Paintings Reveal Influence of Kalighat Artists’ ‘World’

A current exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art sets one musing on contradictory impressions created by similar historical events. Why does the Spanish conquistadors’ takeover of pre-Columbian civilizations, for example, now play as epic tragedy, while Britain’s subjugation of India tends to be viewed as a kind of comedy of manners? Since the formula is entirely reversible, one is left a bit puzzled.

“Kalighat Painting: Images From a Changing World,” at LACMA, marks the first American exhibition of this crucial Indian artistic period of innovation. It reflects a moment when oppressors and oppressed strike an odd balance that can only be expressed with double-edged satire.

The exhibition presents some 130 works, unveiling an artistic style that arose spontaneously around 1830 in Calcutta. Then the political and cultural capital of the British raj, the cosmopolitan center attracted droves of European tourists and indigenous religious pilgrims. They, in turn, magnetized itinerant artists from the hinterlands who hoped to turn a penny profit making souvenirs.

They congregated around the city’s temple of Kalighat, since it attracted travelers both secular and devout. Wares were hawked from stalls offering painted clay figures that we might mistake for shooting-gallery prizes and paintings that could be taken for religious kitsch. In present-day terms, these guys were transforming folk art into popular art.

At first, imagery was based on the traditional iconography of Indian deities. Kali, the ferocious, black-tongued, multi-armed goddess of intertwined creation and destruction, sold well. Visitors liked seeing mighty gods like Shiva, Parvati and her elephant-headed offspring Ganesha depicted as regular earthy folks--prototypes of the Flintstones.

What they liked even better, as matters developed, was sensation, topical commentary, sex and satire. Soon artists were doing brisk business with images of Bibis--foppish young upscale Indians who melded the latest in British and native sartorial finery, lounged about smoking dope in hookahs and consorted with pimps, courtesans, prostitutes and actresses while generally behaving like characters out of “La Dolce Vita.” Kalighat artists had a field day with all of it.

The apogee of this tabloid aesthetic were series devoted to an 1873 murder scandal. The titillating scenario involved the seduction of a young married woman by the head priest of her temple. When the cuckolded husband discovered the wife’s infidelity, he hacked off her head. The priest, sworn to celibacy and vegetarianism, got life. In its sensationalism it was the O.J. Simpson trial of its day.

Since all of this could easily be interpreted as a masked protest against the corrosive effects of British rule, one has to wonder how the artists got away with it.

A colored woodcut titled “Sahib and Memsahib on a Paddle Wheel Boat” depicts a couple of ever-so-smarmy bearers of the White Man’s Burden on a Ganges cruise, accompanied by an armed guard. How did the Kalighat artists get away suggesting the British colonizers were unpopular?

I think it’s because the work looks so, well, naive. It’s easy to imagine the Colonel of Blimp thinking, “Such simple, sweet little Gunga Dins. Don’t mean any harm, you know, just can’t draw any better.” Kalighat art is a rather slap-dash affair. Artisans faced competition from technologically advanced woodcuts and lithographs. Even more threatening were the oleographs--chromolithographs that imitated the look of oil paintings. To keep abreast, the hand-workers developed variable prototypes and printed outlines that could be quickly hand-colored. Form tends to be flat and poster-like excepting double outlines suggesting the same kind of tubular modeling seen in classic Indian sculpture. Depicted images bear an odd lack of considered relationship to the paper on which they rest.

Yet, in sum, the Kalighat phenomenon breathed exceptional freshness into South Asian art. The exhibition acknowledges the work’s influence on indigenous Modernism through such native pioneers as Jamini Roy. As one wanders through the show, some works bear a striking resemblance to Cubism. Depictions of multi-headed and multi-armed deities hint at Futurist movement. Tubular rendition of limbs foreshadow Fernand Leger and a decorative-map building tinkles of Paul Klee. These resemblances were either an extraordinary coincidence, or Modernism paid more attention to Indian art than generally acknowledged.

The exhibition was organized by LACMA, curated by Stephen Markel, and comes with an informative if somewhat repetitious catalog by Indian art scholar Jyotindra Jain.

* “Kalighat Painting: Images From a Changing World,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., through Aug. 30, closed Wednesdays. (323) 857-6000.