘frame’, arms stretched out in a strongman posture, with two chains dangling, one hand holds a trident and the other an axe, both Shiv’s attributes. The hooded, scaled snakehead is shown with tiny serpentine eyes, a marking on the forehead and instead of a forked tongue, a tripartite tongue, perhaps because Shiv is associated with triads.

The head includes large ears, and as such it is hard to say whether this is a zoomorphic Shiv or an anthropomorphic Shesh Nag cobra.This work is an excellent example of how Jangarh invested so many of his creatures with animism.

The snakes that float around this Shiv Shesh Nag appear to be radiating the deity’s energy. Without their tails, the snakeheads might have resembled avian heads, perhaps not quite as surprising as it might seem, given that birds’ ancestors were dinosaurs, which were at least part reptilian.

The bottom-most snake, which goes out of the frame and comes back in, demonstrates Jangarh’s compositional playfulness.

The two base colours — mud brown and yellow ochre — recall Jangarh’s early mural painting experiences, since both correspond to two of the five materials traditionally smeared on domestic walls by the Pardhan Gond, one of them being peeli mitti (yellow earth). It is not often that Jangarh used two base colours. This is also Jangarh’s pointillism at its best. Note the various colours he uses for the snakes: a dull brown, almost burnt umber, which provides a subtle foil for the brighter white, fuchsia, leaf green and the occasional cadmium red around the pupils, made brighter by placing the red dots on a white line. He also uses cadmium red along with white and yellow dots on a black base for the Shesh Nag’s body, repeating it again and this time combining it with white and Prussian blue dots for the chains dangling from Shiv’s arms. The same colour combination is repeated for the axe in Shiv’s right hand, and then again, with yellow added, for the tripartite tongue, the ears and the hood. Note how he switches the colours around, by applying cadmium red, yellow and white dots on a base of Prussian blue for the trident, displaying considerable dexterity as a colourist.

While one might argue that Jangarh was merely a brilliant colourist and a genius at pattern, clearly the other animistic elements here belie such a conclusion. Moreover, pattern here goes beyond the decorative, to ‘animate’ the

painting, making it pulsate with palpable energy to the point that it makes this work truly hypnotic. It is almost as though the dots are meant to be protons, neutrons and electrons, all combining to compose atoms, which in their turn create molecules, which lead, finally, to forms as we see them here. Such an evocation aptly reflects the god of ‘dissolution’, which extends beyond destruction to become a necessary stage in the cycle of regeneration.

figure 3.3 Siva Silkscreen on paper, circa 1982–88, 50 x 38 cm Collection: The British Museum 1988 0209,0.7 Photograph © The Trustees of The British Museum

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Notes

figure 3.6 Tithee Red-wattled lapwing

1. When using the word ‘nature’, it should be clarified that there are

alternative title: Waterfowl and Snake Poster colour on paper, 1991, 55.8 x 70.9 cm Collection: Art Gallery New South Wales (AGNSW), 348.1993

In the hope that they will indeed grow always and provide shelter and sustenance to Jangarh’s myriad creatures, we offer you his Enchanted Forest, as we see it in his paintings and drawings from the Crites Collection, which collectively capture what Jangarh himself expressed so eloquently in the catalogue of Magiciens de la terre (quoted in Martin 1989: 231, translation mine): I was born in a community of Pardhan Gond. I passed my childhood in the company of mountains, forests dense with trees, birds, animals, insects and terrifying deities. I was both amazed and terrified.

My people had to rediscover this forest on the walls of their houses, in the form of clay reliefs and colours. This was done with the purpose of inviting deities onto our hearths. This is still a 126

21 March to 20–21 April in the Gregorian calendar.

two schools of thought, one that regards man as nature and the other

4. Whether Jangarh was familiar enough with Hindu mythology

that considers man and nature. Despite the validity of the former

to underline Shiv’s manifestation as Pashupatinath, is difficult to

school of thought, for our purpose here, nature is differentiated from

ascertain.

the human race.

Photograph courtesy AGNSW

3. The lunar month of Chaith, or Chaitra, corresponds roughly to 20–

5. It should be remembered that Jangarh’s titles, though always written

2. In 2006, Greg A. Hill, one of the three curators of Sakahàn, curated a

in Devanagari script, were oftentimes in the Gondi language, such as

one-man show of Norval Morisseau, an indigenous Canadian artist

with fanfa keeda. Fanfa is the Gondi word for grasshoppers, which in

who had intimate knowledge of, and deep pride in, the Anishinaabe

Hindi is jhingur. Many Pardhan Gond speak a dialect they call Thadi,

culture of Canada and the United States. The show, held at the

a mix of Gondi and Hindi, so that their conversation is peppered

National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, was titled Shaman Artist.

with words from both languages.

commonplace practice. I was so frightened of these deities that I thought I should try and represent them in forms that would be personal to me. I was trying to crystallise fear in the form of beauty.

