Golden gods with staring eyes

SPOTLIGHT SOCIETY

Ranvir Shah

NOVEMBER 04, 2017 16:00 IST

UPDATED: NOVEMBER 03, 2017 15:01 IST

Metaphysical realm: Paiting of Krishna with Rukmani and Satyabhama   | Photo Credit: Kuldip Singh

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One modest man and his not-so-modest collection of more than 350 Tanjore paintings

Four years ago, two American women, Lucy Aptekar and Susan Whitehead of Boston, came calling at my residence for tea and to talk about a Tanjore painting exhibition they wanted to mount at a Boston museum. For reasons beyond their control that exhibition did not happen. However, their research planted the seeds of the idea in Kuldip Singh, architect and city planner, who has by far the largest known collection of over 350 paintings of the Tanjore, Mysuru, Andhra and Kerala schools.

Cut to earlier this year. The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art was curating a show on the photographs of Madan Mahatta on post-Independence architecture. Kuldip Singh’s works featured in the photographs. The curator and Kiran Nadar checked out Singh’s massive collection and convinced him to share it with the public for the first time.

Singh lives and works in Delhi’s Jangpura. It is a hub of traffic and business. As I enter his office space, to be led up to his residence, I feel like having entered a Fabergé egg. Three large drawing rooms, extended and heightened for space, hold only a part of his collection.

Curiosity to obsession

“About 50 years ago, I was travelling in Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi. I was interested in architectural artefacts — doors, furniture and wooden sculpture. A friend asked me to get him two Tanjore paintings, but later didn’t like them. So they lay in front of me for two months. I was to return them to the dealer on my next trip South, but I forgot them. When I went to the dealer, I don’t know what overcame me but I asked to be shown more and here I am — the curiosity became a hobby and now it is an obsession.”

Singh is a modest man, although his collection is not modest by any means — it is possibly the largest in private hands in India and of an incredible variety. But he makes no bones about the fact that he did not start out as a collector with deep pockets. He has put most of his savings into the collection, preservation, and research of these paintings. In the initial years, he would read books and meet collectors to educate himself, go to various dealers and visit as many museums as he could.

Paintings hang, in typical South Indian style, in a row close to the ceiling on the walls of the drawing room. They follow no particular order.

And making the space more exquisite are a large carved Chettinad door, intricately carved wooden façades from Gujarat, lamps, carved rafters and beautiful carpets.

I recognise a rare Somaskanda (Shiva with Uma and the child Skanda)

painting in gold. Nearby is the representation of Shiva as Thyagarajaswami of Thiruvarur. This is a temple I am deeply attached to and we talk about the deity. Singh has never visited but is aware of it. As we cross his study, he casually points to an intricately designed Kerala painting — he says it is one of just three pieces known to exist in the world, the other two being in the British Museum. We sit down under a large painting of Shiva as the ultimate yogi, with all his chakras heightened. The gold has faded to reveal the foil work on pure silver leaf.

I ask what he intends to do with the collection. How does he engage with it? “Over time I will form a trust, which will look after this collection and make it accessible to the public. The last 200 years of our history have been neglected. We talk of the great history of the Cholas but we don’t study the period closest to our times and which moulds us,” he says. Singh has been researching the history of the paintings with the help of some scholars and they have been able to date many of the works by the wasli (handmade paper) used, and by some of the temples and religious songs represented in the works.

Poster deity

“There was a time,” says Singh, “when I had set up a full-fledged laboratory in my office staffed by three conservators to repair and preserve the works. These paintings are not meant to last. They have a physical body just like ours that has been inhabited by the divine for a temporary period, and they too will eventually fade.”

Singh is delighted by the stories the paintings tell. There is a poster print of Vishnu he got as a free gift, inexpensive in terms of monetary worth, but rare because a devotee has scribbled the Vishnu Saharasnamam all over it. A portrait of four men seems to have been painted in the Mysore court. There are multiple Balajis — some from Tirupathi and others from the network of Nava Tirupathi. The list is endless —there are iconic paintings, inspired by deities, mythological ones, often reflected in bas relief, and portraits. A magnificent Thanjavur Maharaja benevolently oversees all the paintings in one of the drawing rooms. He has fan-bearers of royal vintage on either side.

Darshan in drawing rooms

Unlike the North Indian tradition of commissioning miniatures for pleasure, Thanjavur paintings were meant for private prayer rooms or religious mutts. These have now moved to drawing rooms, with collectors vying for them.

The shift in context changes the way they are viewed. The gods and goddesses in the iconic paintings often have “stark staring eyes”. This is because, Singh suggests, in the Indian tradition of darshan, you do not just look at the deity but the deity looks back at you. The box frames are a three-dimensional representation of a shrine. The religious cannot be disconnected from the aesthetic in this way of experiencing art.

Curator Roobina Karode confesses that she is not an expert on the subject, but her years of showing contemporary art have allowed her to look at these works from a spatial perspective. “One can view them through the lens of devotion, philosophy, and metaphysics and finally go back to the space-making of architecture.” She aims to create a different environment for viewing Singh’s collection.

Over 200 works from Singh’s collection will be featured in the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Saket (the exhibition opens on November 13). Singh sees a certain return to the religio-spiritual among some practitioners of contemporary art, and the paintings will be an inspiration. He will also, later this year, co-author a volume on the paintings with Anna L. Dallapiccola for Marg.

Singh has stopped buying over the last few years — “too many fakes and too expensive. I want to look after what I have.” But lavishing his savings on this “circus” was totally worth it, he says with a laugh.

His eyes sparkle as he speaks of his visit to the Kovilur mutt in Tamil Nadu where he was shown a dark room with nearly 100 paintings, mostly portraits of the sect leaders or matadhipathis. “In the light of the lamp, the gold leaf shimmered,” he remembers.

The author, a cultural activist, philanthropist and businessman, is the founder of Prakriti Foundation.

http://www.thehindu.com/society/golden-gods-with-staring-eyes/article19974714.ece?homepage=true