India Ink

Robin Rice on Visual Art

by Robin Rice

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Few Americans recognize Nandalal Bose's name. That situation should be remedied by the Philadelphia Museum of Art's well-balanced retrospective organized by the San Diego Museum of Art in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. It includes nearly a hundred of Bose's thousands of known paintings, from temperas to mural designs to book illustrations.

Sometimes called India's "father of modern art," Bose — unlike, say, Diego Rivera, who spent youthful years in Europe absorbing a Cubist aesthetic that he would later combine with indigenous Mexican imagery — seems to have taken little account of European modernism, despite a thorough exposure to avant-garde Western painting. Like Rivera, Bose (1882-1966) was a painter working within the context of a dominant colonial European culture, and like Rivera, he had a deep appreciation for his local traditions.

The paintings — large and small but mostly on paper — reveal many sources. In addition to his familiarity with Mughal painting, with its sinuous lines and often complex narrative content, Bose made a special study of the monumental Buddhist Ajanta cave murals. He loved and respected swiftly executed traditional Indian village images. As we see in landscapes like Village Huts (1928) or the lush Dolan Champa flower (1952), Bose was familiar with wet-on-wet calligraphic Chinese and Japanese brush painting.

A sense of broad influences is discernible even in such an essentially Indian work as Sati, which Bose painted as a student in 1907 and re-created in 1943. The fragile figure, black hair against the fiery red-gold haze, probably represents the wife of the god Siva as she uses her mental yogic powers to immolate herself, a protest against her father's hostile treatment of her husband. The catalog mentions Sati as the model of a virtuous Indian wife, but not what I suspect is Bose's implicit critique of British meddling in Indian customs, including the practice of sati (or suttee), the self-immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. Despite British laws against it, some widows chose sati. Bose's painting does not admit to doubts. It is calm, ethereal and spiritual.

More pointedly political is Annapurna (a manifestation of Siva's wife Parvati), whose name means "abundance of food." Bose shows the goddess holding a bowl of rice as Siva, in an ascetic, emaciated form, dances before her with a begging bowl (pictured, p.26). When Bose made the painting in 1941, Bengal was suffering severe famine because the British had stockpiled India's rice for World War II military use. The painting — decorative and pleasing in color and composition — transcends its harsh, contemporaneous subject.

Through his teacher Abanindranath Tagore, Bose met writer and educator Rabindranath Tagore (Abanindranath's uncle), who invited him to be director of art at Visva-Bharati, a university post he held for 32 years while continuing to paint — he executed major mural projects during holiday periods. One of my favorite paintings, New Clouds (1937), depicts a sort of frieze of young women hurrying along a tree-lined path under lowering monsoon clouds. The seemingly casual brushstrokes give each figure a characteristic gesture or posture, while a pattern of rhythm and variation suggests the raindrops that will soon pelt down.

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Bose met Gandhi in 1925. They shared a deep respect for Indian rural village culture. Over the years, Gandhi gave Bose public commissions; Bose often worked for almost nothing. In fact, Bose was the only artist Gandhi ever hired. His lively paintings for sessions of the Indian National Congress would please Matisse. Other graphic work is equally delightful.

Bose chose a path that scarcely acknowledges the West. Nevertheless, his paintings feel accessible and unforced. His decision not to make didacticism the wellspring of his art — but rather to take nature, including human nature, as a consistent subject — has kept his work fresh and relevant.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bos Through Sept. 1, Dorrance Galleries, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Ben Franklin Parkway, 215-763-8100, philamuseum.org