Drafted 3/08/03
Slightly Revised 11/18/03
Some Observations on the Continuing Evolution of Mithila Painting
David L. Szanton
Ethnic Arts Foundation
March 2003
During our January 5 to 16, 2003 visit to Madhubani and the surrounding villages we were given several additional bits of information regarding the origins of Mithila painting on paper. According to the painter, Gopal Saha, when the artist, Baskar Kulkarni, came to Madhubani in 1967 and '68 (we had previously heard 1966), Kulkarni essentially, or at least initially - and after some difficulty even gaining access to local women for this purpose - worked with five women; Sita Devi, Ganga Devi, Karpoori Devi, Mahasundari Devi, and Yasoda Devi. It is not clear how he chose those five, or how they chose him, especially Ganga Devi who lived in the village of Rashidpur, some 12 miles from Madhubani town. (We do know, however, from Jain (1997) that she enjoyed drawing well before then.) Of these five women (the soon celebrated, but now blind), Sita Devi, was a Mahapatra Brahmin, living in Jitwarpur village, close by Madhubani town. The even more celebrated, but now late, Ganga Devi, as well as Mahasundari Devi and Karpoori Devi, were all Kayastha. Mahasundari and Karpoori were in fact married to brothers. Today they are both widows and live (separately) in the adjacent halves of their large house in Ranti, a village also close by Madhubani town. According to Gopal Saha, because Ganga Devi and Yasoda Devi both came from distant villages, they rented a house (or space in a house) two houses down from his own home in Laharegunj, then nearby, now within, Madhubani town. As they were living together, Yasoda Devi was probably a Kayastha as well.
The Brahmin and Kayastha Painters
These caste origins seem to be important because while the distinctive ancient internal wall painting traditions of the Brahmins and Kayastha were then transferred to painting on paper, the trajectories of the two traditions have until recently diverged quite dramatically. Referring specifically to the wall painting tradition, Mildred Archer noted:
The work of the two castes has remained clearly distinguishable even though the houses may be in close proximity in the same village. Brahmin paintings have a delicate meandering line which encloses areas of brilliant colour-pink, green, lemon yellow, aquamarine blue, red and black. The figures, reduced to fantastic geometric or vegetable forms, float in space amongst birds, animals and flowers. Kayastha paintings, on the other hand, employ only one or two colours -black and sometimes dull blood red. They rely on strong lines enlivened with hatching and spotting, and the figures, often set in panels, are firmly ranged in long processions round the wall. Although similar in purpose and subject-matter, the two styles are markedly distinct. Their variety and inventiveness make them perhaps the most sophisticated and elegant of all popular painting still current in Bihar.
Once Sita Devi started painting on paper, and was nationally recognized and sent to Europe and the US by the GOI to represent India at various cultural fairs and exhibitions, numerous other Mahapatra Brahmin women in Jitwarpur, but also in other villages, seemed to follow her lead. Based on our Ethnic Arts Foundations collection, seemingly all adopted Sita Devi's characteristic Brahmin technique, i.e., using a frayed straw wrapped in cotton, to both outline and/or fill in the outlines of the figures of gods and goddesses with large masses in the vibrant commercially purchased colors, quite as described by Mildred Archer. Locally, this technique is known as bharni (literally, "filling"). The two 1977 paintings of Krishna playing his flute under a flowering tree by Sita Devi and by the younger (Mahapatra Brahmin) Baua Devi, currently owned by the Ethnic Arts Foundation, certainly suggest a master/pupil relationship between them at that time.
Similarly, a number of Kayastha women, many from Ranti village, following, and apparently explicitly encouraged by, the equally nationally and internationally acclaimed and traveled Ganga Devi (and by perhaps Mahasundari Devi as well), also transferred their long standing Kayastha wall painting technique onto paper. Their paintings were thus done with fine black and red ink pens, a technique locally referred to as kachni, or "line" drawing.
Even though the subject matter of their paintings has been nearly identical, the clear distinction between the painting techniques of the women of these two castes has been largely maintained up to the present. In the original wall paintings, either inside the house or on compound walls, and largely until the early 1980s on paper as well, nearly all of the images depicted by both castes were of high gods and goddesses (Shiva and Parvati, Krishna and Radha, Vishnu, Durga, Kali, Ram, Ganesha, etc. or an occasional scene from the Ramayana), or else symbolic figures or objects central to life cycle rituals -- and especially marriage ceremonies (e.g. the much noted kohbar). On the walls, these images were traditionally intended to create sacred spaces, and to encourage prosperity, fertility, and general well being. (We simply do not know if, when painted on paper and for sale, these images are presumed to have some or any of the same powers. Probably not, but we have never thought to ask the artists.) In addition, the women of the two castes also shared in using the same, almost standard, 22 x 30 sheets of heavy, white, hand-made paper introduced by Kulkarni, and quickly commercially available in the town. (A few of the major artists did make some larger paintings on lower quality paper, but these must be less than 1% of the total production.) The women of both castes also joined in beginning each painting with a formal frame of leaves, branches, stylized animals, simple to complex geometrical forms, etc., around the edges of the paper before working on the central images. (These painted frames may be a reflection or holdover of the painted architectural elements often visible in the traditional wall paintings, though this requires further investigation).
It should also be noted here that a small number of men also began painting in the early years, but their paintings were distinctively different and will be addressed separately below.
The Dusadh Painters
It was apparently not until 1972 -- that is, some five years after Brahmin and Kayastha women began to do commercial painting -- that some Dusadh women as well as some men, mostly, it appears, in Jitwarpur village, also began to paint on paper. As far as we know the Dusadh did not previously do ritually oriented wall paintings inside their homes. Jain reports that Dusadh "occasionally they painted on the exterior and interior walls of their houses ornamental motifs as well as religious themes, the most popular among them being the serpent deities, the goddesses Durga and Sita, Shiva and, to a lesser extent, diverse episodes from the Krishna legend. The tutelary deity of the Dusadhs is Raja Salhesh whose village shrine (gahabar) is usually adorned with paintings based on his legend. Similar scenes also appear on their house walls." (Today, only a very few of the Dusadh homes in Jitwarpur still have (usually severely faded) floral patterns or low clay reliefs of animals or human figures on their external walls, but they are seen being made in one of Erika Moser's 1972 films. We simply do not know the current extent of painting on their interior walls, or in the gahabar.) What is clear is that the Dusadh painters rapidly developed their own two distinctively different styles of painting on paper. One style, described by Jain (above) but also epitomized by the prolific and continuously innovative work of Shanti Devi, involved using a cow-dung based paint on the white paper to make a doubled outline of boldly drawn heroes and animals, with cow dung dots between the doubled outlines. The figures themselves were then brightly colored and any spaces between them were filled with equally brightly colored flowers, trees, leaves, etc. These paintings most often had to do with the adventures of the Dusadh culture heroes, Lord Salhesh and his brothers, or else other figures in the Dusadh pantheon. Although distinctive in technique and subject matter, these Dusadh paintings, which were also "framed," seemed closer to, or reflective of, the by then established Brahmin style.
The second Dusadh style, suggested by a Nittan (itinerant service or "juggler" caste) woman and encouraged by Erica Moser (the late German filmmaker and folklorist
who made several visits of several months to Jitwarpur in the early 1970s), was based on a Dusadh tradition of small protective bodily tattoos. In this painting technique, known as godana (tattoo painting), stick figures with upturned arms and elephants of varying sizes were roughly drawn, and very rarely "framed," in lines or circles all across the standard white paper. In time, however, the practice grew of first covering the white paper with gobar, a light brown cow dung wash. Once the gobar had dried, was painted from edge to edge with rows of more regular small figures; repeated images of Lord Salhesh, his brothers, their traditional mounts (elephant and horses), and occasionally, their consorts. The high gods of the Brahmins and Kayasthas never appeared.
In effect, while they were all recognizable as distinctively Mithila paintings - impossible to be confused with Bengali Patas, Patta Chittra from Orissa, or Rajasthani Pars. Thus until quite recently, the Dusadh painters, and the Brahmin and Kayastha painters, seemed to be living and operating in distinct and separate aesthetic, ritual, symbolic, cosmological, no less social, worlds. Based on seeing several thousand Mithila paintings going back to 1971, as far as we know, the Dusadh painters rarely depicted the high gods and seemingly never the khobar-ghar, the central ritual form of the Brahmin and Kayastha traditions. Likewise, the Brahmins and Kayastha never used the Dusadh gobar or godana techniques or styles, nor ever depicted the Dusadh heroes.
Because of these evident distinctions in technique and subject matter, for many years, and at even a quick glance at a painting, it was usually easy to tell the caste affiliation of the painter. Thus Jyotindra Jain could helpfully and accurately divide the catalog for the Indian Council for Cultural Relations' 1991?? exhibition in the French colony of Reunion of Mithila paintings from the 1970s and 1980s, into three obvious sections; Brahmin, Kayastha, and Dusadh.
Since the early 1980s, however, the situation began to change. We frankly know nothing about possible changes in the external or internal wall paintings, e.g., changes in styles, images, techniques, incidence, and possible influences from painting on paper. One can imagine various forms of feedback from commercial painting, and interaction with the more general social, cultural, and political changes that have been affecting everyone in Bihar/India. But all of this cries out to be -- studied. However, we do know that painting on paper has evolved dramatically among all three castes, initially in terms of subject matter, and more recently in terms of techniques, even the crossing of caste styles. As a result, some - though not all -- of the easy distinctions described above are now disappearing. Styles, techniques, and subject matter, are in some case beginning to merge. The dynamics and larger implications of these changes raise a whole series of fascinating questions.
Painting by Men.
Before dealing with these changes in the subject matter and techniques of the women of these three castes, it is important to mention something about painting among local men. Although Mithila painting it is widely known and presumed to be a woman's painting tradition (though they have shared awards with their wives, no male painter has ever received a national award on his own), starting as early at the late 1960s, a number of young Brahmin men began filling in the broad expanses of colour after their mothers had outlined the figures. Among others, Sita's Devi son, Surya Dev, was actively engaged in this work and when she was commissioned to do murals elsewhere in India and internationally, he traveled with her to help in this way. As far as we know, however, he did not initiate any paintings. In contrast, there was no such role was available or necessary for the sons or husbands of the Kayastha "line" painters.
Nevertheless, at least three men who were neither Mahapatra Brahmins or Kayastha, did begin painting in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Krishnanan Jha, and his brother Batohi Jha - both sons of a tantric priest who is said to have been highly skilled at drawing tantric diagrams - began to paint tantric images of gods, goddesses, and especially the 10 avatars of Vishnu, accompanied below by their respective tantric yantras. Batohi Jha soon stopped painting and left Madhubani, but Krishnanand Jha has continued painting to the present. Like that of the women painters, the evolution of his paintings described below, has expanded dramatically over time. The other early and continuously active painter has been Gopal Saha, a Bania, who started life as a chai-wala but who had to give up his trade when he was nearly paralyzed from the waist down as a result of mistaken medical treatment. Having enjoyed drawing as a child, he initially studied early Ganga Devi paintings, but then quickly developed his own distinctive style. He has become a prolific painter of sharply observed local village and small town life, often with an ironic, critical, or humorous undertone.
