India: Engima with Flowers…
Happy Holidays to everyone from Varanasi, India, Hinduism’s holiest city, sprawled along the West bank of the Ganges River. Varanasi (formerly Banares, from British times) —a city where Shiva (the Hindu Deity of destruction/renewal/transformation) is constantly worshipped—for many contains the archetypical Indian experience. The medieval old city is a network of alleys
populated by small temples, silk vendors, small restaurants, music academies, vedic astrologers, cows, goats, neighborhood water spouts, and garbage. The riverside, where pilgrims bathe, bodies are cremated and ashes scattered, and where people seeking salvation come to die, provides almost endless opportunities for contemplation of the meaning of life. When Mark Twain visited Varanasi, he wrote something to the effect of, “the Parthenon, the Coliseum…Varanasi is just as old and looks twice as ancient.” Walking through this city, the quintessential scents of India are upon you. It is truly amazing that the electricity works for the five or six brief hours a day that it does, and that the city has not been wiped out by plague in recent memory.
After nearly a month traveling (for recreation and photography) in the Rajasthan and Punjab states of northwest India, and to cities including Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaiselmer and Amritsar, research on contemporary spiritual art re-started here in Varanasi. On Sunday, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Dr. Anjan Chakraverty, who is a professor of Art History at Benares Hindu University and a talented painter working in what has been described as the Visionary tradition of spiritually-influenced art.
Dr. Chakraverty’s work—layers of pen sketch, watercolor, gouache, varnish, various techniques borrowed from printmaking, and embellished with miniaturist detail invoking Rajasthani artistic traditions, was a refreshing start to research in India. Hindu symbols are present to suggest or invoke, but the totality of the image tells a much more personal story of the individual’s spiritual journey, so the images of the Devi (Goddess) and the Saddhu (Wandering Seeker) are portrayed in metaphoric narration of the individual’s spiritual journey—scenes of meditation in the ivory tower isolated from a disarticulated nature (The Monastic Cage, 1999), the imprisonment by ritual symbols (Ritual Bound, 1999), and the dance of life interacting with nature (The Orchid Grove, 2004).
Chakraverty’s attention to naturalistic detail beyond the simple invocation of lotus flowers also reveals a sensitivity to life itself as the ultimate spiritual narrative. This sets Chakraverty closer to the great Indian mystic tradition of Rabindranath Tagore, who was highly attuned to the interdependence of the natural and human-made world, than to the Tantric or Iconic art with tendencies towards self-referential images. Central to this enterprise is Chakraverty’s intention to dissolve the specificity of symbols in the singular state of mind of love, peace, and passion…mystical ecstasy. Says Chakraverty, “This is the zone where spiritual aspirations bloom into the higher lotus out of which I find completion.”
The next stop is Calcutta (Kolkata post-independence), high-culture center of post-independence India where, Chakraverty declared, “they will die for art.” As the former British Imperial capital of India and the seat of the Indian independence movement, Calcutta promises to be a bastion of contradictions—high art and high rates of poverty alongside each other. Nearby is Shantinektan, where Tagore founded his university town—perhaps India’s “Princeton” is a good analogy. I plan to visit the Bela Academy of Art and Culture in Calcutta where Chakraverty has shown, and to follow a few more leads provided by Dr. Banerji and by Tawatchai Somkong as I spend Christmas in Calcutta.
That’s all for now. More on India travels and the road so far next time.
populated by small temples, silk vendors, small restaurants, music academies, vedic astrologers, cows, goats, neighborhood water spouts, and garbage. The riverside, where pilgrims bathe, bodies are cremated and ashes scattered, and where people seeking salvation come to die, provides almost endless opportunities for contemplation of the meaning of life. When Mark Twain visited Varanasi, he wrote something to the effect of, “the Parthenon, the Coliseum…Varanasi is just as old and looks twice as ancient.” Walking through this city, the quintessential scents of India are upon you. It is truly amazing that the electricity works for the five or six brief hours a day that it does, and that the city has not been wiped out by plague in recent memory.After nearly a month traveling (for recreation and photography) in the Rajasthan and Punjab states of northwest India, and to cities including Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaiselmer and Amritsar, research on contemporary spiritual art re-started here in Varanasi. On Sunday, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Dr. Anjan Chakraverty, who is a professor of Art History at Benares Hindu University and a talented painter working in what has been described as the Visionary tradition of spiritually-influenced art.
Dr. Chakraverty’s work—layers of pen sketch, watercolor, gouache, varnish, various techniques borrowed from printmaking, and embellished with miniaturist detail invoking Rajasthani artistic traditions, was a refreshing start to research in India. Hindu symbols are present to suggest or invoke, but the totality of the image tells a much more personal story of the individual’s spiritual journey, so the images of the Devi (Goddess) and the Saddhu (Wandering Seeker) are portrayed in metaphoric narration of the individual’s spiritual journey—scenes of meditation in the ivory tower isolated from a disarticulated nature (The Monastic Cage, 1999), the imprisonment by ritual symbols (Ritual Bound, 1999), and the dance of life interacting with nature (The Orchid Grove, 2004).
Chakraverty’s attention to naturalistic detail beyond the simple invocation of lotus flowers also reveals a sensitivity to life itself as the ultimate spiritual narrative. This sets Chakraverty closer to the great Indian mystic tradition of Rabindranath Tagore, who was highly attuned to the interdependence of the natural and human-made world, than to the Tantric or Iconic art with tendencies towards self-referential images. Central to this enterprise is Chakraverty’s intention to dissolve the specificity of symbols in the singular state of mind of love, peace, and passion…mystical ecstasy. Says Chakraverty, “This is the zone where spiritual aspirations bloom into the higher lotus out of which I find completion.”
The next stop is Calcutta (Kolkata post-independence), high-culture center of post-independence India where, Chakraverty declared, “they will die for art.” As the former British Imperial capital of India and the seat of the Indian independence movement, Calcutta promises to be a bastion of contradictions—high art and high rates of poverty alongside each other. Nearby is Shantinektan, where Tagore founded his university town—perhaps India’s “Princeton” is a good analogy. I plan to visit the Bela Academy of Art and Culture in Calcutta where Chakraverty has shown, and to follow a few more leads provided by Dr. Banerji and by Tawatchai Somkong as I spend Christmas in Calcutta.
That’s all for now. More on India travels and the road so far next time.