This was the only way that I could relive my fear — in the form of raw vibrations — the tiger, the luxuriant banyan tree, the venomous insects in multiple colours, all coursing with the rivers of terror, love and beauty: I imagine them and I paint them. My ancestors painted in squares of black and white in our courtyards. Me, I use colours. I want to draw the figures of my desires, and I want to infuse them with my desires. For me, art and life are unceasing silences. Art penetrates life like an explosion of dance. I remember the forests. That memory makes me paint what I paint.

127

Notes

figure 3.6 Tithee Red-wattled lapwing

1. When using the word ‘nature’, it should be clarified that there are

alternative title: Waterfowl and Snake Poster colour on paper, 1991, 55.8 x 70.9 cm Collection: Art Gallery New South Wales (AGNSW), 348.1993

In the hope that they will indeed grow always and provide shelter and sustenance to Jangarh’s myriad creatures, we offer you his Enchanted Forest, as we see it in his paintings and drawings from the Crites Collection, which collectively capture what Jangarh himself expressed so eloquently in the catalogue of Magiciens de la terre (quoted in Martin 1989: 231, translation mine): I was born in a community of Pardhan Gond. I passed my childhood in the company of mountains, forests dense with trees, birds, animals, insects and terrifying deities. I was both amazed and terrified.

My people had to rediscover this forest on the walls of their houses, in the form of clay reliefs and colours. This was done with the purpose of inviting deities onto our hearths. This is still a 126

21 March to 20–21 April in the Gregorian calendar.

two schools of thought, one that regards man as nature and the other

4. Whether Jangarh was familiar enough with Hindu mythology

that considers man and nature. Despite the validity of the former

to underline Shiv’s manifestation as Pashupatinath, is difficult to

school of thought, for our purpose here, nature is differentiated from

ascertain.

the human race.

Photograph courtesy AGNSW

3. The lunar month of Chaith, or Chaitra, corresponds roughly to 20–

5. It should be remembered that Jangarh’s titles, though always written

2. In 2006, Greg A. Hill, one of the three curators of Sakahàn, curated a

in Devanagari script, were oftentimes in the Gondi language, such as

one-man show of Norval Morisseau, an indigenous Canadian artist

with fanfa keeda. Fanfa is the Gondi word for grasshoppers, which in

who had intimate knowledge of, and deep pride in, the Anishinaabe

Hindi is jhingur. Many Pardhan Gond speak a dialect they call Thadi,

culture of Canada and the United States. The show, held at the

a mix of Gondi and Hindi, so that their conversation is peppered

National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, was titled Shaman Artist.

with words from both languages.

commonplace practice. I was so frightened of these deities that I thought I should try and represent them in forms that would be personal to me. I was trying to crystallise fear in the form of beauty.

This was the only way that I could relive my fear — in the form of raw vibrations — the tiger, the luxuriant banyan tree, the venomous insects in multiple colours, all coursing with the rivers of terror, love and beauty: I imagine them and I paint them. My ancestors painted in squares of black and white in our courtyards. Me, I use colours. I want to draw the figures of my desires, and I want to infuse them with my desires. For me, art and life are unceasing silences. Art penetrates life like an explosion of dance. I remember the forests. That memory makes me paint what I paint.

127

figure 3.9

Bhatkatiya Jhad Yellow-fruit nightshade, scientific name: Solanum virginianum Ink on paper 1991, 26.7 x 21.7 cm JSS-1991-008

132

figure 3.10

Machhli Fish Ink on paper 1990, 56 x 35.5 cm JSS-1990-016

133

figure 3.9

Bhatkatiya Jhad Yellow-fruit nightshade, scientific name: Solanum virginianum Ink on paper 1991, 26.7 x 21.7 cm JSS-1991-008

132

figure 3.10

Machhli Fish Ink on paper 1990, 56 x 35.5 cm JSS-1990-016

133

figure 3.17

Barosur The Tiger God Poster colour on paper 1991, 71 x 54 cm JSS-1991-001 Note: This is an erroneous title, and ought to have read Bagheisur, which is an alternate name for the Gond tiger god, Bagh Dev

140

figure 3.18

Khurahi Dev The God Khurahi Poster colour on paper 1991, 71 x 56 cm JSS-1991-004

141

figure 3.17

Barosur The Tiger God Poster colour on paper 1991, 71 x 54 cm JSS-1991-001 Note: This is an erroneous title, and ought to have read Bagheisur, which is an alternate name for the Gond tiger god, Bagh Dev

140

figure 3.18

Khurahi Dev The God Khurahi Poster colour on paper 1991, 71 x 56 cm JSS-1991-004

141

figure 3.24

Sootee Oysters Poster colour on paper 1989, 75 x 102 cm JSS-1989-009 figure 3.23

Shiv Shesh Nag Shiv and Shesh Nag, the many-headed king of the snakes Poster colour on paper 1990, 152 x 150 cm JSS-1990-006

146

147