How can we use our creative imagination to visualise the invisible and bring the drama of the stories of myths beyond our senses to be dazzled? Create paintings with gold and precious gems and colours? Make the Gods give us darshan and also look at us with stoic eyes?
The paintings of the Thanjavur style have all this more. They are mini temples that offer aesthetic pleasure tinged with worship.
Kuldip Singh, a sardar from New Delhi goes all the way to Mysuru to visit Bidaram Krishnappa Rama Mandira (it has hosted classical music concerts of stalwarts like Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar, Mysore Vasudevachar, Madurai Mani Iyer, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer and others) just to gaze at the spectacular repository of traditional Mysure and Thanjavur styles of paintings on its walls. Of the more than 45 paintings of different sizes and styles, his attention is drawn to the Mysuru style painting of the Goddess Chamundeswari, one of Krishna done in the Thanjavur style and portraits of several legendary musicians in watercolour and in oil.
Kuldip Singh now has more than 350 paintings of Thanjavur and Mysuru styles in his personal collection. “Thanjavur paintings encompass Hinduism’s three sacred entities in a single graphic frame,” Kuldip Singh explains in Thanjavur’s Gilded Gods, a coffee-table book brought out based on his collection. “The sthala — the place where the deity manifests, the parikramas and the immovable image — the deity enshrined in the Garbha Griha.”
Concentric circles
The temple of Sri Ranganatha in Srirangam is magnificent. The seven concentric enclosures with Sri Ranganatha’s Garbha Griha with the deity reclining on the coils of the five-hooded serpent Adisesha. On a cloud floating above him is his devotee, Vibhishana, who legend says, brought the image from Ayodhya. There are details of smaller shrines, gardens and granaries all rendered painstakingly.
A painting of Sri Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangapattana can be compared to this. This painting depicts the temple in its urban context among fields, choultries and smaller shrines. Both branches of the Cauvery at the top and at the bottom of the painting and the bridge across are clearly shown.
The artistic output of South India between the mid-18th and the beginning of the 20th century, with its beautiful wall paintings, superb icons and skilfully executed wood carvings depicting gods and goddesses needs to be noted with as much seriousness as the 10th century Chola icons. Our recent history in artistic creations needs our attention too, emphasises Kuldip Singh.
The production of a painting in earlier days was not a single artist’s work. Individuals specialising in drawing, busywork, gesso work, gold leaf application, bead work, finishing, etc., contributed their skills in a well-coordinated and dedicated manner to produce a single painting of the Thanjavur style. No other genre of Indian painting boasts such a profuse use of gold leaf and its variants.
Embedment of glass beads, semi-precious stones, fragmented mirrors, tinsel, etc., along with gesso work (a hard compound of plaster of paris or whiting in glue, used in sculpture or as a base for gilding or painting on wood or paper) produce a highly textured surface, akin to the divine sculptures chiselled in bas relief on temple walls and pillars.
This assemblage of a large variety of materials contributes to — in fact ensures — the deterioration of a painting and its ultimate demise in a short period of time with different materials responding differently to the atmospheric variations of temperature and moisture, leading to the development of cracks, flaking, loss of beads, separation of metallic foil and loss of adhesion but the Thanjavur artists do not seem to be concerned with the short life of their works. The impermanence of the material world, it seems, is metaphorically implicit in the self-destructive nature of the Thanjavur icons. It is no surprise that the act of disposal of a damaged icon is termed visarjana — the ceremonial immersion in water. The Mysuru style of paintings are a little subdued and use more delicate hues and softer brush strokes and discreet use of bright colours. Devi Chamundeswari is a favourite theme of Mysuru paintings. Thanjavur Gilded Gods provides a feast of reading material on the historical, political, artistic and contemporary creations in Kuldip Singh’s personal collections.
The author is a cultural activist and a Gandhi scholar