Particularly striking about the paintings by these men, and the small band (Kayastha, Brahmin, Dusadh, and others) who subsequently joined them, is that they seemingly never paint the Kohbar or other images surrounding marriage and other life cycle rituals that remain a core feature of the paintings by the Brahman and Kayastha women. These ritual images, deeply rooted in Mithila's cosmology, remain in the women's component of this powerfully gender differentiated world. These figures and images are clearly not part of the men's domain. Instead, aside from the tantric paintings, the male painters depict local folklore and daily (secular) life in the world(s) around them. Over time, as the number of male painters has grown the subject matter of their paintings has also expanded. However, it still remains distinctively Mithila painting, and from here on it will be discussed along with that of the women painters, as part of the general diversification and continuing innovative vitality of the Mithila tradition.
Raymond Owens and Trajectories of Change
Many outsiders have influenced the reception and content of Mithila painting. These include William and Mildred Archer, Pupil Jayakar, Baskar Kulkarni, Uppendra Maharathi, Erika Moser, Jyotindra Jain, Tokyo Hasegawa, but I will attenmtp to deal here with the influence of the American anthropologist, Raymond Owens. Starting in 1977 until 1990, Raymond Owens, often with his wife, Naomi, an ethnomusicologist, regularly visited, and for extended periods of time lived in, Madhubani, Jitwarpur, and Ranti. During this period Ray became very close to many of the painters, ultimately producing two films and a book manuscript (still incomplete), on the lives of several of the painters. In 1977 he helped organize the Master Craftsmen Association of Mithila (MCAM), a cooperative intended to assist the painters obtain materials, sell their paintings, develop a literacy program, etc. MCAM collapsed in the late 1980s?, but its chop on the back of the paintings from that period is still often seen, including information on the artist, their village, the subject of the painting, and the date it was purchased.
Also in 1977, with friends in the US, Owens organized the non-profit, pro bono, Ethnic Arts Foundation (EAF) to sponsor exhibitions, sales, and broad public appreciation of Mithila painting. In the late 70s, dealers from, or selling to, the Delhi tourist emporia, were offering minimal prices for rapidly executed, mass produced paintings. Owens recognized that this was killing the tradition, flooding the market with poor and repetitive work, and undercutting the talents of some if not many of the local painters. In an effort to counter this (inspired by M.N. Srinivas), Owens and the EAF set up a system whereby he would personally encourage painters to take their time and produce their best possible work. He would then purchase what he considered "the best" paintings he could find - or work by painters he thought had talent and whom he wanted to encourage -- for well over the current market prices. He would then bring those paintings to the US for exhibition and sale by the EAF. When paintings were sold by the EAF, on Owen's next trip to Madhubani, the profits from those sales would go (1) to the individual painters whose work had been sold as a further incentive to do their "best" work, (2) to the MCAM cooperative (while it existed), and (3) to purchase still more Mithila paintings. (The EAF had no other source of funds, and Owen's travel was usually covered by various grants or consultancies.) By this means, Owens and then the EAF purchased some 1,400 Mithila paintings between 1977 and 2003, from some 85 different painters, sold some 700 paintings, and currently have unsold, in inventory, some 700 paintings. Using this system, tens of thousands of dollars in rupees have been distributed to the Mithila painters.
Although of course this was not the only - or even the largest - source of income for the painters, thanks to these efforts, Owens was an extremely popular, even beloved, figure in Madhubani and the surrounding villages. He was a major source of personal support, professional encouragement, and income. He also quite consciously influenced the subject matter of what was being painted based on his own experience and sense of what was possible, and the US market, i., e, what kinds of images attracted people in the US who were buying paintings from the EAF (mostly, but not entirely, people with some prior interest or experience in India.). At first he suggested that painters do more well-known scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabarata,. themes more readily taken up by the Brahmins and Kayasthas familiar with those epics. Scenes of Ram, Lakshman, and Sita entering the forest, Ram and Lakshman chasing the golden deer, Ravan's abduction of Sita, Sita Garlanding Ram, all became popular. He then began to suggest that painters could, perhaps should, do episodes - or even extended narratives in multiple paintings -- drawn from local folklore myths and legends. This suggestion crossed all the caste lines, and we began to see paintings with single or multiple episodes from such narratives, and also sometimes multiple paintings (from 3 to 20 or more), telling extended tales of ordinary people, kings and queens, animals, gods and goddesses. By 1980, Owens began suggesting that people try painting individual or multiple scenes and events in local life, ritual, and ultimately, series of paintings of their own life histories.
Clearly, Owens was one of many other influences on the painters that led to the expansion of the subject matter during the 1980s; this was not solely due to Owen's influence. He was however frequently on the spot - often for many months at a time - making such suggestions, and purchasing individual paintings and series of paintings, ultimately from some 70 different painters. Whatever the sources of change, the results were quite dramatic. The traditional subjects continued to be painted, but many artists also began to innovate, e.g. Ganga Devi (and others) detailing the story of the Ramayana and the life-cycle; Leela Devi (and others) focusing on the central lotus form of the traditional Kohbar, but also painting the multi-paneled story of Kalidasa (which should unquestionably go to a museum); Mahasundari Devi producing large paintings of marriage ritual items, and Lalitha Devi producing a 21 painting series of the entire multi-year marriage ritual, as well as a 12 painting series of her own life history; Baua Devi painting several local stories on the interaction of snakes and people - as well as on the death of her daughter - but also in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center in NY; Krishnanand Jha doing a 32 painting series - over a ten year period - on the actual murder of a young local boy and the trial that followed, as well as of several series depicting classic stories concerned with the intervention of gods in the lives of human beings; Shanti Devi doing a large painting of a local election, complete with sound trucks, flag waving crowds, voting lists, and ballot boxes, and multiple paintings on Dusadh legends; Gopal Saha's series of paintings depicting local folk tales and local foibles, etc.
This list could be considerably extended, and painters today continue to innovate in their subject matter. What is striking, however, is that until the last year or so, as far as we could tell, all of the painters were staying within their caste's traditional styles or techniques. However, in January 2003, for the first time we saw large numbers of paintings that were crossing the long standing line between the Brahmin and Dusadh styles or techniques. Thus we saw paintings by Dusadh artists depicting Radha and Krishna (Urmila Devi); Shiva and the sun and moon gods (Seema Kumari); Ram (Ram Bilas Paswan), Ganesha (Lalita Devi), and even a Kohbar (Chano Devi); many godana (tattoo) paintings with painted frames; and godana paintings on white paper without the previously standard preparatory gobar cow-dung wash (Urmila Devi). At the same time we saw paintings by Kayastha and Brahmin painters using a cow-dung wash (Krishna Kant Jha); and incorporating Dusadh tattoo figures (Rina Kumari); as well as a Brahmin painter doing "line" paintings in Kayastha style (Vinita Jha).
More generally, along with the increasing integration of Brahmin and Dusadh styles, especially evident in Jitwarpur, the number of Brahmin painters seemed to be much smaller than in the past, and the number of Dusadh painters, especially young women, had grown substantially. It would appear that these two previously distinct painting styles and techniques are now merging, or people from both castes are feeling increasingly comfortable drawing on those of the other. Whether this is due to perceptions of "the market," or influence of Bihar state intervention in favor of Dalit communities generally and increased recognition and invitations of Dusadh painters to distant melas (fairs) or exhibitions and training programs, and/or still other sources, clearly needs further investigation. Likewise, it would be extremely important to understand both the broader meanings of painting in the lives of the painters generally, as well as the particular meanings, if any, of this on-going integration of the painting traditions in the daily social lives and on-the-ground interactions of the local Brahmins and Dusadh. What does one make of the fact that Sita Devi's grandson, a Brahmin, when asked about taking tea with Dusadh painters, responded, "we are all artists."
Among the Kayastha painters there seemed to be less cross-overs, though we did see several paintings that made use of the traditional Dusadh gobar cow dung wash as a base (Munjal Devi, Bandna Kanak) on otherwise classic "line" paintings. Nevertheless, there have been major, recent, though more stylistically internal, and dramatic subject matter innovations within the Kayastha painting tradition as well.
Up to now, as far as we know, Mithila paintings have not made use of either a horizon line or Western style perspective. Images are presented on a single plane. Even in complex multi-episode narrative paintings, in which the sequence or importance of events is differentiated by different scales, they are presented on a flat plane. Clusters of figures are sometimes seen one behind another, but they rarely (and seemingly inadvertently), shrink smaller to give the impression of greater distance from the viewer. Still today there is no sign of this type of perspective. But for the first time this year we have seen something approaching horizon lines. Strikingly, three such paintings we have seen remain on a flat plane, but one which passes from an underwater scene up into the air above, with an effective horizon line between the surface of the water and the sky above (two line paintings by Vimla Dutta, one by Ram Barosh). Several paintings by Ram Barosh also represent dramatic innovations in subject matter, focusing on plants, birds, and animals as simply the beauties of nature.
But perhaps the most strikingly innovative Kayastha painters are long established Godaveri Dutta, and younger Santosh Kumar Das. Godaveri Dutta, who has on seven occasions during the 1990s spent three to six months at the Mithila Museum studio in Japan [http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~mithila/Eindex.html], is doing extraordinarily fine detailed paintings of such images as baby Krishna, unusual scenes from the Mahabaratha, as well as very large paintings (still in Japan) of a single object, e.g., Siva's trident and Ram's bow. Santosh Kumar Das, spent five years in the later 1980s studying art at the national academy in Barodha learning about other forms of Indian art, as well as European and other Asian traditions. He returned to Ranti ten years ago to take up Mithila line painting but with a vastly expanded imagination of the possible. He has done unique line paintings of childhood memories, dreams, local floods, local tragedies, and during this past year, despite the formal constraints of the Kayastha tradition, he did an extraordinary series of 21 emotionally charged and politically powerful paintings of the massacres in Gujarat.
In effect, it appears that while the Brahmin and Dusadh paintings are beginning to merge, the Kayastha painters are largely staying within their own techniques and style, but pressing it into service for very new kinds of images and topics. For the 1980s we know that Ray Owens was encouraging the painters to expand their subject matter. Other people may also have been doing this as well. During the 1990s, Owens was not able to visit Mithila, indeed, did not return until October 1999 staying until March 2000 - when he again encouraged continuing innovation. (And when he died in July 2000, there was great consternation and mourning among the painters.) Nevertheless, one person's influence cannot account for the continuing and most recent acceleration in the elaboration of the several parallel, and now partially merging, painting traditions. It seems more likely that after two decades of encouragement to innovate (from Owens and others) innovation has become part of the spirit, performance or dynamic of the tradition. Still, it is clear that we need much more detailed and concrete understandings of why and how painters from these different castes are currently moving in different directions. What are we to make of the seeming decline in the numbers of Brahmin painters, the merging of Brahmin and Dusadh styles or techniques, the rapid internal evolution of the Kayastha tradition, as well as possible links between these changes in expressive or aesthetic forms, and larger social, economic, and political forces? Mithila painting could be an extraordinary site or laboratory for examining the relationship or interaction of cultural forms to broader social processes.
