Howard Hodgkin
Habiballah of Sava, "A Stallion" (c. 1601-1606),
The painting above used to be in Hodgkin's personal collection and you can see how when perspective is flattened, colour and shape become more important, a lesson Hodgkin no doubt found reinforced in his contact with the aesthetics of Indian painting.
I have posted previously on Indian aesthetics but not really taken a look at any individual artist in any depth, so perhaps it is time to remedy that.
Rembrandt and Bichitr.
Shah Jahan and his Son, about 1656–61 Rembrandt copy of a Bichitr original
Shah Jahan and Dara Shikoh, Rembrandt copy of a Bichitr original
Oval Portrait of Shah Jahan, about 1630: Bichitr
Rembrandt is accepted as one of the masters of Western art and in particular his drawings are picked out as being exemplary. However it is sometimes forgotten that Rembrandt was fascinated by Indian Art and by one artist in particular; Bichitr.
Bichitr was a court painter for two Mughal Emperors, Muhammad Salīm, who called himself Jahangir “Conqueror of the World” and Jahān Shāh and we have work from Bichitr dating from about 1615, so we are talking about an artist with a career lasting over 40 years and the complexity of his images rivals Rembrandt's, but because he was working in India most of us have never heard of him.
Bichitr: The emperor Jahangir preferring a Sufi shaikh to kings
In the image above the emperor Jahangir is seated as if receiving homage from a variety of people of both religious and secular power; they are stacked visually in order of his preference. Sufi Shaikh is a Muslim holy man, an Ottoman Sultan appears just below him, then King James of England, (an interesting pre-colonial period turnaround) and then below King James, Bichitr himself wearing a red turban that was a sign of his Hindu faith. An interesting issue here is that it was a Muslim court, Bichitr by inserting his own image as a Hindu, reminding us that some historical periods and civilisations were very tolerant of other religions. He presents a miniature to Jahangir of an elephant, two horses and a man bending over, perhaps suggesting that both men and animals owe allegiance to Jahangir.
Bichitr presenting a painting to the emperor Jahangir
Bichitr produced technically refined portraiture, within a stylised hybrid of Indian iconography and European symbolism, a clear example of an artist developing a cross cultural practice. In order to see this hybridity at work, look at his painting of Shah Jahan with Asaf Khan. Looking carefully at the imagery in the clouds, you can see the influence of Italian Renaissance religious painting. I was particularly interested in Shah Jahan's halo and cone of religious power, a cosmic force that extends from his halo out into the clouds. The cross cultural nature of the halo and cosmic rays being something I had looked at before when thinking about the invisible power of a virus.
Shah Jahan with Asaf Khan
Detail of very European angels
Bichitr was also an adept at constructing complex scenes involving a large collection of important people, something that Rembrandt was good at too. Both artists could orchestrate and compose a complex space with a variety of important people in it. Bichitr like Rembrandt is excellent at group portraiture, presenting his faces in side view and stacking the composition in such a way that the most important people are at the top. Rembrandt resolves a similar problem by a theatrical use of light and by putting the most important people at the front.
Shah Janan receives his three eldest sons and Asaf Khan during his accession ceremonies
Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq
I also find it interesting that they both made images of elephants. For Bichitr of course they would have been an everyday experience, but for Rembrandt the sight of one must have been an amazing thing, as if something from another world had arrived.
Bichitr
Rembrandt
It is salutary to compare these two 17th century artists. Rembrandt's reputation has at times wavered and it has only been cemented into place as being as high as it is, because certain ideals in our society are directly reflected in the way he made images. His 'touch' is almost seismic, when he draws the life of his line seems to re-enact the drawing's making every time you look at it. This expressive liveliness in the handling is very modern and it can be easily associated with individual expressiveness and expressionism, things that are highly valued in our society. Rembrandt is also concerned to communicate the humane qualities of life, his sitters always, including himself, appear to open themselves to his gaze. However these attributes have not always been what a society values. Bichitr's more formal approach suits a more stratified society. His portraits are though still very sensitive, but at the same time they are also able to reflect the rigid pictorial conventions of his period, which themselves further reflect a very ordered society.
Both artists reward close study and by comparing them perhaps we begin to realise that the way that artists are immersed into their time, their culture and their geography is as much a part of their value and meaning to us as is their individual approach to making art. Artists are like other people, plants, rocks and everything else, embedded into a situation that they are totally entangled into. The images we see are yes partly a result of human effort, but they are also a reflection of the lives of various elephants that were encountered, of social values and of geographical location as well as the various technologies of image making. They are now of course all enmeshed in our lives as we experience them through our screens.
The entanglement of the British Isles and the Indian sub-continent of course continues. The artist Desmond Lazaro now based in Pondicherry, grew up within an Indian family in England, had a fine art degree and was at one time working in Leeds and teaching alongside myself. He was a young man at that time and still searching for his roots and so he decided to go to India to re-train as an artist using traditional Indian working methods. After several years of dedicated learning he was able to return to an individual practice, this time based in India, his vision now transformed, he was beginning to be able to look at both cultures from a uniquely informed viewpoint.
Desmond Lazaro: Ten objects or more: Post box - Scotland / Pondicherry 2011
Pigment paint on 19th Century handmade paper
I realise I have by a sort of roundabout route arrived at post-colonialism. If you need to dig somewhat further into these issues the writings of Frantz Fanon are a good place to start. In books such as 'Wretched of the Earth' Fanon analysed the effects of colonialism and decolonisation and the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation. Homi K. Bhabha has also written extensively on these issues, his book, 'The Location of Culture' being essential reading for anyone interested in the hybrid nature of artwork that emerges out of situations whereby cultures collide or otherwise become entangled.
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