Peaceful Abode
I spent January in and around Calcutta—City of Joy and India’s self-proclaimed cultural capital—learning about the West Bengal art scene and writing an article for Fine Art Magazine on the same. Calcutta is as close to a European (or rather, British) city that you’ll find in India owing to its Londonesque layout and architecture, and it was comfortable in many ways and perhaps too comfortable in some ways as well. I also purchased and equipped a 1999 Royal Enfield Bullet 350cc motorcycle (click for photo) which will serve as my main transportation for the remainder of my time in India. Realizing that my India voyage could easily slip away in a cloud of Calcutta art gallery openings, music festivals (both jazz and Indian classical music festivals in January), parking hassles, and the city’s notoriously polluted air, I took the bike on it’s “maiden” long (200km/132 mile)* ride last Sunday to reach Shantiniketan (Peaceful Abode), where Nobel Prize-winning poet and (later) painter Rabindranath Tagore founded his school and then university.
Shantiniketan was recommended as a stop on my trip by Tawatchai Somkong in Thailand who was the first Thai artist to study his MFA here. He was followed by his friend and co-publisher of Fine Art magazine, Alongkorn Lauwatthana, and then by a succession of Thai artists who continue to lend/add to the diversity of the Institute of Fine Arts (Kala Bhavana) at the Visva Bharati (Place where the World Will be One) University.
While Tagore is not a household name in the West, his influence in Indian, and particularly West Bengali thought, is immense. Tagore (1861-1941) was an internationally celebrated mystic, humanist, poet, composer, lyricist, singer, educator, playwright, novelist, and, later in life, founder and inspiration of the West Bengal school of painting, a naturalistic style with roots in the countryside of Bolpur. Though Tagore was born to a wealthy Calcutta family, his inspiration came from village life, and his school was designed to revive the forest ashram tradition in education. Tagore and Rudolph Steiner probably could be discussed in parallel as sources of enlightened thought and writings that influence successive generations of progressive thinkers, and whose appreciation of the interdependence of humans and their natural environment stood out. The first Nobel Laureate in Asia, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his book of poems “Gitanjali” (Song Offering), his first work published in English in 1912. Knighted by the King of England in 1915, he renounced the title in 1919 in protest over a British Army massacre of peaceful protesters in Amritsar. At age 70, Tagore’s first exhibition of paintings was held in Paris and then throughout the continent.
The University he founded is also where I had the pleasure of finding Dr. Janak Jhankarnarzary, Chair of the Dept. of Art History and a talented sculptor whose work is very much in line with the Spiros Project’s line of inqury.
Let me backtrack for just a minute to explain that India’s contemporary art world is booming, and Calcutta is one of the centers of the boom. Fueled by a rapidly growing economy and newfound interest among investors, India has joined the world stage of nations with a significant fine art presence at auction and in the homes of collectors. A new generation of “art investors” have joined established collectors to propel India’s current generation of artists to newfound fame and art prices to new highs. In this Go-Go environment, Indian contemporary art is becoming less different from the rest of the world—more abstract, and more commercially aware. In this environment, the number of artists with a genuine interest in spirituality appears to be shrinking.
With this backdrop, it was a great relief to meet Dr. Jhankarnarzary, whose unique sculptural works elegantly reveal an authentic spiritual inquiry centered around the translation of primordial space into unique physical manifestations. By primordial space I refer to the vastness of the infinite, out of which (in Vedic and non-dual spiritual traditions) phenomena and physical forms arise. Janak approaches these questions beginning with the OM- the original cosmic vibration/ sound that, in Vedic philosophy, forms and attunes matter with the basic point of origin. This orientation developed studying Hindu philosophy as an undergraduate, and his sculptural works have successively tackled the difficult task(s) of exploring the vital force of life (a theme throughout his work); situating the human consciousness in the vastness of the infinite; exploring the dichotomy and power imbalance between the human and Divine aspects of the feminine; and exploring the five elemental forces.
These two earlier pieces- both from the 1970s- deal directly with the question of situating the human consciousness in a vast space out of which all phenomena arise. I find the treatment of the limits of human vision very interesting in the first. The second is more conceptual, perhaps, focusing more on the way that events arise out of this vastness.
This third image is from work on the Divine Feminine from the early 1990s. One might raise the question of whether a male artist should approach this theme so directly, but I think the observation is an honest one, at least, and the work interesting.
Finally, two pieces that say something about the life force itself through pretty innovative installations. Janak explained that on the first day(s) of the exhibition in which these pieces were shown, he watered the (dry) seeds that comprise the outer ring. By about the seventh day of the exhibition, they had sprouted and the pieces were, literally, filled with life.
The honest exploration and depth of Janak's gentle, whimsical, and non-didactic inquiry leads me to think of his work as adhering to a Karmic tradition-- in the sense that none of these works refers to the details or "facts" of a particular religious narrative, but all of them help the viewer better understand some of the elemental forces of the universe and shed light on basic questions of existence. After a bit of a hiatus from spiritually-focused art, Janak was a great find. Specifics from his interview will be posted shortly in the artists' directory.
