John Guy, curator of the South & South East Asia section at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, was in Chennai recently to launch a book on Y.G. Srimathi, the Chennai-born artist who went on to make New York her home and who is now largely forgotten in India. The book, an extension of the retrospective that Guy curated for the Met in 2017, is an important addition to Indian art history, tracing the career of a female artist who grew up in the heady post-Independence years in a progressive family that encouraged her to dance, sing and paint.
Yet, rather than follow the distinctly avant-garde example of her predecessor Amrita Sher-Gil or the emerging Progressive Artists’ Group of Bombay, Srimathi looked back to the Ajanta and Ellora paintings, to the Bengal School, and to Indian epics and gods for her inspiration. She continued with these preoccupations even after moving to New York in 1963, where she stayed for the next 40 years. Guy’s fascination with Srimathi makes for an interesting conversation. Excerpts:
Srimathi’s ‘Mahakali’
What drew you first to Indian art?
I was a medievalist by training, and I became interested in Asia because of a classical dance teacher, the only Englishman recruited by Anna Pavlova, who toured India in the 20s and 30s. I first learnt about India from him whilst a teenage student of dance. Then, when working at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, I was appointed to the Indian section where I worked under the erudite Robert Skelton, who became my guru, so to speak.
John Guy
Why Srimathi?
My encounter with Srimathi was by chance. She died in 2007, a year before I joined the Met. In 2008, her husband Michael Pellettieri offered her rare musical instruments to the Met, and the curator of the department told me, purely in passing, “I believe she was also a painter”. Well, I met Pellettieri and discovered Srimathi’s paintings, many of which were with him in their tiny apartment. He also told me about the many diaries and notes stored in shoeboxes under their bed, from which we were able to piece together her story for this book.
Srimathi’s ‘Saraswati’.
Clearly, her work impressed you enough to arrange a retrospective at the Met.
Here was a young woman, highly proficient in all the classical arts — she played the veena, was trained in classical singing, gave lessons and performances, she danced Bharatanatyam — and she painted. She painted well enough to be featured in the very first post-Independence publication on Indian art to be published in Bombay in 1950 — Present-day Painters of India , by Manu Thacker and G. Venkatachalam. She was invited to present a solo show to inaugurate the opening of the Centenary Hall at Chennai’s Government Museum in 1952, where C. Rajagopalachari was the chief guest — she was still only in her 20s. Her second solo was in New Delhi in 1955, where Vice-President S. Radhakrishnan presided. I was initially struck by her subject matter and then by her technique — she was very proficient in watercolours, a notoriously difficult medium, over which she seemed to have perfect control. The specific catalyst for this book was an elderly friend of Srimathi’s in New York — they had met through the Vedanta Society in the 70s — who said to me, “It’s so sad that Srimathi is forgotten in India. I found that 20th-century art books don’t mention her at all. Let us correct that”.
Srimathi with Chief Minister C. Rajagopalachari at the opening of her first solo exhibition, Chennai, 1952.
Is it your own interest in ancient Indian art that draws you to her work?
Well, my interest is the ancient and medieval periods of Indian art history: I often say that my comfort zone is the first millennium. What drew me to Srimathi was that she was a product of a historical moment, the seismic transition from the independence struggle to Independence and its afterglow. The genesis of her art belongs to that moment. Srimathi belonged to a progressive, nationalist family. Her older brother Y.G. Doraisamy, a cultured patron of the arts, encouraged her in all she did. She sang bhajans for a series of rallies that Gandhi held in Chennai in 1946. Their house was frequented by the likes of sculptor Debi Prasad Roy Choudhury, Principal of the Madras School of Art, and C. Sivaramamurti, curator of the Madras Museum.
Srimathi accompanying Mahatma Gandhi at an independence rally in Chennai in 1946, where she sang the opening bhajans.
In art, the search for an indigenous style had begun with the Bengal school, led in turn by Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose. All this was influencing Srimathi. She was drawing on the Ajanta style to paint Hindu mythological themes. I thought here is an artist worth capturing.
Srimathi’s ‘Parasuram’.
If Srimathi is largely forgotten today, would you say that’s also because her style remained largely derivative and conservative?
Conservative, yes. That’s a valid point. But to use the art of the past as a stepping-off point for advancing one’s art is what all artists do. I came to admire her determination to celebrate Indian culture through her art. I think she became forgotten more because she moved to New York; because she was modest and not self-promoting, nor looking for fame or money. She was very reluctant to sell her works.
Srimathi with M.S. Subbulakshmi and Kalki Sadasivam in New York, 1966.
Does the Met’s revival of interest in Srimathi derive perhaps from a certain lingering Orientalism? Srimathi too seems stuck in a certain era…
I would say not. Srimathi’s choices were partly ideologically driven and partly artistically. She had a view of Indian culture and she drew upon sources like the myths and the Ajanta murals and used all this in her own way at a certain moment in history. She was not stuck — she knew what was going on here and in New York. At a time when abstract-expressionism ruled the world, when figurative and literal painters had gone profoundly out of fashion, she developed her work in her own way. That required a certain courage.
The artist at work in her New York studio.
When you look at the sensual, voluptuous female bodies she painted, or her fantastic bare-breasted Saraswati, do you think she was actually rather bold?
Yes, she challenged stereotypes. Her renderings of Saraswati, Shiva Gangadhara, Ekalavya, Parasurama are original reinventions of classical subjects. Her Thyagaraja embodies pure bhakti.
Given her background, she was an exceptional woman, I think. She didn’t have much money. She was earning her livelihood through performances and lessons. Much of her life she lived abroad on her own, travelling, living out of a suitcase. That’s pretty amazing.
She chose a hard path, driven by her art. She was curious and hungry to learn about the world. And she was at the vanguard of spreading Indian culture abroad at that time. Her story deserves to be told, and her place in 20th-century Indian art restored.
vaishna.r@thehindu.co.in