Outside Influences
In my report last year I listed a number of Indian and foreign "outsiders" who had over the years influenced the development and wider recognition of the Mithila painting traditions. What I failed to address was the parallel and interactive influence both on and of Mithila painters who themselves traveled widely in India and internationally. As mentioned earlier, aside from receiving numerous national commissions and honours, the GOI sent Ganga Devi and Sita Devi on extended trips to Europe, Russia, and the US for for a variety of major cultural events. In the 1990s, Godaveri Dutta and Baua Devi both made seven trips to the Mithila Museum in Japan and each time painted in the studio there for periods of three to nine months. They also traveled to numerous exhibitions of their work in wide array of Japanese municipalities. Seven or eight other Mithila painters including Ganga Devi (starting in 1988), Sita Devi, Shanti Devi, Karpoori Devi, and Vimla Dutta also made one or more similar extended visits to the Mithila Museum in Japan. Santosh Kumar Das, although he has not travelled internationally, spent five years studying (world) art in Barodha. Clearly, all these artists were able to move beyond the confines of Mithila because various influential people outside the region with access to the necessary funding, recognized that they had some extraordinary talents. But the combination or interaction of the artists' inherent talents, and the external experience and expansion of their imaginations, has made them all particularly powerful models for others in the region.
The recently established Mithila Art Institute (MIA) will hopefully turn out to be another marker of the creative possibilities of insider-outsider interaction. In early January 2003, the Ethnic Arts Foundation established the MIA in Madhubani with Santosh Kumar Das as the Director and primary instructor. Santosh is an extraordinary painter himself. But he was selected as Director because he is also personally committed to simultaneously developing the technical skills of the next generation of painters; deepening their roots in and understanding of Mithila painting and the region's cultural traditions; enlarging their imaginations, their sense of the possible; and expanding their capacity to articulate their ideas in both paint and words. At this point, the Institute has been operating four-plus hours a day, five days a week, for seven weeks. The 30 students were selected by a panel of major painters in a "blind" competition from among 103 applicants. Unlike previous government sponsored "training programs," the MIA initially offered no stipends, simply free materials, a place to work, serious instruction, a sense of community or collegiality, and a chance to expand their imaginations. (The MIA has subsequently provided small stipends for students who could not otherwise attend the program.) So far, two students have dropped out, two more have been added, enthusiasm is running high, and there are reasonable grounds for thinking some stunning artists will emerge.
Are these external contacts and influences threatening the "authenticity" of Mithila painting? Is the "purity" of tradition being damaged or destroyed? I believe quite the opposite; that the continuing innovations in subject matter and techniques over the past three decades have given Mithila painting an extraordinary vitality. All of these painters are still rooted in their tradition. You would never mistake their painting as coming from some other region of India. But the painters are actively and creatively responding to the world around them, both to "the market," but also to other personal, local, and external events and influences. As at least some of the artists are aware, "the market" for their paintings is in fact highly segmented - among urban middle class and elite Indian buyers, foreign tourists, Europeans, Americans, and Japanese. Moreover, given their distance from their buyers (extremely few if any people now travel the terrible roads from Patna to Madhubani and the surrounding villages), many seem well aware that this complex "market" is particularly disadvantageous to them; it is hard to get clear signals from it. As a result, several painters explicitly mentioned that they were "experimenting" with some different ways of painting to see if they might be more successful.
Folk Art or Art? Craftspeople or Artists?
An observant reader might have noticed that I have begun to shift from using the neutral term "painter," to the more loaded term "artist." Nor have I used the term "craft," or 'folk art." This is intentional. There are Mithila painters of all the castes who simply produce more or less the same painting over and over again in what would fairly be called craft or folk art. But there are also a surprisingly large number of local painters whose work is constantly evolving in technique and subject matter as they attempt to express their feelings and understandings of themselves, of nature, the cosmos, and of the changing concrete world around them, including "the market." With the exception of Santosh Kumar Das, none in the villages have attended a formal Art School. Nevertheless, they are certainly schooled in a complex and deeply sophisticated artistic tradition, which they are simultaneously and constantly remaking, expanding, elaborating, in an effort to develop their own individual expressive capacities and to reach larger audiences. They are drawing on, or curling back to, the past but in the process building a future. These seem to me to be the defining characteristics of being an artist anywhere in the world. This also accounts for Stella Kramrich's comment to me in the mid-1980s that Mithila painting showed more vitality than any other traditional art form she knew in India.
The contrast between current Mithila with what I take to be the more genuinely "folk arts" within India (and elsewhere) is striking. Thus, it is certainly the case that the celebrated Bengali Patas and Terracottas, the Patta Chittra from Orissa, the Rajasthani Pars are often quite beautiful and fascinating. However, those being produced today seem remarkably similar in form, technique, and often in content, to those done 10, 20, and 50 years ago. At least for the moment, these seem to be relatively fixed traditions. Indeed, I was told in Calcutta that the production of Patas is now reduced two painters, and is threatened with extinction. Many of the folk arts of India are of high technical quality. And clearly there are single individuals in some of these other traditions who also stand out as artists, such as the father and son team (names??) who do Warli paintings. However, as broad based traditions, they do not seem to be evolving and responding to changing internal and external worlds, to the personal experiences of their producers, nor manifesting the continuous innovation, expressive power, and individuality of many of the Mithila painters. Mithila painting today is a rapidly changing, highly complex, broad stream with deeply individual, distinctive, and occasionally merging currents. The stream certainly includes craftspeople producing folk art for the craft emporia. However, it also includes a large number of extremely innovative, creative, and self- expressive artists.
At one level this is not surprising. Wall painting has been done for hundreds of years in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of villages all across Mithila. Huge numbers of young people grow up with paintings around them, paintings that are richly validated and powerfully meaningful in the culture. Skilled (wall) painters have always been appreciated within the context of their families, and now for nearly 40 years skilled painters on paper have received external (national and international) recognition, opportunities for travel, and sometimes substantial economic benefits. In this context, with a pool of potential artists across hundreds of villages, and a small, segmented, but significant market for their work, it should not be surprising that some of these painters should emerge as quite extraordinary artists.
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<u> Endnotes </u>
[1] As this suggests, these observations are limited to Mithila wall painting and painting on paper in, and in the villages around, Madhubani town. This is a, if not the, major center of painting on paper. However wall painting, and quite possibly painting on paper, is presumably much more widespread and varied across the Mithila region. The observations offered here clearly need to be supplemented by wider and deeper research.
[2] The growth of male painters in what is publicly seen as a .woman.s painting tradition,. raises one of a whole series of questions regarding changing(?) gender relations (re control of income, status, public recognition, dowry, mobility, education, etc.) in these families . and the larger society.
[3] It is striking (and somewhat puzzling), that while upon their return from their international travels, both Ganga Devi and Sita Devi produced numerous paintings of places that they visited in Russia and the US, as far as we know, none of the artists . including theses two - who spent time in Japan have done any paintings of scenes or images from that country. There may be some subtle influence of aspects of Japanese art on Godaveri Dutta.s paintings, but she does not see or admit to it.
[4] Modest stipends will be considered if poverty seems to be forcing talented students to drop out.
[5] One obvious problem of course is that to succeed as an artist, potential buyers need to see one.s paintings. While men and older women seem able to travel fairly easily to Patna and, e.g., Delhi, while cultural restrictions are perhaps declining, it is still much harder for young women . who remain the bulk of the painters and the students in the MIA - to make these journeys. As a partial solution, the EAF is considering the possibility of establishing a website in Madhubani, perhaps at the MIA itself, to enable painters to display their work on the Internet.
[6] Today there continue to be veiled accusations that in the early years of painting on paperm and still at present, various people, both painters and dealers, sometimes marketed other peoples. paintings as their own. This does not seem to be widespread but several people offered us paintings this January that they claimed were their own work, but which were almost certainly painted by someone else. Whether this is simply a matter of clever or practical marketing -- attempting to impress a potential buyer or increase one.s own status (and income) -- or if it represents a different (joint?) conception of creation or ownership, probably calls for some additional research.
Drafted 3/08/03
Slightly Revised 11/18/03
Some Observations on the Continuing Evolution of Mithila Painting
David L. Szanton
Ethnic Arts Foundation
March 2003
During our January 5 to 16, 2003 visit to Madhubani and the surrounding villages we were given several additional bits of information regarding the origins of Mithila painting on paper. According to the painter, Gopal Saha, when the artist, Baskar Kulkarni, came to Madhubani in 1967 and '68 (we had previously heard 1966), Kulkarni essentially, or at least initially - and after some difficulty even gaining access to local women for this purpose - worked with five women; Sita Devi, Ganga Devi, Karpoori Devi, Mahasundari Devi, and Yasoda Devi. It is not clear how he chose those five, or how they chose him, especially Ganga Devi who lived in the village of Rashidpur, some 12 miles from Madhubani town. (We do know, however, from Jain (1997) that she enjoyed drawing well before then.) Of these five women (the soon celebrated, but now blind), Sita Devi, was a Mahapatra Brahmin, living in Jitwarpur village, close by Madhubani town. The even more celebrated, but now late, Ganga Devi, as well as Mahasundari Devi and Karpoori Devi, were all Kayastha. Mahasundari and Karpoori were in fact married to brothers. Today they are both widows and live (separately) in the adjacent halves of their large house in Ranti, a village also close by Madhubani town. According to Gopal Saha, because Ganga Devi and Yasoda Devi both came from distant villages, they rented a house (or space in a house) two houses down from his own home in Laharegunj, then nearby, now within, Madhubani town. As they were living together, Yasoda Devi was probably a Kayastha as well.
The Brahmin and Kayastha Painters
These caste origins seem to be important because while the distinctive ancient internal wall painting traditions of the Brahmins and Kayastha were then transferred to painting on paper, the trajectories of the two traditions have until recently diverged quite dramatically. Referring specifically to the wall painting tradition, Mildred Archer noted:
The work of the two castes has remained clearly distinguishable even though the houses may be in close proximity in the same village. Brahmin paintings have a delicate meandering line which encloses areas of brilliant colour-pink, green, lemon yellow, aquamarine blue, red and black. The figures, reduced to fantastic geometric or vegetable forms, float in space amongst birds, animals and flowers. Kayastha paintings, on the other hand, employ only one or two colours -black and sometimes dull blood red. They rely on strong lines enlivened with hatching and spotting, and the figures, often set in panels, are firmly ranged in long processions round the wall. Although similar in purpose and subject-matter, the two styles are markedly distinct. Their variety and inventiveness make them perhaps the most sophisticated and elegant of all popular painting still current in Bihar.
Once Sita Devi started painting on paper, and was nationally recognized and sent to Europe and the US by the GOI to represent India at various cultural fairs and exhibitions, numerous other Mahapatra Brahmin women in Jitwarpur, but also in other villages, seemed to follow her lead. Based on our Ethnic Arts Foundations collection, seemingly all adopted Sita Devi's characteristic Brahmin technique, i.e., using a frayed straw wrapped in cotton, to both outline and/or fill in the outlines of the figures of gods and goddesses with large masses in the vibrant commercially purchased colors, quite as described by Mildred Archer. Locally, this technique is known as bharni (literally, "filling"). The two 1977 paintings of Krishna playing his flute under a flowering tree by Sita Devi and by the younger (Mahapatra Brahmin) Baua Devi, currently owned by the Ethnic Arts Foundation, certainly suggest a master/pupil relationship between them at that time.
Similarly, a number of Kayastha women, many from Ranti village, following, and apparently explicitly encouraged by, the equally nationally and internationally acclaimed and traveled Ganga Devi (and by perhaps Mahasundari Devi as well), also transferred their long standing Kayastha wall painting technique onto paper. Their paintings were thus done with fine black and red ink pens, a technique locally referred to as kachni, or "line" drawing.
