Markel Stephen the Enigmatic Image Curious Subjects in Indian Art Asianartcom

​For many viewers the subject of most Indian paintings is understandable​ even without a specialist's noesis of the identity and history of the figures portrayed. For example, images of a princely couple listening to music on a palace terrace can be appreciated without needing to know the historical or literary identity of the protagonists. Beyond this bones intelligibility, all the same, many works characteristic complex subject matter, symbolic nuances, and/or compositional substructures that require an in-depth explanation to sympathize their layers of meaning.

Allegories

Inspired past the iconography and mythology of Western divinity and sovereignty featured in the European prints brought to Bharat, the Mughals and other Islamic dynasties of India soon appropriated the visual attributes of the divine and the regal for their own glorification. Chief among these emulated personages were Solomon and David, kings of aboriginal State of israel; Orpheus and the philosopher Plato, both legendary musicians and poets of ancient Greece; and Majnun, the famous Arabic poet and unconsummated paramour of his dear Layla. The unifying thread in the stories of these influential personalities was that each was graced with the ability to tame and control animals by means of his musical ability and/or spiritual authority.

Abu'50 Hasan (attributed to), Emperor Jahangir Triumphing Over Poverty(item), c. 1620–25, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates Purchase

Perchance the most of import Mughal allegorical images are a series of portraits of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605-1627). During his later on years, characterized by political turbulence, regional famine, and his protracted poor health, Jahangir was inspired by a cocky-exalting dream to committee these allegorical portraits in order to extol his righteousness and majestic supremacy. The dream portrait in the exhibition,Emperor Jahangir Triumphing Over Poverty, has an inscription that explains the Emperor's symbolic human action of shooting arrows at an emaciated old homo allegorical of poverty. The chain stretching from sky to globe represents God's justice manifested in Jahangir, and would take been a recognizable innuendo to the aureate "chain of justice" hanging from a belfry in the imperial palace at the Agra Fort that had been installed for citizens wanting to entreatment to the Emperor.

Metaphors

The use of visual metaphors in Indian art was especially prevalent in images associated with Vaishnava Bhaktism, a form of worship focusing on the Hindu avatars Krishna and Rama that was popular in northern Bharat during the 14th–17th centuries. Numerous poems and prose expressed the core belief of the Bhakti motility that a devotee'southward loving adoration for one's personal deity was a metaphor for the ultimate union with a transcendent god.

The Reversal of Roles, Episode from theKrishna Lila (The Play of Krishna), Folio from a Sur Sagar (The Ocean of Sur Das) Series, Bharat, Rajasthan, Mewar, Udaipur, c. 1725–35, Los Angeles Canton Museum of Art, from the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection

The Reversal of Roles, Episodes from the Krishna Lila(The Play of Krishna)'southward three registers of multiple images of Radha and Krishna wearing each other'due south apparel and training each other in role-reversal scenarios brilliantly express the intrinsic identification of the worshiper and the worshiped every bit theorized in Vaishnava Bhaktism. The painting's inscribed poem is drawn from the enormous corpus of devotional poetry ascribed to the preeminent Hindi poet Sur Das (1478-1573) and his followers. This is ane of 3 best-known paintings from this series. Intriguingly, in each painting the blind poet Sur Das is shown seated and singing his verses to the accompaniment of golden hand cymbals.

Outlanders and Caricatures

Since the earliest periods of South Asian art, exotic foreigners and otherworldly anthropomorphized creatures have been often depicted as caricatures with exaggerated features and convoluted postures, and often wearing misunderstood foreign or hybrid garb. In Indian paintings of the later 16th through 19th centuries, there was a renewed interest in portraying bizarre-looking outlanders, as well every bit comical Indians. Based primarily on the distinctive figural forms establish in European prints and engravings circulating in India during the fourth dimension, and from personal ascertainment of the many European merchants, travelers, and political and religious emissaries that were increasingly commonplace throughout Bharat, painters took evident delight in depicting such literally "outlandish" characters, ofttimes equally stereotypes and stock motifs. These seemingly humorous or satirical observations of the "Other" could exist termed Occidentalism, an Asian corollary of Orientalism, the artistic vogue in 19th-century Western painting for romantic images expressing the exoticism and allure of Middle Eastern culture. Among the most popular of these Occidentalist subjects were the foppish "Farangis" or Franks, a name used generically and often disparagingly to refer to the French, Portuguese, Dutch, and English alike.

