The Profound and the profane have always had a cosy relationship in Indian art and thought, if not life. Just how heady this oxymoronic cohabitation can be is made clear in the imaginatively curated exhibition, "Symbolism and Geometry in Indian Art" which opened recently at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Delhi.Symbols like the yoni triangle (manifestation of female energy and sexuality) and the lingam are recurrent motifs in many of the works of the 46 contemporary painters and sculptors. Starting, in fact, with the symbol of the exhibition itself - the marvellously abstract yoni taken from the prehistoric Bhimbetka caves in Madhya Pradesh. On a burnished gold-coloured banner it's the first thing that greets visitors, and it is also on the cover of the thought-provoking catalogue written by the exhibition's curator, art restorer Rupika Chawla. Taken separately or together to personify the Shiv-Shakti union, the two symbols can either leave you at the threshold of the physical or cross over to the realm of the metaphysical and the philosophical.A view of the show (top) and (above) Biren De's oil on canvas October '67Symbols based on geometry are, as Chawla explains in the catalogue, not only capable of a multi-layered significance. They can also "penetrate time and cultural barriers from the traditional to the folk and tribal to the contemporary". Such symbols, according to her, "mutate without losing their essence". For example, Prafulla Mohanti's lotus metamorphoses until it becomes just a dot.The exhibition focuses on seven artists who explored such forms in the '60s. Some continue to do so, managing to fit them into their modernist concerns and configurations. So there are the main protagonists: Biren De, K.C.S. Paniker, J. Swaminathan, Gulam Rasool Santosh, Sayed Haider Raza, Mohanti and Vishwanadhan. But there are, in the span and conceptual framework of the show, works by a diverse group of artists who were also seduced by indigenous abstraction and geometrical forms. Interestingly, the show also includes folk artists like Kashi Nath Jha who render contemporary expression of the timeless..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Obviously, the Neo-Tantra movement which was in full throttle in the '60s in India forms a major part of the exhibition. But the show is also an exploration of what led to Tantra art and what followed. Curiously, this "imported export" influenced western painters like Frank Stella with his concentric circles and Jasper Johns with his mandalas. The proponents of psychedelic art also captured the imagination of Indian artists at that time. Ajit Mookerjee's seminal book Tantra Art, published in 1966, reinforced this. Cross-cultural networking had begun.This viewer-friendly exhibition is more like a journey: there's even a colour-coded map that indicates what is where, and in a sense why. The oddities of the NGMA building - its corridors and tiny circular spaces - are used to advantage, like rites of passage. Here the philosophy is in the corridors: yantras, lingams, ritual drawings. And the poetry of geometry is on the walls: the paintings.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Mar 2, 1998--- ENDS ---