Even though the subject matter of their paintings has been nearly identical, the clear distinction between the painting techniques of the women of these two castes has been largely maintained up to the present. In the original wall paintings, either inside the house or on compound walls, and largely until the early 1980s on paper as well, nearly all of the images depicted by both castes were of high gods and goddesses (Shiva and Parvati, Krishna and Radha, Vishnu, Durga, Kali, Ram, Ganesha, etc. or an occasional scene from the Ramayana), or else symbolic figures or objects central to life cycle rituals -- and especially marriage ceremonies (e.g. the much noted kohbar). On the walls, these images were traditionally intended to create sacred spaces, and to encourage prosperity, fertility, and general well being. (We simply do not know if, when painted on paper and for sale, these images are presumed to have some or any of the same powers. Probably not, but we have never thought to ask the artists.) In addition, the women of the two castes also shared in using the same, almost standard, 22 x 30 sheets of heavy, white, hand-made paper introduced by Kulkarni, and quickly commercially available in the town. (A few of the major artists did make some larger paintings on lower quality paper, but these must be less than 1% of the total production.) The women of both castes also joined in beginning each painting with a formal frame of leaves, branches, stylized animals, simple to complex geometrical forms, etc., around the edges of the paper before working on the central images. (These painted frames may be a reflection or holdover of the painted architectural elements often visible in the traditional wall paintings, though this requires further investigation).
It should also be noted here that a small number of men also began painting in the early years, but their paintings were distinctively different and will be addressed separately below.
The Dusadh Painters
It was apparently not until 1972 -- that is, some five years after Brahmin and Kayastha women began to do commercial painting -- that some Dusadh women as well as some men, mostly, it appears, in Jitwarpur village, also began to paint on paper. As far as we know the Dusadh did not previously do ritually oriented wall paintings inside their homes. Jain reports that Dusadh "occasionally they painted on the exterior and interior walls of their houses ornamental motifs as well as religious themes, the most popular among them being the serpent deities, the goddesses Durga and Sita, Shiva and, to a lesser extent, diverse episodes from the Krishna legend. The tutelary deity of the Dusadhs is Raja Salhesh whose village shrine (gahabar) is usually adorned with paintings based on his legend. Similar scenes also appear on their house walls." (Today, only a very few of the Dusadh homes in Jitwarpur still have (usually severely faded) floral patterns or low clay reliefs of animals or human figures on their external walls, but they are seen being made in one of Erika Moser's 1972 films. We simply do not know the current extent of painting on their interior walls, or in the gahabar.) What is clear is that the Dusadh painters rapidly developed their own two distinctively different styles of painting on paper. One style, described by Jain (above) but also epitomized by the prolific and continuously innovative work of Shanti Devi, involved using a cow-dung based paint on the white paper to make a doubled outline of boldly drawn heroes and animals, with cow dung dots between the doubled outlines. The figures themselves were then brightly colored and any spaces between them were filled with equally brightly colored flowers, trees, leaves, etc. These paintings most often had to do with the adventures of the Dusadh culture heroes, Lord Salhesh and his brothers, or else other figures in the Dusadh pantheon. Although distinctive in technique and subject matter, these Dusadh paintings, which were also "framed," seemed closer to, or reflective of, the by then established Brahmin style.
The second Dusadh style, suggested by a Nittan (itinerant service or "juggler" caste) woman and encouraged by Erica Moser (the late German filmmaker and folklorist
who made several visits of several months to Jitwarpur in the early 1970s), was based on a Dusadh tradition of small protective bodily tattoos. In this painting technique, known as godana (tattoo painting), stick figures with upturned arms and elephants of varying sizes were roughly drawn, and very rarely "framed," in lines or circles all across the standard white paper. In time, however, the practice grew of first covering the white paper with gobar, a light brown cow dung wash. Once the gobar had dried, was painted from edge to edge with rows of more regular small figures; repeated images of Lord Salhesh, his brothers, their traditional mounts (elephant and horses), and occasionally, their consorts. The high gods of the Brahmins and Kayasthas never appeared.
In effect, while they were all recognizable as distinctively Mithila paintings - impossible to be confused with Bengali Patas, Patta Chittra from Orissa, or Rajasthani Pars. Thus until quite recently, the Dusadh painters, and the Brahmin and Kayastha painters, seemed to be living and operating in distinct and separate aesthetic, ritual, symbolic, cosmological, no less social, worlds. Based on seeing several thousand Mithila paintings going back to 1971, as far as we know, the Dusadh painters rarely depicted the high gods and seemingly never the khobar-ghar, the central ritual form of the Brahmin and Kayastha traditions. Likewise, the Brahmins and Kayastha never used the Dusadh gobar or godana techniques or styles, nor ever depicted the Dusadh heroes.
Because of these evident distinctions in technique and subject matter, for many years, and at even a quick glance at a painting, it was usually easy to tell the caste affiliation of the painter. Thus Jyotindra Jain could helpfully and accurately divide the catalog for the Indian Council for Cultural Relations' 1991?? exhibition in the French colony of Reunion of Mithila paintings from the 1970s and 1980s, into three obvious sections; Brahmin, Kayastha, and Dusadh.
Since the early 1980s, however, the situation began to change. We frankly know nothing about possible changes in the external or internal wall paintings, e.g., changes in styles, images, techniques, incidence, and possible influences from painting on paper. One can imagine various forms of feedback from commercial painting, and interaction with the more general social, cultural, and political changes that have been affecting everyone in Bihar/India. But all of this cries out to be -- studied. However, we do know that painting on paper has evolved dramatically among all three castes, initially in terms of subject matter, and more recently in terms of techniques, even the crossing of caste styles. As a result, some - though not all -- of the easy distinctions described above are now disappearing. Styles, techniques, and subject matter, are in some case beginning to merge. The dynamics and larger implications of these changes raise a whole series of fascinating questions.
Painting by Men.
Before dealing with these changes in the subject matter and techniques of the women of these three castes, it is important to mention something about painting among local men. Although Mithila painting it is widely known and presumed to be a woman's painting tradition (though they have shared awards with their wives, no male painter has ever received a national award on his own), starting as early at the late 1960s, a number of young Brahmin men began filling in the broad expanses of colour after their mothers had outlined the figures. Among others, Sita's Devi son, Surya Dev, was actively engaged in this work and when she was commissioned to do murals elsewhere in India and internationally, he traveled with her to help in this way. As far as we know, however, he did not initiate any paintings. In contrast, there was no such role was available or necessary for the sons or husbands of the Kayastha "line" painters.
Nevertheless, at least three men who were neither Mahapatra Brahmins or Kayastha, did begin painting in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Krishnanan Jha, and his brother Batohi Jha - both sons of a tantric priest who is said to have been highly skilled at drawing tantric diagrams - began to paint tantric images of gods, goddesses, and especially the 10 avatars of Vishnu, accompanied below by their respective tantric yantras. Batohi Jha soon stopped painting and left Madhubani, but Krishnanand Jha has continued painting to the present. Like that of the women painters, the evolution of his paintings described below, has expanded dramatically over time. The other early and continuously active painter has been Gopal Saha, a Bania, who started life as a chai-wala but who had to give up his trade when he was nearly paralyzed from the waist down as a result of mistaken medical treatment. Having enjoyed drawing as a child, he initially studied early Ganga Devi paintings, but then quickly developed his own distinctive style. He has become a prolific painter of sharply observed local village and small town life, often with an ironic, critical, or humorous undertone.
Particularly striking about the paintings by these men, and the small band (Kayastha, Brahmin, Dusadh, and others) who subsequently joined them, is that they seemingly never paint the Kohbar or other images surrounding marriage and other life cycle rituals that remain a core feature of the paintings by the Brahman and Kayastha women. These ritual images, deeply rooted in Mithila's cosmology, remain in the women's component of this powerfully gender differentiated world. These figures and images are clearly not part of the men's domain. Instead, aside from the tantric paintings, the male painters depict local folklore and daily (secular) life in the world(s) around them. Over time, as the number of male painters has grown the subject matter of their paintings has also expanded. However, it still remains distinctively Mithila painting, and from here on it will be discussed along with that of the women painters, as part of the general diversification and continuing innovative vitality of the Mithila tradition.
Raymond Owens and Trajectories of Change
Many outsiders have influenced the reception and content of Mithila painting. These include William and Mildred Archer, Pupil Jayakar, Baskar Kulkarni, Uppendra Maharathi, Erika Moser, Jyotindra Jain, Tokyo Hasegawa, but I will attenmtp to deal here with the influence of the American anthropologist, Raymond Owens. Starting in 1977 until 1990, Raymond Owens, often with his wife, Naomi, an ethnomusicologist, regularly visited, and for extended periods of time lived in, Madhubani, Jitwarpur, and Ranti. During this period Ray became very close to many of the painters, ultimately producing two films and a book manuscript (still incomplete), on the lives of several of the painters. In 1977 he helped organize the Master Craftsmen Association of Mithila (MCAM), a cooperative intended to assist the painters obtain materials, sell their paintings, develop a literacy program, etc. MCAM collapsed in the late 1980s?, but its chop on the back of the paintings from that period is still often seen, including information on the artist, their village, the subject of the painting, and the date it was purchased.
Also in 1977, with friends in the US, Owens organized the non-profit, pro bono, Ethnic Arts Foundation (EAF) to sponsor exhibitions, sales, and broad public appreciation of Mithila painting. In the late 70s, dealers from, or selling to, the Delhi tourist emporia, were offering minimal prices for rapidly executed, mass produced paintings. Owens recognized that this was killing the tradition, flooding the market with poor and repetitive work, and undercutting the talents of some if not many of the local painters. In an effort to counter this (inspired by M.N. Srinivas), Owens and the EAF set up a system whereby he would personally encourage painters to take their time and produce their best possible work. He would then purchase what he considered "the best" paintings he could find - or work by painters he thought had talent and whom he wanted to encourage -- for well over the current market prices. He would then bring those paintings to the US for exhibition and sale by the EAF. When paintings were sold by the EAF, on Owen's next trip to Madhubani, the profits from those sales would go (1) to the individual painters whose work had been sold as a further incentive to do their "best" work, (2) to the MCAM cooperative (while it existed), and (3) to purchase still more Mithila paintings. (The EAF had no other source of funds, and Owen's travel was usually covered by various grants or consultancies.) By this means, Owens and then the EAF purchased some 1,400 Mithila paintings between 1977 and 2003, from some 85 different painters, sold some 700 paintings, and currently have unsold, in inventory, some 700 paintings. Using this system, tens of thousands of dollars in rupees have been distributed to the Mithila painters.
Although of course this was not the only - or even the largest - source of income for the painters, thanks to these efforts, Owens was an extremely popular, even beloved, figure in Madhubani and the surrounding villages. He was a major source of personal support, professional encouragement, and income. He also quite consciously influenced the subject matter of what was being painted based on his own experience and sense of what was possible, and the US market, i., e, what kinds of images attracted people in the US who were buying paintings from the EAF (mostly, but not entirely, people with some prior interest or experience in India.). At first he suggested that painters do more well-known scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabarata,. themes more readily taken up by the Brahmins and Kayasthas familiar with those epics. Scenes of Ram, Lakshman, and Sita entering the forest, Ram and Lakshman chasing the golden deer, Ravan's abduction of Sita, Sita Garlanding Ram, all became popular. He then began to suggest that painters could, perhaps should, do episodes - or even extended narratives in multiple paintings -- drawn from local folklore myths and legends. This suggestion crossed all the caste lines, and we began to see paintings with single or multiple episodes from such narratives, and also sometimes multiple paintings (from 3 to 20 or more), telling extended tales of ordinary people, kings and queens, animals, gods and goddesses. By 1980, Owens began suggesting that people try painting individual or multiple scenes and events in local life, ritual, and ultimately, series of paintings of their own life histories.
