| Story Text | [{"record_id":"0","storytext":"Asit K. Haldar (1890\u20141964) was a major artist who worked across both the Bengal School as well as the Santiniketan environments, due to his affinity with the Tagore family. He is probably best remembered for his delicate wash paintings and illustrations of sacred literary texts, even though he made a large body of abstract works and ventured into cartooning and caricature as well. Although we hear more about the Hindu revivalism of the period he lived through, which informed nascent attitudes of Indian nationalism, \u2018Persophilia\u2019 (as Hamid Dabashi would put it) occupied another pan-subcontinental cultural complex whereby older political and emotional contexts of Persian resistance to Arab conquest was transmuted into an allegory of Indian colonial resistance in the face of political overlordship by a foreign rule. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam<\/I> was presented by its translators like Edward FitzGerald as such a document of resistance by Persians against the orthodoxies of Sufism and Arab spiritual hegemony, even though scholars have argued against such essentialization since. ","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"1","storytext":"As a student and relative of Abanindranath Tagore, Asit K. Haldar is primarily associated with the Bengal School aesthetic pioneered by the former. Like Tagore, however, Haldar also made several illustrated works, including some cartoons and caricatures set in the world of late-colonial Bengal. In this graphic, however, we see a plate from his illustrated edition of the famous Edward FitzGerald translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam<\/I>.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"2","storytext":"Although this is from a later edition (1951-52), the work was probably first published in 1930 by the Indian Press at Allahabad (now, Prayagraj). It contained a foreword by the former Principal of the Government School of Art and Craft, E. B. Havell, who, in turn, was acknowledged in an inscription by Abanindranath Tagore as \u2018my guru\u2019 when he presented his own illustrated version of the Rubaiyat<\/I> to him in 1911. This text contains twelve colour plates made by Haldar, tipped-in on individual thick cardboard sheets with tissue guards bearing the relevant quatrain in curlicued red script.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"3","storytext":"There is no obvious reference to a particular quatrain through this depicted scene, although Haldar was possibly representing different scenarios and spaces condensed within the same picture plane. Drawing from older miniature styles of dividing space, Haldar followed Tagore\u2019s footsteps in his effort to critically revive distinctively Indian (or, \u2018Eastern\u2019 or, \u2018Oriental\u2019, as he also described them occasionally) ways of illustrating and painting, in contrast to the prevailing academic realism of the day, allowing for the creation of multiple levels of \u2018depth\u2019 in the picture without an authoritative, singular perspective.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"4","storytext":"Haldar\u2019s emphasis on bhav<\/I> takes precedence over any direct relationship with the poem\u2019s \u2018plot\u2019. He is focused on recreating the mood of the poem through this interpretation, which has to do with contemplation and communal gatherings over spiritual or liturgical texts. The presence of illustrated albums on book stands suggest such an intellectual gathering for reading or viewing illustrated texts, much like this copy of the Rubaiyat<\/I> itself may have been read.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"5","storytext":"However, according to the poem it is likely to be a scene set at a caravanserai, which was an early modern variation on the travellers\u2019 inn, providing refuge and refreshments for commercial, pilgrim and official travellers along the lengthy roads of central Asia. Some of them were popular watering holes of the time, as evident by Khayyam\u2019s profusion of references to drinking wine, which, in spite of its various metaphysical connotations, also referred to the actual drink. The presence of glass decanters, bottles and smoking equipment in wall brackets suggests that the rooms could be situated within a caravanserai complex.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"6","storytext":"Haldar is known primarily for his illustrations of episodes from Indic epics such as the Ramayana<\/I> or the Life of the Buddha<\/I>, but the illustration of this early modern Persian poem of collected lyrics or quatrains fits into his idea of the \u2018lyric\u2019 in contrast to the \u2018epic\u2019 in painting. The lyric in painting isn\u2019t simply an illustration of episodes from short poems, but a recreation of the \u2018romantic\u2019 mood expressed by that poem, an objective that he thought academic realism (through its direct \u2018imitation\u2019 of nature or, reality) had largely rejected in modern western art.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"7","storytext":"Islamic architectural details are closely reproduced in this picture\u2014from the arches, the ornate door frames and the variety of floral motifs gracing the wall skirtings. The profusion of floral motifs deepens Haldar\u2019s engagement of aesthetic mood-creation over faithful reproductions from nature. The picture revels in its status as an aesthetic object for contemplation, rather than a window to a reality outside.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"8","storytext":"E. B. Havell\u2019s influence on the text signals another significance for floral motives that Asit Haldar argued for. As a part of his efforts to emphasize the originality of Indian design and craft works (in the teeth of official disapproval as well as accusations of Orientalism), what was previously dismissed as various forms of \u2018decorative\u2019 art were elevated to a higher aesthetic standard by Havell (and Tagore), restoring confidence to longstanding non-western art practices that were feeding into discourses of industrial design and craft back in England, with the help of his friends like William Morris (who was also inspired by such \u2018decorative\u2019 arts from the Islamic world).","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"9","storytext":"Doorways and their ornate frameworks have storied histories in the Islamic world and have multiple resonances in Khayyam\u2019s poem as well. It suggests a threshold for time, a window towards light or darkness from which even the ruler is not spared: \u2018Think, in this batter\u2019d Caravanserai\/ Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,\/How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp\/ Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.\u2019 Or, it could pose as a puzzle that questions the veil of distinction between the individual and its oneness with the universe: \u2018There was a Door to which I found no Key:\/ There was a Veil past which I could not see: Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE\/ There seemed\u2014and then no more of THEE and ME.\u2019","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"10","storytext":"The difference in the picture planes invites us to wonder if the contemplative youth leaving through the doorway (with some bound books) is the poet himself, recalling his own youth in the poem: \u2018Myself when young did eagerly frequent\/ Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument\/ About it and about: but evermore\/ Came out by the same Door as in I went\u2019. For all his excursions into knowledge, its impermanence seems to be the final lesson: \u2018With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow\/ And with my own hand labour\u2019d it to grow:\/ And this was all the Harvest that I reap\u2019d\u2014\u2018I came like Water, and like Wind I go\u2019.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""},{"record_id":"11","storytext":"Taken as a composite image, one could assume that youth and old age are represented in a cycle, so that the poet can write before it all ends with a \u2018Tamam Shud\u2019: \u2018Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise\/ To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;\/ One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;\/ The Flower that once has blown for ever dies\u2019.","initialize":"true","storytextauthor":""}] |
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| Art Artist Names Single | Asit Kumar Haldar |
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