European Fortune Teller Feeding Pet Birds, India Rajasthan, Mewar, Udaipur, 1700–25, Los Angeles Canton Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Harry and Yvonne Lenart, photograph © Museum Associates/LACMA Conservation, by Yosi Pozeilov

Bestowed with a topknot, mustache, and goatee, the figure in European Fortune Teller Feeding Pet Birds wears a loose shawl over a shirt with a lace collar and folded cuffs, both features inconsistent with Indian fashion. The fortune tellers' birds would pick a playing carte to tell the customer'due south future or fortune, thus making his occupation seem equally bizarre to his audience.

Parodies of Europeans, c. 1760–1800, Los Angeles Canton Museum of Art, gift of Walter and Nesta Spink

A peculiar subset of the farangi genre features a pair of grinning buffoons. The visual source of these enigmatic expressive figures was apparently the representation of fools in 16th- and 17th-century European paintings and prints that illustrated the Dutch proverb, "the world feeds many fools." The figures' gesticulation of touching their nose with their forefinger has been said to suggest the use of snuff, but the gesture may take also found resonance in the Indian cultural context from its resemblance to the well-known mitt position expressing astonishment where the index finger and sometimes the middle finger are held touching the mentum or lips.

Subtleties, Complexities, and Obscurities

Sometimes subtle nuances of the painting tin confirm the identification of the subject. Dedicatory inscriptions often convey the underlying rationale for an enigmatic piece of work, but works with multiple, esoteric, effaced, intrusive, and/or incorrect inscriptions make the estimation far more circuitous, specially when variant translations are rendered. Fifty-fifty more perplexing are works with pseudo-inscriptions, which cannot be translated, such as those on an ivory manuscript embrace. Images with obscure or atypical field of study affair are also misreckoning, insofar every bit it is difficult to make up one's mind relevant comparisons or related works from the aforementioned serial. To muddy the waters even further, these various categories of obliqueness can also be combined in a single work, such as when earlier images are reworked in a pastiche, which renders a new composition that can be both complex and obscure.

Demon with Two Chained Men (recto); Folio from a Jain Karma Serial, Bharat, Rajasthan, Marwar, c. 1850–1900, Los Angeles Canton Museum of Art, from the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates Buy

An example of obscure and grisly imagery, this double-sided page ofA Demon with Two Chained Men (recto), Man Bitten on the Arm by a Tiger (verso)is probable from a Jain karma serial depicting the punishments in hell of evil doers. The Jain pictorial tradition of such hell scenes of torment and torture includes murals, manuscript folios, and the better-known large-scale representations on cloth of the cosmic man (loka-purusha) whose compartmentalized body symbolizes Jain cosmographic views of the structure and nature of the universe.

Human being Bitten on the Arm past a Tiger (verso); Folio from a Jain Karma Series, India, Rajasthan, Marwar, c. 1850–1900, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates Buy

The didactic inscriptions on this work, albeit somewhat cryptic and inexact per the painted imagery, have been translated as follows:

Recto (Demon with enchained souls)

Do cheering Dharma, occasionally would be hitting.
Afterward does bad deeds, thus become hit.
Observe Dharma.
To go result of it
Exercise Karma, offerDaan [offerings] to God and reduce sins.

Verso (Tiger biting arm)

Follows wrong path, head would be striked.
Observe religion and Karma.

Deciphering enigmatic images successfully often depends on a combined approach involving the shut exam of the work'southward features, an understanding of its historical milieu, a full reading of the inscriptions and conclusion of their viability, and, if available, a scientific assay of the materials and methods used past the creative person. These works of art and many more on view in The Enigmatic Image: Curious Subjects in Indian Fine art in the Ahmanson Building. Visit the exhibition before it closes on March 12 to accept a closer wait.

This post is excerpted from a longer essay on asianart.com and lightly edited.

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Source: https://unframed.lacma.org/2017/01/05/enigmatic-image-curious-subjects-indian-art

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