Clearly, Owens was one of many other influences on the painters that led to the expansion of the subject matter during the 1980s; this was not solely due to Owen's influence. He was however frequently on the spot - often for many months at a time - making such suggestions, and purchasing individual paintings and series of paintings, ultimately from some 70 different painters. Whatever the sources of change, the results were quite dramatic. The traditional subjects continued to be painted, but many artists also began to innovate, e.g. Ganga Devi (and others) detailing the story of the Ramayana and the life-cycle; Leela Devi (and others) focusing on the central lotus form of the traditional Kohbar, but also painting the multi-paneled story of Kalidasa (which should unquestionably go to a museum); Mahasundari Devi producing large paintings of marriage ritual items, and Lalitha Devi producing a 21 painting series of the entire multi-year marriage ritual, as well as a 12 painting series of her own life history; Baua Devi painting several local stories on the interaction of snakes and people - as well as on the death of her daughter - but also in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center in NY; Krishnanand Jha doing a 32 painting series - over a ten year period - on the actual murder of a young local boy and the trial that followed, as well as of several series depicting classic stories concerned with the intervention of gods in the lives of human beings; Shanti Devi doing a large painting of a local election, complete with sound trucks, flag waving crowds, voting lists, and ballot boxes, and multiple paintings on Dusadh legends; Gopal Saha's series of paintings depicting local folk tales and local foibles, etc.
This list could be considerably extended, and painters today continue to innovate in their subject matter. What is striking, however, is that until the last year or so, as far as we could tell, all of the painters were staying within their caste's traditional styles or techniques. However, in January 2003, for the first time we saw large numbers of paintings that were crossing the long standing line between the Brahmin and Dusadh styles or techniques. Thus we saw paintings by Dusadh artists depicting Radha and Krishna (Urmila Devi); Shiva and the sun and moon gods (Seema Kumari); Ram (Ram Bilas Paswan), Ganesha (Lalita Devi), and even a Kohbar (Chano Devi); many godana (tattoo) paintings with painted frames; and godana paintings on white paper without the previously standard preparatory gobar cow-dung wash (Urmila Devi). At the same time we saw paintings by Kayastha and Brahmin painters using a cow-dung wash (Krishna Kant Jha); and incorporating Dusadh tattoo figures (Rina Kumari); as well as a Brahmin painter doing "line" paintings in Kayastha style (Vinita Jha).
More generally, along with the increasing integration of Brahmin and Dusadh styles, especially evident in Jitwarpur, the number of Brahmin painters seemed to be much smaller than in the past, and the number of Dusadh painters, especially young women, had grown substantially. It would appear that these two previously distinct painting styles and techniques are now merging, or people from both castes are feeling increasingly comfortable drawing on those of the other. Whether this is due to perceptions of "the market," or influence of Bihar state intervention in favor of Dalit communities generally and increased recognition and invitations of Dusadh painters to distant melas (fairs) or exhibitions and training programs, and/or still other sources, clearly needs further investigation. Likewise, it would be extremely important to understand both the broader meanings of painting in the lives of the painters generally, as well as the particular meanings, if any, of this on-going integration of the painting traditions in the daily social lives and on-the-ground interactions of the local Brahmins and Dusadh. What does one make of the fact that Sita Devi's grandson, a Brahmin, when asked about taking tea with Dusadh painters, responded, "we are all artists."
Among the Kayastha painters there seemed to be less cross-overs, though we did see several paintings that made use of the traditional Dusadh gobar cow dung wash as a base (Munjal Devi, Bandna Kanak) on otherwise classic "line" paintings. Nevertheless, there have been major, recent, though more stylistically internal, and dramatic subject matter innovations within the Kayastha painting tradition as well.
Up to now, as far as we know, Mithila paintings have not made use of either a horizon line or Western style perspective. Images are presented on a single plane. Even in complex multi-episode narrative paintings, in which the sequence or importance of events is differentiated by different scales, they are presented on a flat plane. Clusters of figures are sometimes seen one behind another, but they rarely (and seemingly inadvertently), shrink smaller to give the impression of greater distance from the viewer. Still today there is no sign of this type of perspective. But for the first time this year we have seen something approaching horizon lines. Strikingly, three such paintings we have seen remain on a flat plane, but one which passes from an underwater scene up into the air above, with an effective horizon line between the surface of the water and the sky above (two line paintings by Vimla Dutta, one by Ram Barosh). Several paintings by Ram Barosh also represent dramatic innovations in subject matter, focusing on plants, birds, and animals as simply the beauties of nature.
But perhaps the most strikingly innovative Kayastha painters are long established Godaveri Dutta, and younger Santosh Kumar Das. Godaveri Dutta, who has on seven occasions during the 1990s spent three to six months at the Mithila Museum studio in Japan [http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~mithila/Eindex.html], is doing extraordinarily fine detailed paintings of such images as baby Krishna, unusual scenes from the Mahabaratha, as well as very large paintings (still in Japan) of a single object, e.g., Siva's trident and Ram's bow. Santosh Kumar Das, spent five years in the later 1980s studying art at the national academy in Barodha learning about other forms of Indian art, as well as European and other Asian traditions. He returned to Ranti ten years ago to take up Mithila line painting but with a vastly expanded imagination of the possible. He has done unique line paintings of childhood memories, dreams, local floods, local tragedies, and during this past year, despite the formal constraints of the Kayastha tradition, he did an extraordinary series of 21 emotionally charged and politically powerful paintings of the massacres in Gujarat.
In effect, it appears that while the Brahmin and Dusadh paintings are beginning to merge, the Kayastha painters are largely staying within their own techniques and style, but pressing it into service for very new kinds of images and topics. For the 1980s we know that Ray Owens was encouraging the painters to expand their subject matter. Other people may also have been doing this as well. During the 1990s, Owens was not able to visit Mithila, indeed, did not return until October 1999 staying until March 2000 - when he again encouraged continuing innovation. (And when he died in July 2000, there was great consternation and mourning among the painters.) Nevertheless, one person's influence cannot account for the continuing and most recent acceleration in the elaboration of the several parallel, and now partially merging, painting traditions. It seems more likely that after two decades of encouragement to innovate (from Owens and others) innovation has become part of the spirit, performance or dynamic of the tradition. Still, it is clear that we need much more detailed and concrete understandings of why and how painters from these different castes are currently moving in different directions. What are we to make of the seeming decline in the numbers of Brahmin painters, the merging of Brahmin and Dusadh styles or techniques, the rapid internal evolution of the Kayastha tradition, as well as possible links between these changes in expressive or aesthetic forms, and larger social, economic, and political forces? Mithila painting could be an extraordinary site or laboratory for examining the relationship or interaction of cultural forms to broader social processes.
Outside Influences
In my report last year I listed a number of Indian and foreign "outsiders" who had over the years influenced the development and wider recognition of the Mithila painting traditions. What I failed to address was the parallel and interactive influence both on and of Mithila painters who themselves traveled widely in India and internationally. As mentioned earlier, aside from receiving numerous national commissions and honours, the GOI sent Ganga Devi and Sita Devi on extended trips to Europe, Russia, and the US for for a variety of major cultural events. In the 1990s, Godaveri Dutta and Baua Devi both made seven trips to the Mithila Museum in Japan and each time painted in the studio there for periods of three to nine months. They also traveled to numerous exhibitions of their work in wide array of Japanese municipalities. Seven or eight other Mithila painters including Ganga Devi (starting in 1988), Sita Devi, Shanti Devi, Karpoori Devi, and Vimla Dutta also made one or more similar extended visits to the Mithila Museum in Japan. Santosh Kumar Das, although he has not travelled internationally, spent five years studying (world) art in Barodha. Clearly, all these artists were able to move beyond the confines of Mithila because various influential people outside the region with access to the necessary funding, recognized that they had some extraordinary talents. But the combination or interaction of the artists' inherent talents, and the external experience and expansion of their imaginations, has made them all particularly powerful models for others in the region.
The recently established Mithila Art Institute (MIA) will hopefully turn out to be another marker of the creative possibilities of insider-outsider interaction. In early January 2003, the Ethnic Arts Foundation established the MIA in Madhubani with Santosh Kumar Das as the Director and primary instructor. Santosh is an extraordinary painter himself. But he was selected as Director because he is also personally committed to simultaneously developing the technical skills of the next generation of painters; deepening their roots in and understanding of Mithila painting and the region's cultural traditions; enlarging their imaginations, their sense of the possible; and expanding their capacity to articulate their ideas in both paint and words. At this point, the Institute has been operating four-plus hours a day, five days a week, for seven weeks. The 30 students were selected by a panel of major painters in a "blind" competition from among 103 applicants. Unlike previous government sponsored "training programs," the MIA initially offered no stipends, simply free materials, a place to work, serious instruction, a sense of community or collegiality, and a chance to expand their imaginations. (The MIA has subsequently provided small stipends for students who could not otherwise attend the program.) So far, two students have dropped out, two more have been added, enthusiasm is running high, and there are reasonable grounds for thinking some stunning artists will emerge.
Are these external contacts and influences threatening the "authenticity" of Mithila painting? Is the "purity" of tradition being damaged or destroyed? I believe quite the opposite; that the continuing innovations in subject matter and techniques over the past three decades have given Mithila painting an extraordinary vitality. All of these painters are still rooted in their tradition. You would never mistake their painting as coming from some other region of India. But the painters are actively and creatively responding to the world around them, both to "the market," but also to other personal, local, and external events and influences. As at least some of the artists are aware, "the market" for their paintings is in fact highly segmented - among urban middle class and elite Indian buyers, foreign tourists, Europeans, Americans, and Japanese. Moreover, given their distance from their buyers (extremely few if any people now travel the terrible roads from Patna to Madhubani and the surrounding villages), many seem well aware that this complex "market" is particularly disadvantageous to them; it is hard to get clear signals from it. As a result, several painters explicitly mentioned that they were "experimenting" with some different ways of painting to see if they might be more successful.
Folk Art or Art? Craftspeople or Artists?
An observant reader might have noticed that I have begun to shift from using the neutral term "painter," to the more loaded term "artist." Nor have I used the term "craft," or 'folk art." This is intentional. There are Mithila painters of all the castes who simply produce more or less the same painting over and over again in what would fairly be called craft or folk art. But there are also a surprisingly large number of local painters whose work is constantly evolving in technique and subject matter as they attempt to express their feelings and understandings of themselves, of nature, the cosmos, and of the changing concrete world around them, including "the market." With the exception of Santosh Kumar Das, none in the villages have attended a formal Art School. Nevertheless, they are certainly schooled in a complex and deeply sophisticated artistic tradition, which they are simultaneously and constantly remaking, expanding, elaborating, in an effort to develop their own individual expressive capacities and to reach larger audiences. They are drawing on, or curling back to, the past but in the process building a future. These seem to me to be the defining characteristics of being an artist anywhere in the world. This also accounts for Stella Kramrich's comment to me in the mid-1980s that Mithila painting showed more vitality than any other traditional art form she knew in India.
