Women's Art in Village India

Women's Art in Village India

In discussing the articles we received on different aspects of women and their art in village India, we noticed a recurring theme: artmaking in India is in a state of flux. Colonization, industrialization and the impingement of the world market have in fluenced choices of material, means of production, the meaning of ritual content, the relationship between artist and consumer and the status of the artist in society. Women’s traditional arts such as embroidery and ritual painting on walls and ground, themselves often affected by such changes, co-exist with nontraditional forms such as painting on paper produced specifically for the market. Nontraditional paintings by women from Mithila have received recent attention through articles, a book and ex- hibitions in India and Europe.

As we discussed the articles submitted to us, a dilemma became apparent since two distinct interpretations of the meaning of Mithila paintings in terms of ritual content and social significance emerged. It seemed to us that we were seeing a demonstration of ways in which feminist analyses develop and some of the problems in making an accurate woman-centered description. Véquaud and Stendhall Yves Véquaud, Women Artists of Mithila (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); Renate Stendhal, “Ein Volk von Malerinnen” (“A Nation of Women Artists”), Emma, No. 6 (June 1977), pp. 50-53. Thanks to Tobe Levin for her translation of this article. connected the Maithil2Maithil is the adjective form of Mithila. ”Personal communication, Tamara Wasserman—E. W. women to a tradition of independent women artists who perpetuated ancient matriarchal customs. We were attracted to their picture of Maithil women as “a nation of women artists.” But as editors we felt that this analysis, in the light of fieldwork observations by feminist sociologists, did not adequately reflect the extremely circum- scribed life typical of women in village India. We noted, moreover, that the traditional painters of Mithila were women of the upper caste, the caste which most strictly requires seclusion of women and absolute obedience to men.

On the other hand, the sociological writers tended not to emphasize some of the strengths of women, even in this extremely segregated (sex and caste) society. Women developed their creativity, forming women’s art traditions outside of male control. Most prized by the women themselves is the work derived from weaving raffia or embroidering cloth. Paintings exist in a category other than art; they are sacred acts in themselves. But they are exclusively women’s work—and there lies their interest to us, as we search for examples of traditional women’s art, their designs, materials and techniques.

Why a connection was made to matriarchal traditions becomes clearer if we note that in southern India, at least, the ritual wall and ground paintings are made in honor of the goddess Lakshmi, who is throughout Hindu India a patron goddess of women.? Thus the paintings reinforce female concerns and a sense of female community. However, this is the sense of communi- ty that occurs when one group is systematically oppressed. A visually rich and religiously meaningful woman’s art exists. But this does not deny, to our dismay, the real exclusion of women of Mithila, as of other areas of India, from full control of their lives. —The Editors

WOMEN OF INDIA

Despite the complex and heterogeneous nature of Indian society, there are certain consistent attitudes and values. Such is the case with the status of women: their positions relative to men and to other women, and the practical effects of prevailing atti tudes on their lives.

The following description of the roles open to the majority of women is based on my own observations and written sources, Four-fifths of the population are caste Hindus, and unless otherwise indicated, 1 am referring to caste Hindu women. The family, not the individual, is the primary economic and social unit in India. A joint family, where married sons, their wives, unmarried daughters and parents live together, is the Indian ideal. Most women’s lives are spent within the family court yard while men circulate between home, fields, markets, villages and cities. Home is where children first learn to perpetuate the subordination of women.

Inferior status is more evident in North India where many women still practice a modified form of Purdah, seclusion at home and covering one’s face in the presence of most men. Purdah became popular during the Muslim rule (approximatel 1200-1700) and was practiced among royal and upper-class women. Centuries of foreign invaders attacked the North, but prior to the British, few penetrated to the South, so it was not necessary to “protect” women by hiding them.

Embroidery from the Northwest

In the 700,000 villages of India, the peasant woman is born into a set of prescribed rituals which she is responsible for maintaining and transmitting. Traditional art is one form these rituals take; in Northwestern India, an area historically rich in all kinds of textiles, peasant women embroider. A classification of textiles made in India for domestic use includes “skilled work of weavers and dyers, who work close to large market towns; articles of luxury made under court patronage or in the court tradition; folk embroidery; and fabrics of the aborigina tribes.”John Irwin, Textiles and Ornaments of India (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1956), p. 29 The first two forms of production are dominated by male weavers and craftsmen working in a commercial structure. The fourth is outside the mainstream of Indian village life, though folk embroidery draws upon many aboriginal antecedents which have become tangled with Islamic and Hindu influences.

