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Lot 50

 

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Jagdish Swaminathan’s artistic aspiration oscillated between abstraction, which attempted to communicate the intuitive and cerebral, and geometric obscurity that channelled his belief in the potency of line, form, and colour. The unique symbolism of forms achieved in Swaminathan’s pictorial frames, driven by tribal art and motifs, was no only unparalleled but also revolutionary in ushering Indian art into a new conceptual direction.

Born... Jagdish Swaminathan’s artistic aspiration oscillated between abstraction, which attempted to communicate the intuitive and cerebral, and geometric obscurity that channelled his belief in the potency of line, form, and colour. The unique symbolism of forms achieved in Swaminathan’s pictorial frames, driven by tribal art and motifs, was no only unparalleled but also revolutionary in ushering Indian art into a new conceptual direction.

Born in 1928, Swaminathan described his childhood as idyllic, replete with innocent adventures through gardens and orchards in Shimla. Even though his family often shuttled between Delhi and Shimla, “this early awakening of the senses, the intensity of colour, the desire to capture a world in all its childlike simplicity of form and freshness is something that remained in Swaminathan’s mind.” (Geeta Doctor, “J Swaminathan and his work,” Namaste, the Welcome Group Magazine, XX/4, October to December, 2001, pp. 28-33) He grew up to be an astounding personality whose egalitarian approach towards tribal communities and the working class finds its roots in his humble upbringing that progressed into a passionate political career in leftist and communist organisations.

It was not until the 1950s that Swaminathan began to paint full-time and became opposed to the contemporary Indian art ideologies prevalent at the time, such as Indian modernism that had developed under the influence of the West and the Bengal school which found inspiration rooted in past traditions. In 1962, he, along with some others, formed Group 1890, a short-lived artists’ collective, which defied the conventions set by the contemporary Indian art movements and signalled a change. The manifesto echoed Swaminathan’s ideals as it read, “a work of art is neither representational nor abstract, figurative or non-figurative. It is unique and sufficient into itself, palpable in its reality and generating its own life.” (Group 1890, Manifesto, 1963)

Swaminathan sought an intuitive realisation of his visuals through the simplicity of form, underlying symbolism, avoiding any direct conventions of figural representation or narration. What he conceived on his canvas was a composition of obscure symbols combined with automatic writing, more evocative than readable, that ushered the viewer into a liminal condition of the mind that united the imaginative and the analytical. His exercises were rooted in theory, for instance he was inspired by Claude Levi-Strauss and the impetus to interpret language and symbolic communication. His concern found expression “in the aesthetic sense- dimension of tribal art, where it has the capacity to hold us enthralled even when the representational aspect, or the ‘content’ is rationally unacceptable or mundane or even trivial and commonplace.”(J Swaminathan, “Pre-naturalistic Art and Postnaturalistic Vision: An Approach to the Appreciation of Tribal Art,” Lalit Kala Contemporary 40: J Swaminathan, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 50)

Apart from borrowed tribal symbols and motifs, he found inspiration in tantric practices to find a spirituality that is both indigenous and subversive. Additionally, “in tantra it is assumed that the pictorial elements in non-descriptive compositions are capable of magic invocation that can compel the intense concentration of the viewer and transport him to a state of mystical union.” (Geeta Kapur, “Reaching out to the part,” Lalit Kala Contemporary 40: J Swaminathan, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1995, p. 17) The non-descriptive, partially associative images in Swaminathan’s works are symptomatic of his fascination with the ‘unexplainable’ and the ‘mystic’

During the late 1980s, constant experiments with visual language led to a dramatic shift in Swaminathan’s technique, style, and subject. Following his founding of the Roopanker Museum of Art at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, in 1982, he broke away from his serene and well-known Bird and Mountain series, reverting to his earlier interest in the typology of tribal forms. His tenure as Director of the Roopanker Museum helped imbibe in him a deep and profound understanding of tribal cultures and the symbolic basis of their art forms. The result was a unique artistic expression informed by an assemblage of indigenous symbols, enriched with earthy neutral colours in browns, yellows, and splashes of red. Apart from the transition in his own work, Swaminathan’s research and involvement with tribal communities was pivotal as it led him to mentor Jangarh Singh Shyam, who would later become a contemporary artist venerated internationally.

The works done during this later phase, such as the present lot, have been gaining an increased traction from collectors recently. They are admired for the curious language that emulates tribal ritualistic wall paintings with pronounced textures and geometricity. Exploring what he himself described as his “natural bent for the primeval,” the artist experimented with a ‘primitive’ system of communications, adopting ancient symbology as a tool to reconnect modern Indian art with its indigenous precursors. This helped him start “on a new phase recalling my work of the early sixties. If my work of the early sixties anticipated the journey of the eighties, my present phase recapitulates my beginnings.” (“The Cygan: An Auto-bio note,” Lalit Kala Contemporary 40: J Swaminathan, p. 13)

The present lot displays a profound composition that is both constructed and dynamic. Focussed on the off-centred triangular forms, the picture plane opens to gestural outlines of a face and two birds, encapsulated within rectangular forms and a running border profuse with linear patterns. His inclination towards geometricity is reminiscent of his inspiration from tantric diagrams that are used for meditation. The artist was known to, at this time, employ his own fingers and rubber rollers to texture these earthy pigments and create varying levels of opacity within the same colour field. The emphasis here “...is on primal Indian symbols and their contemporary relevance, on indigenous abstraction, and the free surface treatment of the canvas.” (Gayatri Sinha, India: Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private Collections, Rutgers- New Brunswick: Jane Voorhess Zimmerli Art Museum, 2002, p. 117)

A strong penchant for the extended meaning of forms and the interest in symbolism was a result of Swaminathan’s personality which “concentrated in permitting the mind to become creative beyond its conceptual mechanism: to become a ‘feeling mind’.”(Geeta Kapur, “The art of J. Swaminathan,” The Sunday Standard, 23 April, 1967) Born out of this passion for the imaginary, the transformed context and use of the primaeval forms in the present lot is a compelling manifestation of a deeply philosophical confluence of tradition and contemporaneity.

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