The contrast between current Mithila with what I take to be the more genuinely "folk arts" within India (and elsewhere) is striking. Thus, it is certainly the case that the celebrated Bengali Patas and Terracottas, the Patta Chittra from Orissa, the Rajasthani Pars are often quite beautiful and fascinating. However, those being produced today seem remarkably similar in form, technique, and often in content, to those done 10, 20, and 50 years ago. At least for the moment, these seem to be relatively fixed traditions. Indeed, I was told in Calcutta that the production of Patas is now reduced two painters, and is threatened with extinction. Many of the folk arts of India are of high technical quality. And clearly there are single individuals in some of these other traditions who also stand out as artists, such as the father and son team (names??) who do Warli paintings. However, as broad based traditions, they do not seem to be evolving and responding to changing internal and external worlds, to the personal experiences of their producers, nor manifesting the continuous innovation, expressive power, and individuality of many of the Mithila painters. Mithila painting today is a rapidly changing, highly complex, broad stream with deeply individual, distinctive, and occasionally merging currents. The stream certainly includes craftspeople producing folk art for the craft emporia. However, it also includes a large number of extremely innovative, creative, and self- expressive artists.
At one level this is not surprising. Wall painting has been done for hundreds of years in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of villages all across Mithila. Huge numbers of young people grow up with paintings around them, paintings that are richly validated and powerfully meaningful in the culture. Skilled (wall) painters have always been appreciated within the context of their families, and now for nearly 40 years skilled painters on paper have received external (national and international) recognition, opportunities for travel, and sometimes substantial economic benefits. In this context, with a pool of potential artists across hundreds of villages, and a small, segmented, but significant market for their work, it should not be surprising that some of these painters should emerge as quite extraordinary artists.
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<u> Endnotes </u>
[1] As this suggests, these observations are limited to Mithila wall painting and painting on paper in, and in the villages around, Madhubani town. This is a, if not the, major center of painting on paper. However wall painting, and quite possibly painting on paper, is presumably much more widespread and varied across the Mithila region. The observations offered here clearly need to be supplemented by wider and deeper research.
[2] The growth of male painters in what is publicly seen as a .woman.s painting tradition,. raises one of a whole series of questions regarding changing(?) gender relations (re control of income, status, public recognition, dowry, mobility, education, etc.) in these families . and the larger society.
[3] It is striking (and somewhat puzzling), that while upon their return from their international travels, both Ganga Devi and Sita Devi produced numerous paintings of places that they visited in Russia and the US, as far as we know, none of the artists . including theses two - who spent time in Japan have done any paintings of scenes or images from that country. There may be some subtle influence of aspects of Japanese art on Godaveri Dutta.s paintings, but she does not see or admit to it.
[4] Modest stipends will be considered if poverty seems to be forcing talented students to drop out.
[5] One obvious problem of course is that to succeed as an artist, potential buyers need to see one.s paintings. While men and older women seem able to travel fairly easily to Patna and, e.g., Delhi, while cultural restrictions are perhaps declining, it is still much harder for young women . who remain the bulk of the painters and the students in the MIA - to make these journeys. As a partial solution, the EAF is considering the possibility of establishing a website in Madhubani, perhaps at the MIA itself, to enable painters to display their work on the Internet.
[6] Today there continue to be veiled accusations that in the early years of painting on paperm and still at present, various people, both painters and dealers, sometimes marketed other peoples. paintings as their own. This does not seem to be widespread but several people offered us paintings this January that they claimed were their own work, but which were almost certainly painted by someone else. Whether this is simply a matter of clever or practical marketing -- attempting to impress a potential buyer or increase one.s own status (and income) -- or if it represents a different (joint?) conception of creation or ownership, probably calls for some additional research.
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[7] We know of three painters from Mithila who have had some formal Art School training but who have settled in, and become part of the art world, in Delhi or Bombay. It is not clear how rooted they are, or will remain, in one or another of the Mithila traditions.
Drafted 3/08/03
Slightly Revised 11/18/03
Some Observations on the Continuing Evolution of Mithila Painting
David L. Szanton
Ethnic Arts Foundation
March 2003
During our January 5 to 16, 2003 visit to Madhubani and the surrounding villages we were given several additional bits of information regarding the origins of Mithila painting on paper. According to the painter, Gopal Saha, when the artist, Baskar Kulkarni, came to Madhubani in 1967 and '68 (we had previously heard 1966), Kulkarni essentially, or at least initially - and after some difficulty even gaining access to local women for this purpose - worked with five women; Sita Devi, Ganga Devi, Karpoori Devi, Mahasundari Devi, and Yasoda Devi. It is not clear how he chose those five, or how they chose him, especially Ganga Devi who lived in the village of Rashidpur, some 12 miles from Madhubani town. (We do know, however, from Jain (1997) that she enjoyed drawing well before then.) Of these five women (the soon celebrated, but now blind), Sita Devi, was a Mahapatra Brahmin, living in Jitwarpur village, close by Madhubani town. The even more celebrated, but now late, Ganga Devi, as well as Mahasundari Devi and Karpoori Devi, were all Kayastha. Mahasundari and Karpoori were in fact married to brothers. Today they are both widows and live (separately) in the adjacent halves of their large house in Ranti, a village also close by Madhubani town. According to Gopal Saha, because Ganga Devi and Yasoda Devi both came from distant villages, they rented a house (or space in a house) two houses down from his own home in Laharegunj, then nearby, now within, Madhubani town. As they were living together, Yasoda Devi was probably a Kayastha as well.
The Brahmin and Kayastha Painters
These caste origins seem to be important because while the distinctive ancient internal wall painting traditions of the Brahmins and Kayastha were then transferred to painting on paper, the trajectories of the two traditions have until recently diverged quite dramatically. Referring specifically to the wall painting tradition, Mildred Archer noted:
The work of the two castes has remained clearly distinguishable even though the houses may be in close proximity in the same village. Brahmin paintings have a delicate meandering line which encloses areas of brilliant colour-pink, green, lemon yellow, aquamarine blue, red and black. The figures, reduced to fantastic geometric or vegetable forms, float in space amongst birds, animals and flowers. Kayastha paintings, on the other hand, employ only one or two colours -black and sometimes dull blood red. They rely on strong lines enlivened with hatching and spotting, and the figures, often set in panels, are firmly ranged in long processions round the wall. Although similar in purpose and subject-matter, the two styles are markedly distinct. Their variety and inventiveness make them perhaps the most sophisticated and elegant of all popular painting still current in Bihar.
Once Sita Devi started painting on paper, and was nationally recognized and sent to Europe and the US by the GOI to represent India at various cultural fairs and exhibitions, numerous other Mahapatra Brahmin women in Jitwarpur, but also in other villages, seemed to follow her lead. Based on our Ethnic Arts Foundations collection, seemingly all adopted Sita Devi's characteristic Brahmin technique, i.e., using a frayed straw wrapped in cotton, to both outline and/or fill in the outlines of the figures of gods and goddesses with large masses in the vibrant commercially purchased colors, quite as described by Mildred Archer. Locally, this technique is known as bharni (literally, "filling"). The two 1977 paintings of Krishna playing his flute under a flowering tree by Sita Devi and by the younger (Mahapatra Brahmin) Baua Devi, currently owned by the Ethnic Arts Foundation, certainly suggest a master/pupil relationship between them at that time.
Similarly, a number of Kayastha women, many from Ranti village, following, and apparently explicitly encouraged by, the equally nationally and internationally acclaimed and traveled Ganga Devi (and by perhaps Mahasundari Devi as well), also transferred their long standing Kayastha wall painting technique onto paper. Their paintings were thus done with fine black and red ink pens, a technique locally referred to as kachni, or "line" drawing.
Even though the subject matter of their paintings has been nearly identical, the clear distinction between the painting techniques of the women of these two castes has been largely maintained up to the present. In the original wall paintings, either inside the house or on compound walls, and largely until the early 1980s on paper as well, nearly all of the images depicted by both castes were of high gods and goddesses (Shiva and Parvati, Krishna and Radha, Vishnu, Durga, Kali, Ram, Ganesha, etc. or an occasional scene from the Ramayana), or else symbolic figures or objects central to life cycle rituals -- and especially marriage ceremonies (e.g. the much noted kohbar). On the walls, these images were traditionally intended to create sacred spaces, and to encourage prosperity, fertility, and general well being. (We simply do not know if, when painted on paper and for sale, these images are presumed to have some or any of the same powers. Probably not, but we have never thought to ask the artists.) In addition, the women of the two castes also shared in using the same, almost standard, 22 x 30 sheets of heavy, white, hand-made paper introduced by Kulkarni, and quickly commercially available in the town. (A few of the major artists did make some larger paintings on lower quality paper, but these must be less than 1% of the total production.) The women of both castes also joined in beginning each painting with a formal frame of leaves, branches, stylized animals, simple to complex geometrical forms, etc., around the edges of the paper before working on the central images. (These painted frames may be a reflection or holdover of the painted architectural elements often visible in the traditional wall paintings, though this requires further investigation).
It should also be noted here that a small number of men also began painting in the early years, but their paintings were distinctively different and will be addressed separately below.
The Dusadh Painters
It was apparently not until 1972 -- that is, some five years after Brahmin and Kayastha women began to do commercial painting -- that some Dusadh women as well as some men, mostly, it appears, in Jitwarpur village, also began to paint on paper. As far as we know the Dusadh did not previously do ritually oriented wall paintings inside their homes. Jain reports that Dusadh "occasionally they painted on the exterior and interior walls of their houses ornamental motifs as well as religious themes, the most popular among them being the serpent deities, the goddesses Durga and Sita, Shiva and, to a lesser extent, diverse episodes from the Krishna legend. The tutelary deity of the Dusadhs is Raja Salhesh whose village shrine (gahabar) is usually adorned with paintings based on his legend. Similar scenes also appear on their house walls." (Today, only a very few of the Dusadh homes in Jitwarpur still have (usually severely faded) floral patterns or low clay reliefs of animals or human figures on their external walls, but they are seen being made in one of Erika Moser's 1972 films. We simply do not know the current extent of painting on their interior walls, or in the gahabar.) What is clear is that the Dusadh painters rapidly developed their own two distinctively different styles of painting on paper. One style, described by Jain (above) but also epitomized by the prolific and continuously innovative work of Shanti Devi, involved using a cow-dung based paint on the white paper to make a doubled outline of boldly drawn heroes and animals, with cow dung dots between the doubled outlines. The figures themselves were then brightly colored and any spaces between them were filled with equally brightly colored flowers, trees, leaves, etc. These paintings most often had to do with the adventures of the Dusadh culture heroes, Lord Salhesh and his brothers, or else other figures in the Dusadh pantheon. Although distinctive in technique and subject matter, these Dusadh paintings, which were also "framed," seemed closer to, or reflective of, the by then established Brahmin style.
The second Dusadh style, suggested by a Nittan (itinerant service or "juggler" caste) woman and encouraged by Erica Moser (the late German filmmaker and folklorist
who made several visits of several months to Jitwarpur in the early 1970s), was based on a Dusadh tradition of small protective bodily tattoos. In this painting technique, known as godana (tattoo painting), stick figures with upturned arms and elephants of varying sizes were roughly drawn, and very rarely "framed," in lines or circles all across the standard white paper. In time, however, the practice grew of first covering the white paper with gobar, a light brown cow dung wash. Once the gobar had dried, was painted from edge to edge with rows of more regular small figures; repeated images of Lord Salhesh, his brothers, their traditional mounts (elephant and horses), and occasionally, their consorts. The high gods of the Brahmins and Kayasthas never appeared.
