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Indepth Arts News:
"Kalighat Paintings of Calcutta"
1999-06-10 until 1999-08-30
Los Angeles County Museum
Los Angeles, CA,
USA United States of America
Calcutta in the nineteenth century was a dynamic, cosmopolitan city.
It was not only the political capital of British India, but also the
leading intellectual and cultural center of India. Several disparate art
styles were practiced simultaneously in Calcutta during this period,
including Western oil paintings, graphics, watercolors, and
photography by British and Continental artists, Western-style works
by classically trained Indian artists, traditional Hindu and Islamic
works of art, and the dramatic watercolor paintings sold in the
bazaars near the revered temple of the goddess Kali in the Kalighat
area of south Calcutta. Of all the art forms current in Calcutta,
Kalighat painting was the most innovative and had the strongest
influence on later generations of South Asian artists.
Images from a Changing World: Kalighat Paintings of Calcutta
presents the rich milieu of Kalighat painting in three thematic
sections: The Art of Nineteenth-Century Calcutta discusses the
various contemporary arts relevant to the formation of Kalighat
painting. The World of Kalighat Painting provides a topical overview
of the wide range of Kalighat subject matter organized into religious,
historical, genre, and social commentary images. The Kalighat
Legacy reveals the substantial effect Kalighat painting had on later
South Asian artists in terms of theme, style, and freedom from
convention.
The Art of Nineteenth-Century Calcutta
In 1773 Calcutta was made the capital of British India. Not only did
entrepreneurs and adventurers flock to Calcutta, but also architects
and professional artists seeking patronage, such as William Devis
(1762-1822). Exhibitions of oil paintings by visiting European artists
and the plenitude of Western prints and drawings available for sale in
the bazaars introduced a new artistic world to the Indian artists,
merchants, and affluent landowners who were drawn to Calcutta.
With the breakdown of traditional patronage opportunities caused by
the decline of the Mughal empire, some Indian court artists moved to
Calcutta, where they were often reduced by economic necessity to
sell their works in the bazaars alongside lesser trained artists.
Possessed of a high degree of skill, they were able to adapt their
traditional Mughal style to the desire of British and European patrons
for works displaying naturalistic drawing, shading, and perspective.
A subsection of the exhibition entitled Myriad Visions examines the
artistic interaction between the Kalighat painters and other artists
and traditions. The challenge South Asian artists of all periods have
faced is how to express artistic genius while portraying traditional
subjects bound by iconographic prescription and regional style.
Kalighat artists looked for inspiration not only to earlier existing
works within their rich Bengali cultural heritage and contemporary art
forms being practiced elsewhere in Calcutta, but to works made in
other media and regions as well. Far from slavishly imitating the
earlier or foreign forms, however, Kalighat artists created dynamic
new interpretations of religious subjects that, nevertheless, remained
within the broad confines of the heterogeneous Kalighat visual canon.
Myriad Visions contrasts a number of cross-cultural depictions of
deities to suggest the significant degree of artistic exchange or
borrowing that transpired between the Kalighat painters and the
Calcutta art world.>Stylistically, Kalighat painting primarily developed out of the Bengali
tradition of narrative scroll painting, which was condensed and
stripped of nonessentials to produce images quickly, and thereby
better exploit the burgeoning market opportunities in the Calcutta
bazaars. At first, images of Hindu deities and myths were the leading
subjects, but by the middle of the nineteenth century the Kalighat
artists began to be concerned with portraying the world around them.
Contemporary newsworthy figures and genre images were depicted,
and social issues were commented upon in satirical and
metaphorical images, much in the same fashion as the popular
literature of the age.
Images from a Changing World: Kalighat Paintings of Calcutta
presents the rich milieu of Kalighat painting in three thematic
sections: The Art of Nineteenth-Century Calcutta discusses the
various contemporary arts relevant to the formation of Kalighat
painting. The World of Kalighat Painting provides a topical overview
of the wide range of Kalighat subject matter organized into religious,
historical, genre, and social commentary images. The Kalighat
Legacy reveals the substantial effect Kalighat painting had on later
South Asian artists in terms of theme, style, and freedom from
convention.
The Art of Nineteenth-Century Calcutta
In 1773 Calcutta was made the capital of British India. Not only did
entrepreneurs and adventurers flock to Calcutta, but also architects
and professional artists seeking patronage, such as William Devis
(1762-1822). Exhibitions of oil paintings by visiting European artists
and the plenitude of Western prints and drawings available for sale in
the bazaars introduced a new artistic world to the Indian artists,
merchants, and affluent landowners who were drawn to Calcutta.
With the breakdown of traditional patronage opportunities caused by
the decline of the Mughal empire, some Indian court artists moved to
Calcutta, where they were often reduced by economic necessity to
sell their works in the bazaars alongside lesser trained artists.
Possessed of a high degree of skill, they were able to adapt their
traditional Mughal style to the desire of British and European patrons
for works displaying naturalistic drawing, shading, and perspective.
A subsection of the exhibition entitled Myriad Visions examines the
artistic interaction between the Kalighat painters and other artists
and traditions. The challenge South Asian artists of all periods have
faced is how to express artistic genius while portraying traditional
subjects bound by iconographic prescription and regional style.
Kalighat artists looked for inspiration not only to earlier existing
works within their rich Bengali cultural heritage and contemporary art
forms being practiced elsewhere in Calcutta, but to works made in
other media and regions as well. Far from slavishly imitating the
earlier or foreign forms, however, Kalighat artists created dynamic
new interpretations of religious subjects that, nevertheless, remained
within the broad confines of the heterogeneous Kalighat visual canon.
Myriad Visions contrasts a number of cross-cultural depictions of
deities to suggest the significant degree of artistic exchange or
borrowing that transpired between the Kalighat painters and the
Calcutta art world.
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