NEWSMAKER
For the sake of the arts
RANVIR SHAH
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Whether it’s Chola bronzes, silverware made for the very English afternoon tea ritual or contemporary art, historian Vidya Dehejia uses the past to communicate with the present.
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I think the idea of the museum as a place to communicate with people is not yet understood in India.
Photo: K. Murali Kumar
Fascinating silverware: Vidya Dehejia opens up the world of Indian culture.
For many years as an amateur Indian arts history enthusiast I aspired to meet the venerable Vidya Dehejia and had, in a manner of American slang, been stalking her by telephoning her or asking friends about her and her work, which I followed assiduou
sly. It was a wish-fulfilling prophecy when she decided to pass through Chennai and lecture on Indian silver for the Raj recently.
She traversed through the fascinating world of silverware used by and manufactured especially for the British in India. Most popular were the tea sets, as the very ‘propah’ English custom of tea in the afternoon was a sacrosanct ritual often bordering on a performance. This habit was introduced to the British by Catherine of Braganza who married the English King Charles and brought, in her dowry, some green tea from China and the island of Bombay.
Centres of production
These lavish tea sets were made primarily in two centres of silver production: in Madras, at the famous P. Orr & Sons; and in Kutch, at the workshop of Oomersee Mawjee & Sons. The use of gods from the Hindu pantheon in seemingly random juxtapositions created, for the uninitiated western eye, an object of great beauty. With the depiction of these gods the work came to be known as swami (god in south India) work. The effect was achieved by beating the background in and allowing the final polished surface to stay on top. Kutch also went on to create and compete with cheap Chinese imports by making Chinese style silverware at lower prices. Obviously history is repeating itself.
Vidya also explained how she had figured this out by stumbling upon a cache of drawings from Oomersee Mawjee in Japan where details of rates, styles, orders and other notes give an insight into the working of this industry. Next she shared several visuals of calling card cases and explained the ritual of the call. Calling card cases, tea sets, salt and pepper shakers, gifts for the Prince of Wales from several Maharajas, international exhibition of Industrial Arts and the travels of the Brits all made a huge and popular demand for Indian silver for the Raj.
Earlier, Vidya informed me that her journey on the path of Art history began with her father who was in the police. “We didn’t have normal holidays. My father would choose a district and a fort, palace or well would be inspected in detail. One could grow up hating it or absolutely adoring it; that’s what I did.” After a stint in Art history in St. Xavier’s, Bombay, Vidya moved to Cambridge where she finished her doctorate on Early Buddhist caves; then followed marriage and travel all over the globe with her husband from London to Hong Kong to Honolulu and finally New York. With fellowships and projects over all these ports of call, she finally came to Columbia University in 1982. Then she took eight years to be curator at the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery, where she created some wonderful world class Indian exhibitions.
“What interests me is how I open up this material of Indian culture to people who know nothing of it at all. I teach freshmen at college and do exhibitions, which are curated in such a way that it becomes interesting for them. Usually a major exhibition should only have two main points for the general public that visits; all other scholarly material is for those who want it in the catalogue! My challenge is how does one draw them in.”
Successful shows
Over the years there was a phenomenally successful show on Chola bronzes with a wonderful catalogue of essays and Vidya shares the story behind that show. “The director of the Amercian Federation of Arts had never seen Chola bronzes; saw some, was fascinated and then wanted to do something and found me as a curator. What I tried to show was the bronze collection of a medium-sized temple and its utsavas during the Chola period.”
In Devi, another show she curated on the mother goddess tradition of India, she borrowed pieces of art from over 35 collections. Being interested in women-saints, Andal and yoginis, several issues came up in putting this exhibition together. Most images, however, had the major potency of Devi as the Cosmic Force; then there was the strata of the Dayini (the Giver) approached for knowledge, for children, for wealth, benign and gentle in nature. There was another strand of Draupadi, Radha and Sita as beloved women and heroines of our myths.
Her take on museums in India? “I think the idea of the museum as a place to communicate with people is not yet understood in India. There are no labels, no text panels. In the West, museums compete with leisure time activities. We have to make it exciting and rewarding. At the National Museum in Delhi, villagers from Rajasthan come in and walk through. They have no idea of the context of pieces; it’s just a grand building. In the U.S., we have surveys; we talk to the guards as the first points of contact. The Smithsonian is a free museum; it is not about money but wanting people to come and see. Government museums have treasures in their godowns but they and the staff of the Archeological Survey think it is their property and will not share it with scholars or the public. This is very frustrating. Museums must be open with access to all.”
Her latest project, The Body Adorned, will soon to be out in bookstores. It explores the dissolving boundaries between the sacred and the profane. The complete cultural context of hymns, inscriptions and actual classical literature reveals sensuality; the body as a means to approach the divine. She says, “I have seen inscriptions that start with the glory of the King, donations, grants to Brahmins and finally come to the physical love between gods and goddesses. The matted locks of Shambu Siva have come loose due to Parvati’s love making or that Siva has the third eye as he desires to see the breasts and the face of Parvati while making love. May the gods multiply your pleasure and so on. There are so many ways of all this tying up together.”
One of her interests apart from art history is contemporary art and she feels the time has come for a major museum show on Indian contemporary art in the West, but it needs to be done in collaboration with curators who speak the same discourse and language of contemporary art in the rest of the world. Otherwise she fears it would be ghettoised and turn ethnic.
As for Indian art history and its future, she is deeply optimistic as more new jobs for Indian curators have opened up. India is big, as an interest. “It is our moment!” she says.
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