In effect, while they were all recognizable as distinctively Mithila paintings - impossible to be confused with Bengali Patas, Patta Chittra from Orissa, or Rajasthani Pars. Thus until quite recently, the Dusadh painters, and the Brahmin and Kayastha painters, seemed to be living and operating in distinct and separate aesthetic, ritual, symbolic, cosmological, no less social, worlds. Based on seeing several thousand Mithila paintings going back to 1971, as far as we know, the Dusadh painters rarely depicted the high gods and seemingly never the khobar-ghar, the central ritual form of the Brahmin and Kayastha traditions. Likewise, the Brahmins and Kayastha never used the Dusadh gobar or godana techniques or styles, nor ever depicted the Dusadh heroes.
Because of these evident distinctions in technique and subject matter, for many years, and at even a quick glance at a painting, it was usually easy to tell the caste affiliation of the painter. Thus Jyotindra Jain could helpfully and accurately divide the catalog for the Indian Council for Cultural Relations' 1991?? exhibition in the French colony of Reunion of Mithila paintings from the 1970s and 1980s, into three obvious sections; Brahmin, Kayastha, and Dusadh.
Since the early 1980s, however, the situation began to change. We frankly know nothing about possible changes in the external or internal wall paintings, e.g., changes in styles, images, techniques, incidence, and possible influences from painting on paper. One can imagine various forms of feedback from commercial painting, and interaction with the more general social, cultural, and political changes that have been affecting everyone in Bihar/India. But all of this cries out to be -- studied. However, we do know that painting on paper has evolved dramatically among all three castes, initially in terms of subject matter, and more recently in terms of techniques, even the crossing of caste styles. As a result, some - though not all -- of the easy distinctions described above are now disappearing. Styles, techniques, and subject matter, are in some case beginning to merge. The dynamics and larger implications of these changes raise a whole series of fascinating questions.
Painting by Men.
Before dealing with these changes in the subject matter and techniques of the women of these three castes, it is important to mention something about painting among local men. Although Mithila painting it is widely known and presumed to be a woman's painting tradition (though they have shared awards with their wives, no male painter has ever received a national award on his own), starting as early at the late 1960s, a number of young Brahmin men began filling in the broad expanses of colour after their mothers had outlined the figures. Among others, Sita's Devi son, Surya Dev, was actively engaged in this work and when she was commissioned to do murals elsewhere in India and internationally, he traveled with her to help in this way. As far as we know, however, he did not initiate any paintings. In contrast, there was no such role was available or necessary for the sons or husbands of the Kayastha "line" painters.
Nevertheless, at least three men who were neither Mahapatra Brahmins or Kayastha, did begin painting in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Krishnanan Jha, and his brother Batohi Jha - both sons of a tantric priest who is said to have been highly skilled at drawing tantric diagrams - began to paint tantric images of gods, goddesses, and especially the 10 avatars of Vishnu, accompanied below by their respective tantric yantras. Batohi Jha soon stopped painting and left Madhubani, but Krishnanand Jha has continued painting to the present. Like that of the women painters, the evolution of his paintings described below, has expanded dramatically over time. The other early and continuously active painter has been Gopal Saha, a Bania, who started life as a chai-wala but who had to give up his trade when he was nearly paralyzed from the waist down as a result of mistaken medical treatment. Having enjoyed drawing as a child, he initially studied early Ganga Devi paintings, but then quickly developed his own distinctive style. He has become a prolific painter of sharply observed local village and small town life, often with an ironic, critical, or humorous undertone.
Particularly striking about the paintings by these men, and the small band (Kayastha, Brahmin, Dusadh, and others) who subsequently joined them, is that they seemingly never paint the Kohbar or other images surrounding marriage and other life cycle rituals that remain a core feature of the paintings by the Brahman and Kayastha women. These ritual images, deeply rooted in Mithila's cosmology, remain in the women's component of this powerfully gender differentiated world. These figures and images are clearly not part of the men's domain. Instead, aside from the tantric paintings, the male painters depict local folklore and daily (secular) life in the world(s) around them. Over time, as the number of male painters has grown the subject matter of their paintings has also expanded. However, it still remains distinctively Mithila painting, and from here on it will be discussed along with that of the women painters, as part of the general diversification and continuing innovative vitality of the Mithila tradition.
Raymond Owens and Trajectories of Change
Many outsiders have influenced the reception and content of Mithila painting. These include William and Mildred Archer, Pupil Jayakar, Baskar Kulkarni, Uppendra Maharathi, Erika Moser, Jyotindra Jain, Tokyo Hasegawa, but I will attenmtp to deal here with the influence of the American anthropologist, Raymond Owens. Starting in 1977 until 1990, Raymond Owens, often with his wife, Naomi, an ethnomusicologist, regularly visited, and for extended periods of time lived in, Madhubani, Jitwarpur, and Ranti. During this period Ray became very close to many of the painters, ultimately producing two films and a book manuscript (still incomplete), on the lives of several of the painters. In 1977 he helped organize the Master Craftsmen Association of Mithila (MCAM), a cooperative intended to assist the painters obtain materials, sell their paintings, develop a literacy program, etc. MCAM collapsed in the late 1980s?, but its chop on the back of the paintings from that period is still often seen, including information on the artist, their village, the subject of the painting, and the date it was purchased.
Also in 1977, with friends in the US, Owens organized the non-profit, pro bono, Ethnic Arts Foundation (EAF) to sponsor exhibitions, sales, and broad public appreciation of Mithila painting. In the late 70s, dealers from, or selling to, the Delhi tourist emporia, were offering minimal prices for rapidly executed, mass produced paintings. Owens recognized that this was killing the tradition, flooding the market with poor and repetitive work, and undercutting the talents of some if not many of the local painters. In an effort to counter this (inspired by M.N. Srinivas), Owens and the EAF set up a system whereby he would personally encourage painters to take their time and produce their best possible work. He would then purchase what he considered "the best" paintings he could find - or work by painters he thought had talent and whom he wanted to encourage -- for well over the current market prices. He would then bring those paintings to the US for exhibition and sale by the EAF. When paintings were sold by the EAF, on Owen's next trip to Madhubani, the profits from those sales would go (1) to the individual painters whose work had been sold as a further incentive to do their "best" work, (2) to the MCAM cooperative (while it existed), and (3) to purchase still more Mithila paintings. (The EAF had no other source of funds, and Owen's travel was usually covered by various grants or consultancies.) By this means, Owens and then the EAF purchased some 1,400 Mithila paintings between 1977 and 2003, from some 85 different painters, sold some 700 paintings, and currently have unsold, in inventory, some 700 paintings. Using this system, tens of thousands of dollars in rupees have been distributed to the Mithila painters.
Although of course this was not the only - or even the largest - source of income for the painters, thanks to these efforts, Owens was an extremely popular, even beloved, figure in Madhubani and the surrounding villages. He was a major source of personal support, professional encouragement, and income. He also quite consciously influenced the subject matter of what was being painted based on his own experience and sense of what was possible, and the US market, i., e, what kinds of images attracted people in the US who were buying paintings from the EAF (mostly, but not entirely, people with some prior interest or experience in India.). At first he suggested that painters do more well-known scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabarata,. themes more readily taken up by the Brahmins and Kayasthas familiar with those epics. Scenes of Ram, Lakshman, and Sita entering the forest, Ram and Lakshman chasing the golden deer, Ravan's abduction of Sita, Sita Garlanding Ram, all became popular. He then began to suggest that painters could, perhaps should, do episodes - or even extended narratives in multiple paintings -- drawn from local folklore myths and legends. This suggestion crossed all the caste lines, and we began to see paintings with single or multiple episodes from such narratives, and also sometimes multiple paintings (from 3 to 20 or more), telling extended tales of ordinary people, kings and queens, animals, gods and goddesses. By 1980, Owens began suggesting that people try painting individual or multiple scenes and events in local life, ritual, and ultimately, series of paintings of their own life histories.
Clearly, Owens was one of many other influences on the painters that led to the expansion of the subject matter during the 1980s; this was not solely due to Owen's influence. He was however frequently on the spot - often for many months at a time - making such suggestions, and purchasing individual paintings and series of paintings, ultimately from some 70 different painters. Whatever the sources of change, the results were quite dramatic. The traditional subjects continued to be painted, but many artists also began to innovate, e.g. Ganga Devi (and others) detailing the story of the Ramayana and the life-cycle; Leela Devi (and others) focusing on the central lotus form of the traditional Kohbar, but also painting the multi-paneled story of Kalidasa (which should unquestionably go to a museum); Mahasundari Devi producing large paintings of marriage ritual items, and Lalitha Devi producing a 21 painting series of the entire multi-year marriage ritual, as well as a 12 painting series of her own life history; Baua Devi painting several local stories on the interaction of snakes and people - as well as on the death of her daughter - but also in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center in NY; Krishnanand Jha doing a 32 painting series - over a ten year period - on the actual murder of a young local boy and the trial that followed, as well as of several series depicting classic stories concerned with the intervention of gods in the lives of human beings; Shanti Devi doing a large painting of a local election, complete with sound trucks, flag waving crowds, voting lists, and ballot boxes, and multiple paintings on Dusadh legends; Gopal Saha's series of paintings depicting local folk tales and local foibles, etc.
This list could be considerably extended, and painters today continue to innovate in their subject matter. What is striking, however, is that until the last year or so, as far as we could tell, all of the painters were staying within their caste's traditional styles or techniques. However, in January 2003, for the first time we saw large numbers of paintings that were crossing the long standing line between the Brahmin and Dusadh styles or techniques. Thus we saw paintings by Dusadh artists depicting Radha and Krishna (Urmila Devi); Shiva and the sun and moon gods (Seema Kumari); Ram (Ram Bilas Paswan), Ganesha (Lalita Devi), and even a Kohbar (Chano Devi); many godana (tattoo) paintings with painted frames; and godana paintings on white paper without the previously standard preparatory gobar cow-dung wash (Urmila Devi). At the same time we saw paintings by Kayastha and Brahmin painters using a cow-dung wash (Krishna Kant Jha); and incorporating Dusadh tattoo figures (Rina Kumari); as well as a Brahmin painter doing "line" paintings in Kayastha style (Vinita Jha).
More generally, along with the increasing integration of Brahmin and Dusadh styles, especially evident in Jitwarpur, the number of Brahmin painters seemed to be much smaller than in the past, and the number of Dusadh painters, especially young women, had grown substantially. It would appear that these two previously distinct painting styles and techniques are now merging, or people from both castes are feeling increasingly comfortable drawing on those of the other. Whether this is due to perceptions of "the market," or influence of Bihar state intervention in favor of Dalit communities generally and increased recognition and invitations of Dusadh painters to distant melas (fairs) or exhibitions and training programs, and/or still other sources, clearly needs further investigation. Likewise, it would be extremely important to understand both the broader meanings of painting in the lives of the painters generally, as well as the particular meanings, if any, of this on-going integration of the painting traditions in the daily social lives and on-the-ground interactions of the local Brahmins and Dusadh. What does one make of the fact that Sita Devi's grandson, a Brahmin, when asked about taking tea with Dusadh painters, responded, "we are all artists."
