NATHDWARA MINIATURE

Playing with the scale of the Pichwai paintings has been a continuous theme for the Tradition and Beyond atelier. Scaling down the huge cloth compositions into a quarter of their size on basli paper, yet retaining the detail, finesse and spirituality inherent in the works has been a determined effort. It opens up the ownership of the art and its revival to people in city homes, apartments and more. The smaller works have a distinct visual identity of their own: the paper reacts differently to the natural colours and creates a distinctly vintage look, referencing the traditional form that new and culturally contemporary buyers love. PTB interventions can be minimal, or they can be layered and intense, containing miniatures within the miniatures. The skill – and commitment to process –needed for this engenders complex works which celebrate the deity with as much fervour as the larger pieces.

GOLD ON CLOTH

Traditionally created by Nathdwara artists who acquired the gold foiling technique from their Deccan counterparts in the Nizam’s court a few hundred years ago, the innovative technique that replicates the dull, ‘antique romance’ sheen of old works on cloth has been challenging.

Experimenting with different materials and styles under the creation direction of Pooja, the artisans at the atelier deconstruct, reposition and decontextualize forms including the universally popular cow and the lotus crafting never-seen-before visuals in Pichvai art. Weaving together the idea of new and old, the antiquing is consciously done to recreate the charm of the traditional works in the resulting works. The gold on cloth editions, realised at the Pichvai Tradition and Beyond atelier, depict highly unusual, secular and non-iconic takes on the Pichvai tradition.

DECCAN MINIATURE

PTB has achieved considerable success in its creative manipulations including deconstruction and miniaturization. The miniaturization of the Deccan Pichvais on paper is a highly significant intervention. Besides the stunning outcome, the scaling down arose from two needs: the old world feel of the Deccan works has been hard to recreate on cloth, so paper was the obvious alternative. Secondly, miniature artists get much needed employment from this venture.

Deccan works often depict Krishna, his kadamba tree and the lovely gopis. Miniaturizing the old compositions was the first level of intervention while the decontextualizing and reimagining of these classic elements was the next, for example, the trees the gopis dance around become the focal point in new works, sometimes going down to six inches in size with their delicate leaves painted tiny and aflame with gold and silver.

The other noteworthy element has been the fulsome cows, In geometric repetitive patterns, they create a whole new visual effect.

MUGHAL MINIATURE BASLI

Mughal influences are rife in the Pichvai tradition – the syncretic nature of India a few hundred years ago ensured that. PTB renders a fresh formulation that is its very own invention: using decorative elements from Mughal miniature painting to add layers to traditional Pichvai compositions. The deity and the priest’s clothes, the backdrop, the borders – all get embellished subtly by the beautiful motifs. This creative input was birthed when the curator was attempting to deconstruct the Chowbees Swaroop, (the 24 boxes forming the border of a large Pichvai). She discovered that the works on their own seemed somewhat flat when removed from the confines of the larger cloth compositions of yore. Adding the Mughal miniature decorative features brought them to vivid life without disrupting their aesthetic harmony, and formed an intriguing direction for the PTB atelier to move in. Since then, the artists have produced several series of works using this idea. The works encompass diverse subjects from the original canon beyond the Chowbees Swaroop, including much-loved central subjects like the Annakut, Gopashtami and Sharad Purnima.

In PTB’s paradigm, interventions of scale slide into other manoeuvres, pushing the boundaries of the art form from every direction. Technique is the thread that binds it all together. Pichvai miniatures with the gentle beauty of Mughal decorative elements are magnified to a larger format, executed on cloth like the traditional works. This is a whole reimagining and re-invention of the cloth Pichvais, and its provenance lies with the curator. Yet again we see the play of scale and materials that moves from large to tiny, from cloth to paper and then back again, this time with graphical interventions too. Thus is art created.

SKETCHES

Traditional Pichvai artists maintained sketchbooks where they would draw the composition of a large-scale Pichvai or a quick rough sketch of a darshan to reference it later for the final artwork. At the Kochi Biennale, Pooja showcased the rough renderings of an artist’s old sketchbook of Shrinathji darshans over a year. Taking that language forward and re-framing and presenting in a new way they take on a new life as fine artworks themselves. They clearly reference pen and ink on paper and are tailored to more sparse tastes. They have also been the springboards for the grayscale and monochrome interventions into the art form.

GREYSCALE

In a twist of chronology, black and white photography inspired greyscale versions of a 400-year-old map that features a visual representation of the town of Nathdwara. Pooja Singhal, the founder of the atelier, is perpetually pushing boundaries and innovations with artists. Some of the conversations started with taking the sketches on an extended trajectory. Pichvai Tradition & Beyond first presented the revival of Pichvai creation as an art form, and Pooja now wanted to explore new directions with monochrome. The artists steeped in tradition were unable to visualize this new intervention until they were asked to reference black and white photography. Greyscale, hence, is a significant departure from tradition in this art form with no historical reference or precedence. The first experiment in this new thought stream was the map in 2016. The reimagining of this painting without colour, and now in multiple tones of grey suddenly contemporised the miraculous events and sacred objects depicting the life of Krishna in the labyrinthine map.

Placing the very traditional Chowbees Swaroop, first deconstructed in earlier interventions and now in black and white, allows the emergence of a new language and representation of this very colourful art form. Moving on from black and white photography, we see yet another experiment with monochrome: the deity juxtaposed on a stark steel grey background with pops of colour. The grey Benday dots traditionally used in making the elaborate Jewellery of the idol epitomize a particular skill of these artisans, which is now used across the entire paintings. Playing with scale and colour, paper and cloth, the flexibility, innovation and the atelier’s resourcefulness comes through in these compositions.

CHOWBEES SWAROOP

The curator, even as a child, was intrigued by the little boxes that bordered the original Pichvais, and always yearned for a closer look into the heart of those images-within-the-image. Chief among her favourites were the Chowbees Swaroop – the shringar of Krishna celebrated in the 24 festivals of Nathdwara – which remains a regular feature of many of the old works. In this show, the Chowbees Swaroop has been interpreted in several ways, subverting and crisscrossing techniques, rewriting the old stories with tweaks in scale, colour and more. When the Chowbees Swaroop was first extracted from the original compositions, it did not stand very well on its own. The enrichment of these deconstructed images with Mughal miniature elements gave them depth and beauty, and marked a significant success in the artistic intervention practise of the curator and the artists of PTB.

Since the first set, pooja has commissioned many different versions of the 24 swaroop in the various new languages of the atelier.