In 1969, during the Gandhi Centenary, the Lalit Kala Akademi organised an Exhibition of votive offerings and icons as an expression of the villagers both folk and tribals. It was in the course of this project and the travels to different pockets of folk and tribal culture that we realised the vast wealth of tradition that exists all over the country which is still alive.
A comprehensive scheme was drawn up in the 5th Plan to survey and document the traditional, folk and tribal arts of the country. It was also decided to study the conditions of the traditional art and the artists and devise ways and means to foster their development.
The proposal under the scheme was taken up in four or five regions for conducting the survey with the help of local talents and grants to the artists from the Centre. It was our original plan to get these wall decorations copied by villagers and compile them into an album on the lines of our albums on wall paintings. Shri Jyoti Bhatt, Shri Haku Shah and Shri Bhaskar Kulkarni were earlier assigned the work of collecting works of tribal and folk forms.
Two years ago, the Akademi started the Loka Kala Series under which the work undertaken by research scholars could be published in illustrated book form for wider circulation. The first volume in this series by Dr. Jyotindra Jain entitled Painted Myths of Creations: Art and Ritual of an Indian Tribe was published in 1984.
We are happy to release the second volume under the same series by Smt. Yashodhara Dalmia on the Painted World of the Warlis. The Akademi's active involvement with Warlis began in 1976 when some magnificent specimens were collected by Shri Bhaskar Kulkami. In the present volume we are going a step forward in bringing out an enthnographic record of the seasonal cycle related to the rituals of the Warlis. A detailed analysis of the paintings has also been appended. Smt. Dalmia has drawn an authentic picture of this tribal art with a wide range of visuals. Having worked on it for three years, she documented socio-cultural background of the tribe through prolonged field work. This project was funded by the Akademi.
We are grateful to Smt. Dalmia for adding another prestigious publication in the Loka Kala Series. We are also thankful to Dr. Jyotindra Jain for taking interest in the publication of this volume as an Hony. Editor of the series and for contributing a foreword to the present volume.
The Akademi hopes to bring out many more publications under this series with a view to covering the powerful expression of the folk, tribal and traditional arts of India.
The purpose of the `Loka Kala Series' is to examine the cultural meaning of the art forms of village India. The traditional creators and users of particulars art forms or cultural objects themselves do not feel the need to distinguish between the religious and the secular, the sensual and the spiritual, the social and the individual, the formal and the functional, the objective and the subjective. However, art and culture historians have, time and again, attempted to interpret these forms either in terms of 'empirical judgements based on objective methods' or as being integral part of the religious, moral or social systems of India.
Coomaraswamy and his followers opened up the hidden symbolic and mystical meanings of Indian art which by itself was an invaluable contribution. But we must not lose sight of the fact that all 'psychic' elements are actual cultural phenomena and as such open to an ultimately naturalistic interpretation which is based on the unified study of social, cultural and religious contexts of art. The study of the criteria that govern the creation and use of art forms within a particular socio-cultural context can prove to be of immense value in understanding the meaning of art in a given society.
To elaborate upon the point of criteria used by the creators and patrons of art-forms in tribal and village society, I shall narrate a couple of incidents that I came across during my various field tours. These are just stray incidents which focus on the shifting balance of awarencess of form and visual beauty on the part of the artist and purely ritualistic or utilitarian concern on the part of the patron. This is not to establish any fixed dichotomy of perception between the creator and the user (there would be other examples to prove the reverse or to show that often the form and function are inseparable in the minds of the creators and patrons) but to point out that in a given socio-cultural or religious context such awareness is manifest and helps us to understand the meaning and significance of artistic consciousness in more concrete terms.
Once I was documenting the technical procedure of making coiled terracotta pottery of Manipur where the art is practised by women. After shaping the pots, the distinguished traditional potter Neelamani Devi was arranging them for open firing. At one stage she lifted a pot and arranged it again and again till the position of the pot and the surrounding logs of wood matched to her satisfaction. She was reshuffling the pots in order to obtain the burn-marks at particular spots to enhance the beauty. The burn-marks are normally considered accidental and are often not desired. Most potters do not pay attention to this factor. But Neelamani Devi's concern for calculatedly using the otherwise 'accidental' factor of burn-marks to her aesthetic advantage brings to our notice the presence of such awareness among certain artists within a traditional set-up.
When Warli art was first discovered, in the early seventies, it created a sensation. In many important respects, it was different from the folk and tribal idiom known to urban India till then. It did not narrate mythological stories in vibrant tones as did the Madhubani paintings of Mithila, nor did it contain the robust sensuality of the pata paintings found in districts of Bengal, Orissa or Rajasthan. Hitherto completely unknown, with no record kept even by the British, existed a whole range of paintings adding a new dimensions to the tribal art of India.
Warli paintings, which are made by the Warli tribals of Thane district in Maharashtra, are strangely ascetic. They do not consist of myriad primary colours, so intimately associated with folk painting in India. Instead they are painted on an austere brown surface with the use of only one colour-white. The only exception are red and yellow auspicious dots which are used to decorate the painting. This first impression of sobriety, however, is countered by the ebullience of the themes depicted. These are remarkable in their intensely social nature. They look outwards, capturing the life around and by implication the humanness of living. Men, animals and trees form a loose, rhythmic pattern across the entire sheet. This results in a light swinging and swirling movement, describing the day to day activities of the Warlis. In doing so, they seem to be seeking communication amongst themselves and with the outside world.
The paintings on paper, however, with their deft handling of human material have behind them an ancient tradition of art practised in the villages. These paintings can be found, one in every two to three huts, in every village and have been made by the village artist, the savasini , or 'a woman whose husband is alive'. They repeat the same format-a central figure of a mother goddess surrounded by an elaborately decorated square (figure 102). Surrounding the square is a landscape of soaring trees through which animals and men weave in and out, preparing for a wedding (figure 32). Although the composition is the same, each painting is unique in its palpitating inflections.
What is the significance of this art for the Warlis ? When asked, they say that these are lagnace citra (marriage paintings). Why are they painted ? They merely say pahijeca (we need it). It is obvious that these paintings are made for a very special purpose-that of marriage-and so deeply felt is their need that the Warlis merely articulate it with a brief "we need it." In the course of our research we discovered that the paintings were indispensable to the ritual of marriage, without which it could not take place. Perhaps the Warlis also find them necessary because they express their entire world-view, concretizing a deeply felt truth.
The art of the Warlis then, is part of a ritual tradition and needs to be studied within this context to be fully understood. Ritual art, here as elsewhere, exists for a very specific purpose where it fulfils the aims of the individual and the community. In most cases art is necessary for the community for while at one level it fulfils their immediate aim, at another it represents that which the community is striving towards. In animating what is recognized as an inner truth, the painting points the way to that which has yet to be achieved. In very real terms, therefore, it provides them with an 'order', a coherency which is needed in their lives.
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