Murals recorded for posterity
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Embellished with beautiful photographs and a map, this book documents 30 temples and houses in North Kerala that have intricate murals.
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Wall Paintings In North Kerala, India Arnoldsche Art Publishers.
TODIKALAM IS a sleepy, nondescript village, east of Thalassery, in Kannur district. The 16th century Siva Temple here was destroyed by the British during their struggle with the Pazhassi Raja. Historians have not been able to precisely determine how old the Todikalam Siva Temple is. Some just say that it belongs to a very ancient period; others say that it was rebuilt about 500 years ago, while some others believe that it was built during the time of Harischandra Perumal in the 15th century. Today this temple, like so many in Kerala, is a massive treasure house of murals. This one has a series of 150 pictures on the outer walls of the two-storied sanctum sanctorum.
This volume documents, with beautiful photographs and a map showing the location of each place, 30 temples and houses in North Kerala, which have intricate wall paintings. And the murals of the Siva Temple in Todikulam serve as a level of reference followed by the pictures and details of the other temples in chronological order.
A mission
For 30 years the photographer, artist and teacher, Krishna Kumar Marar, has been on a mission of locating and documenting murals. He has made available the best pieces of his own photographic collections, which he has built up through years of hard work and strenuous craftsmanship. And his collaborator in this slickly produced volume is Albrecht Frenz, German Indologist with "deep interest in Kerala studies." Frenz, as Scaria Zacharia, in his pithy foreword writes, has "translated the visual knowledge of traditional murals to the modern audience through the epilogue and design of the book." The text and captions are both in English and German, with the design and layout very aesthetically done. It is simple, pleasing and easy on the eye. The photographs, in colour and some sepia-toned ones, all brilliantly reproduced, offset the design scheme.
Cultural heritage
The murals of North Kerala, one begins, to realise is part of a fascinating cultural heritage. As Mulk Raj Anand noted, this Kerala style of painting, with its emphasis on dramatic scenes, elaborate costumes and memorable gestures of figures in intimate relation with each other seems to be parallel to the living dance forms of Kathakali, Koodiyattam and other forms of the theatre of imagination. They form the corpus of a distinctive school of painting evolved by masters of pictorial form who could recreate vitalities of conflict, the frenzy of the gods and the grace of goddesses in the grand manner of the great Indian tradition of wall paintings. The overall connection between art history, geography and social issues and the culture of the entire Indian subcontinent was always present in Kerala, although evidence of direct links are somewhat rare.
The art of ritual painting, of floor and body painting and the Theyyam tradition of North Kerala reaches far back into the past.
The different ritual performing arts influenced wall painting and kept the tradition alive in many sections of the population. Krishna Kumar Marar's documentation draws a comparison between wall painting and these rural painting genres.
Elaborate epilogue
There are some very interesting observations in the elaborate epilogue. It says that murals were deliberately painted on the outer temple walls, particularly on the Srikovil as well as on the gate towers and subsidiary buildings, to attract the attention of visitors.
The subject matter of these colourful paintings varied from temple to temple depending on the deity to whom the temple was dedicated when the pictures were painted and to what school of painting the relevant painter belonged.
Apart from images from the world of gods already mentioned, the paintings depicted scenes from the Puranas and Ithihasa, also known as epic poems of which the Mahabharatha and Ramayana are the most significant.
This book addresses readers who are interested in fine art, Indian mythology, theology and philosophy or simply those who enjoy beauty.
This book published by Arnoldsche, Stuttgart, one the world's top art publishers, with its exhaustive documented information and photographs is worth its heavy price tag.
K. PRADEEP
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