Among the Kayastha painters there seemed to be less cross-overs, though we did see several paintings that made use of the traditional Dusadh gobar cow dung wash as a base (Munjal Devi, Bandna Kanak) on otherwise classic "line" paintings. Nevertheless, there have been major, recent, though more stylistically internal, and dramatic subject matter innovations within the Kayastha painting tradition as well.
Up to now, as far as we know, Mithila paintings have not made use of either a horizon line or Western style perspective. Images are presented on a single plane. Even in complex multi-episode narrative paintings, in which the sequence or importance of events is differentiated by different scales, they are presented on a flat plane. Clusters of figures are sometimes seen one behind another, but they rarely (and seemingly inadvertently), shrink smaller to give the impression of greater distance from the viewer. Still today there is no sign of this type of perspective. But for the first time this year we have seen something approaching horizon lines. Strikingly, three such paintings we have seen remain on a flat plane, but one which passes from an underwater scene up into the air above, with an effective horizon line between the surface of the water and the sky above (two line paintings by Vimla Dutta, one by Ram Barosh). Several paintings by Ram Barosh also represent dramatic innovations in subject matter, focusing on plants, birds, and animals as simply the beauties of nature.
But perhaps the most strikingly innovative Kayastha painters are long established Godaveri Dutta, and younger Santosh Kumar Das. Godaveri Dutta, who has on seven occasions during the 1990s spent three to six months at the Mithila Museum studio in Japan [http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~mithila/Eindex.html], is doing extraordinarily fine detailed paintings of such images as baby Krishna, unusual scenes from the Mahabaratha, as well as very large paintings (still in Japan) of a single object, e.g., Siva's trident and Ram's bow. Santosh Kumar Das, spent five years in the later 1980s studying art at the national academy in Barodha learning about other forms of Indian art, as well as European and other Asian traditions. He returned to Ranti ten years ago to take up Mithila line painting but with a vastly expanded imagination of the possible. He has done unique line paintings of childhood memories, dreams, local floods, local tragedies, and during this past year, despite the formal constraints of the Kayastha tradition, he did an extraordinary series of 21 emotionally charged and politically powerful paintings of the massacres in Gujarat.
In effect, it appears that while the Brahmin and Dusadh paintings are beginning to merge, the Kayastha painters are largely staying within their own techniques and style, but pressing it into service for very new kinds of images and topics. For the 1980s we know that Ray Owens was encouraging the painters to expand their subject matter. Other people may also have been doing this as well. During the 1990s, Owens was not able to visit Mithila, indeed, did not return until October 1999 staying until March 2000 - when he again encouraged continuing innovation. (And when he died in July 2000, there was great consternation and mourning among the painters.) Nevertheless, one person's influence cannot account for the continuing and most recent acceleration in the elaboration of the several parallel, and now partially merging, painting traditions. It seems more likely that after two decades of encouragement to innovate (from Owens and others) innovation has become part of the spirit, performance or dynamic of the tradition. Still, it is clear that we need much more detailed and concrete understandings of why and how painters from these different castes are currently moving in different directions. What are we to make of the seeming decline in the numbers of Brahmin painters, the merging of Brahmin and Dusadh styles or techniques, the rapid internal evolution of the Kayastha tradition, as well as possible links between these changes in expressive or aesthetic forms, and larger social, economic, and political forces? Mithila painting could be an extraordinary site or laboratory for examining the relationship or interaction of cultural forms to broader social processes.
Outside Influences
In my report last year I listed a number of Indian and foreign "outsiders" who had over the years influenced the development and wider recognition of the Mithila painting traditions. What I failed to address was the parallel and interactive influence both on and of Mithila painters who themselves traveled widely in India and internationally. As mentioned earlier, aside from receiving numerous national commissions and honours, the GOI sent Ganga Devi and Sita Devi on extended trips to Europe, Russia, and the US for for a variety of major cultural events. In the 1990s, Godaveri Dutta and Baua Devi both made seven trips to the Mithila Museum in Japan and each time painted in the studio there for periods of three to nine months. They also traveled to numerous exhibitions of their work in wide array of Japanese municipalities. Seven or eight other Mithila painters including Ganga Devi (starting in 1988), Sita Devi, Shanti Devi, Karpoori Devi, and Vimla Dutta also made one or more similar extended visits to the Mithila Museum in Japan. Santosh Kumar Das, although he has not travelled internationally, spent five years studying (world) art in Barodha. Clearly, all these artists were able to move beyond the confines of Mithila because various influential people outside the region with access to the necessary funding, recognized that they had some extraordinary talents. But the combination or interaction of the artists' inherent talents, and the external experience and expansion of their imaginations, has made them all particularly powerful models for others in the region.
The recently established Mithila Art Institute (MIA) will hopefully turn out to be another marker of the creative possibilities of insider-outsider interaction. In early January 2003, the Ethnic Arts Foundation established the MIA in Madhubani with Santosh Kumar Das as the Director and primary instructor. Santosh is an extraordinary painter himself. But he was selected as Director because he is also personally committed to simultaneously developing the technical skills of the next generation of painters; deepening their roots in and understanding of Mithila painting and the region's cultural traditions; enlarging their imaginations, their sense of the possible; and expanding their capacity to articulate their ideas in both paint and words. At this point, the Institute has been operating four-plus hours a day, five days a week, for seven weeks. The 30 students were selected by a panel of major painters in a "blind" competition from among 103 applicants. Unlike previous government sponsored "training programs," the MIA initially offered no stipends, simply free materials, a place to work, serious instruction, a sense of community or collegiality, and a chance to expand their imaginations. (The MIA has subsequently provided small stipends for students who could not otherwise attend the program.) So far, two students have dropped out, two more have been added, enthusiasm is running high, and there are reasonable grounds for thinking some stunning artists will emerge.
Are these external contacts and influences threatening the "authenticity" of Mithila painting? Is the "purity" of tradition being damaged or destroyed? I believe quite the opposite; that the continuing innovations in subject matter and techniques over the past three decades have given Mithila painting an extraordinary vitality. All of these painters are still rooted in their tradition. You would never mistake their painting as coming from some other region of India. But the painters are actively and creatively responding to the world around them, both to "the market," but also to other personal, local, and external events and influences. As at least some of the artists are aware, "the market" for their paintings is in fact highly segmented - among urban middle class and elite Indian buyers, foreign tourists, Europeans, Americans, and Japanese. Moreover, given their distance from their buyers (extremely few if any people now travel the terrible roads from Patna to Madhubani and the surrounding villages), many seem well aware that this complex "market" is particularly disadvantageous to them; it is hard to get clear signals from it. As a result, several painters explicitly mentioned that they were "experimenting" with some different ways of painting to see if they might be more successful.
Folk Art or Art? Craftspeople or Artists?
An observant reader might have noticed that I have begun to shift from using the neutral term "painter," to the more loaded term "artist." Nor have I used the term "craft," or 'folk art." This is intentional. There are Mithila painters of all the castes who simply produce more or less the same painting over and over again in what would fairly be called craft or folk art. But there are also a surprisingly large number of local painters whose work is constantly evolving in technique and subject matter as they attempt to express their feelings and understandings of themselves, of nature, the cosmos, and of the changing concrete world around them, including "the market." With the exception of Santosh Kumar Das, none in the villages have attended a formal Art School. Nevertheless, they are certainly schooled in a complex and deeply sophisticated artistic tradition, which they are simultaneously and constantly remaking, expanding, elaborating, in an effort to develop their own individual expressive capacities and to reach larger audiences. They are drawing on, or curling back to, the past but in the process building a future. These seem to me to be the defining characteristics of being an artist anywhere in the world. This also accounts for Stella Kramrich's comment to me in the mid-1980s that Mithila painting showed more vitality than any other traditional art form she knew in India.
The contrast between current Mithila with what I take to be the more genuinely "folk arts" within India (and elsewhere) is striking. Thus, it is certainly the case that the celebrated Bengali Patas and Terracottas, the Patta Chittra from Orissa, the Rajasthani Pars are often quite beautiful and fascinating. However, those being produced today seem remarkably similar in form, technique, and often in content, to those done 10, 20, and 50 years ago. At least for the moment, these seem to be relatively fixed traditions. Indeed, I was told in Calcutta that the production of Patas is now reduced two painters, and is threatened with extinction. Many of the folk arts of India are of high technical quality. And clearly there are single individuals in some of these other traditions who also stand out as artists, such as the father and son team (names??) who do Warli paintings. However, as broad based traditions, they do not seem to be evolving and responding to changing internal and external worlds, to the personal experiences of their producers, nor manifesting the continuous innovation, expressive power, and individuality of many of the Mithila painters. Mithila painting today is a rapidly changing, highly complex, broad stream with deeply individual, distinctive, and occasionally merging currents. The stream certainly includes craftspeople producing folk art for the craft emporia. However, it also includes a large number of extremely innovative, creative, and self- expressive artists.
At one level this is not surprising. Wall painting has been done for hundreds of years in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of villages all across Mithila. Huge numbers of young people grow up with paintings around them, paintings that are richly validated and powerfully meaningful in the culture. Skilled (wall) painters have always been appreciated within the context of their families, and now for nearly 40 years skilled painters on paper have received external (national and international) recognition, opportunities for travel, and sometimes substantial economic benefits. In this context, with a pool of potential artists across hundreds of villages, and a small, segmented, but significant market for their work, it should not be surprising that some of these painters should emerge as quite extraordinary artists.
Endnotes
[1] As this suggests, these observations are limited to Mithila wall painting and painting on paper in, and in the villages around, Madhubani town. This is a, if not the, major center of painting on paper. However wall painting, and quite possibly painting on paper, is presumably much more widespread and varied across the Mithila region. The observations offered here clearly need to be supplemented by wider and deeper research.
[2] The growth of male painters in what is publicly seen as a .woman.s painting tradition,. raises one of a whole series of questions regarding changing(?) gender relations (re control of income, status, public recognition, dowry, mobility, education, etc.) in these families . and the larger society.
[3] It is striking (and somewhat puzzling), that while upon their return from their international travels, both Ganga Devi and Sita Devi produced numerous paintings of places that they visited in Russia and the US, as far as we know, none of the artists . including theses two - who spent time in Japan have done any paintings of scenes or images from that country. There may be some subtle influence of aspects of Japanese art on Godaveri Dutta.s paintings, but she does not see or admit to it.
[4] Modest stipends will be considered if poverty seems to be forcing talented students to drop out.
[5] One obvious problem of course is that to succeed as an artist, potential buyers need to see one.s paintings. While men and older women seem able to travel fairly easily to Patna and, e.g., Delhi, while cultural restrictions are perhaps declining, it is still much harder for young women . who remain the bulk of the painters and the students in the MIA - to make these journeys. As a partial solution, the EAF is considering the possibility of establishing a website in Madhubani, perhaps at the MIA itself, to enable painters to display their work on the Internet.
[6] Today there continue to be veiled accusations that in the early years of painting on paperm and still at present, various people, both painters and dealers, sometimes marketed other peoples. paintings as their own. This does not seem to be widespread but several people offered us paintings this January that they claimed were their own work, but which were almost certainly painted by someone else. Whether this is simply a matter of clever or practical marketing -- attempting to impress a potential buyer or increase one.s own status (and income) -- or if it represents a different (joint?) conception of creation or ownership, probably calls for some additional research.
[7] We know of three painters from Mithila who have had some formal Art School training but who have settled in, and become part of the art world, in Delhi or Bombay. It is not clear how rooted they are, or will remain, in one or another of the Mithila traditions.