So...now in South India, Pondicherry to be specific, and set to begin meeting artists here tomorrow. There may be at least a few new updates in the coming weeks...hopefully they will cheer your February.
_________________
*For those of you unimpressed by this description of a “long”ride, a note: 132 miles on Indian highways took about 4 ½ hours. Average cruising speed of around 37 mph, falling to 5mph often. Sketchy road conditions, dodging oncoming traffic and the occasional cow, and recently re-built engine limiting speed.
Shantiniketan was recommended as a stop on my trip by Tawatchai Somkong in Thailand who was the first Thai artist to study his MFA here. He was followed by his friend and co-publisher of Fine Art magazine, Alongkorn Lauwatthana, and then by a succession of Thai artists who continue to lend/add to the diversity of the Institute of Fine Arts (Kala Bhavana) at the Visva Bharati (Place where the World Will be One) University.
While Tagore is not a household name in the West, his influence in Indian, and particularly West Bengali thought, is immense. Tagore (1861-1941) was an internationally celebrated mystic, humanist, poet, composer, lyricist, singer, educator, playwright, novelist, and, later in life, founder and inspiration of the West Bengal school of painting, a naturalistic style with roots in the countryside of Bolpur. Though Tagore was born to a wealthy Calcutta family, his inspiration came from village life, and his school was designed to revive the forest ashram tradition in education. Tagore and Rudolph Steiner probably could be discussed in parallel as sources of enlightened thought and writings that influence successive generations of progressive thinkers, and whose appreciation of the interdependence of humans and their natural environment stood out. The first Nobel Laureate in Asia, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his book of poems “Gitanjali” (Song Offering), his first work published in English in 1912. Knighted by the King of England in 1915, he renounced the title in 1919 in protest over a British Army massacre of peaceful protesters in Amritsar. At age 70, Tagore’s first exhibition of paintings was held in Paris and then throughout the continent.
The University he founded is also where I had the pleasure of finding Dr. Janak Jhankarnarzary, Chair of the Dept. of Art History and a talented sculptor whose work is very much in line with the Spiros Project’s line of inqury.
Let me backtrack for just a minute to explain that India’s contemporary art world is booming, and Calcutta is one of the centers of the boom. Fueled by a rapidly growing economy and newfound interest among investors, India has joined the world stage of nations with a significant fine art presence at auction and in the homes of collectors. A new generation of “art investors” have joined established collectors to propel India’s current generation of artists to newfound fame and art prices to new highs. In this Go-Go environment, Indian contemporary art is becoming less different from the rest of the world—more abstract, and more commercially aware. In this environment, the number of artists with a genuine interest in spirituality appears to be shrinking.
With this backdrop, it was a great relief to meet Dr. Jhankarnarzary, whose unique sculptural works elegantly reveal an authentic spiritual inquiry centered around the translation of primordial space into unique physical manifestations. By primordial space I refer to the vastness of the infinite, out of which (in Vedic and non-dual spiritual traditions) phenomena and physical forms arise. Janak approaches these questions beginning with the OM- the original cosmic vibration/ sound that, in Vedic philosophy, forms and attunes matter with the basic point of origin. This orientation developed studying Hindu philosophy as an undergraduate, and his sculptural works have successively tackled the difficult task(s) of exploring the vital force of life (a theme throughout his work); situating the human consciousness in the vastness of the infinite; exploring the dichotomy and power imbalance between the human and Divine aspects of the feminine; and exploring the five elemental forces.
These two earlier pieces- both from the 1970s- deal directly with the question of situating the human consciousness in a vast space out of which all phenomena arise. I find the treatment of the limits of human vision very interesting in the first. The second is more conceptual, perhaps, focusing more on the way that events arise out of this vastness.
This third image is from work on the Divine Feminine from the early 1990s. One might raise the question of whether a male artist should approach this theme so directly, but I think the observation is an honest one, at least, and the work interesting.
Finally, two pieces that say something about the life force itself through pretty innovative installations. Janak explained that on the first day(s) of the exhibition in which these pieces were shown, he watered the (dry) seeds that comprise the outer ring. By about the seventh day of the exhibition, they had sprouted and the pieces were, literally, filled with life.
The honest exploration and depth of Janak's gentle, whimsical, and non-didactic inquiry leads me to think of his work as adhering to a Karmic tradition-- in the sense that none of these works refers to the details or "facts" of a particular religious narrative, but all of them help the viewer better understand some of the elemental forces of the universe and shed light on basic questions of existence. After a bit of a hiatus from spiritually-focused art, Janak was a great find. Specifics from his interview will be posted shortly in the artists' directory.
So...now in South India, Pondicherry to be specific, and set to begin meeting artists here tomorrow. There may be at least a few new updates in the coming weeks...hopefully they will cheer your February.
_________________
*For those of you unimpressed by this description of a “long”ride, a note: 132 miles on Indian highways took about 4 ½ hours. Average cruising speed of around 37 mph, falling to 5mph often. Sketchy road conditions, dodging oncoming traffic and the occasional cow, and recently re-built engine limiting speed.
Labels: art, bullet, calcutta, enfield, fine art magazine, janak, jhankarnarzary, santiniketan, shanitniketan, spiritual