The depth of religious feeling and devotion that permeates Indian village life does not exist in the West in any comparable way, and it is fron this regard for the deities that the impulse to create something beautiful and worthy seems to come. Outer and inner worlds are merged in a relationship kept flowing and harmonious by the constant application of visible symbols and signs. Everything is part of everything else; there is none of the “disconnectedness” that is so much a part of life in the West. When the woman embroiders, she is conscious of the decorativenes of what she does, but she also has the satisfaction of honoring the world of the spirits residing in the plants and animals which she imitates in thread. Even the poorest village woman is capable of making her life more bearable and secure by the application of decoration to her house on herself. A Krishna proverb which applies to village women at work is—“I take the form desired by my worshippers.” Anand, Mulk Raj, “The Hand and the Heart,” MARG (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1969), p. 6.

Women wear blouses, full skirts and shawls, all heavily embroidered. They spend their spare time embroidering not only their own clothing or trousseaus for their daughters, but also natis (children s headdresses), toranas (wall hangings), animal trappings and small bags for carrying jewelry and other small items. To wear someone else’s clothing would be unthinkable. When the wearer dies or when a garment is worn out, the old garment is cast off.

Patterns to be embroidered are drawn onto cloth, which is worked in flat sections and sewn together when finished. Chain, cross and but- tonhole stitches cover the surface with patterns; satin stitching fills large areas with color. Small mirrors or pieces of mica are used extensively, interspersed fancifully with the embroidery. Mirrors also decorate walls, furniture and even chicken coops. They are not only attractive. flashing in the sun, but also frighten away demons.

In the designs of peasant women in all parts of India, the essences of the animals, flowers and gods are revealed, emphasized by repetition. Dots, triangles and lines are arranged in panels surrounding abstracted symbols and objects. Even buses, bicycles and airplanes may be incor- porated into the work. The sense of color is more pronounced in the Northwest than in any other part of India. Traditional dyes have been derived from indigo, cochineal (red made from crushed insect bodies), iron filings (black), saffron and various other plants yielding yellows and oranges. Pupul Jayaker of the All-India Handicrafts Board describes the emotional content for peasant women of the colors they use.

Red was the color of Chunari, a tie-dyed sari, and was the symbol of sohog, the first days of marriage and love-play. It was the garment worn by the Abhisarika, the young woman seeking in the darkness of night her waiting beloved. Saffron or gerua was the color of Vasant, of spring, of young mango blossoms, of swarms of bees, of southern winds and the passionate cry of mating birds. Maroon and black were the colors of mourning. Blue or nil, the color of indigo, was also the color of Krishna, the cowherd child-god who bore the name of Navjaldhar—he who is of that color, that of the newly formed cloud, dormant with the darkness that is rain. But there was another blue, Hari nil, or the color of water which is reflecting a clear spring sky. Irwin, p. 20.

Daughters learn embroidery from their mothers who teach not only the techniques but the mythology that provides much of the subject mat ter for their images. Styles in the village gradually change according to the inclination of successive generations of artists and the impact of cultures. Islamic influence is seen in the geometric mazes and flower patterns; the bright colors and looser flowing lines are Hindu in origin.

In the twentieth century industrialization has made inroads on every Indian village, no matter how remote. The survival of women’s arts, especially embroidery is being threatened by the adoption of bright, mill-made cloth. Synthetic dyes have largely replaced traditional ones. Im- itation printed or machine-sewn embroidery also appears now in place of the real thing. In recognition of this the All-India Handicrafts Board has provided incentives for maintaining quality by turning some previously noncommercial arts into quality-controlled commodities. This often has the opposite effect of the one intended, because the spark of life may go out of work produced for an unknown market whose needs are irrelevant to the rural craftsperson. Gandhi believed that it was possible and desirable for India to return to a village-centered economy in which the machine would be relegated to a minor role and the villager dictate the pace of life. Although his ideas are out of favor in present-day India, there is still a sentimental longing for that kind of simplicity in which the drive to create and survive comes out of the soil. The peasant woman holds on to the old ways for the time being, but there is no doubt that even she will become a victim, willing or not, of the changes that have afflicted the West since the industrial revolution.

Mithila Paintings

Mithila is a large region in North Bihar with an ancient high culture which is represented in the Sanskrit written tradition of the Brahman caste. The “painting women of Mithila” who belong to this elite sociocultural stratum are a numerical minority. They have more leisure time to practice their art skills than do women of lower castes.

What is specific to the art of these Maithil women? To answer this question it is necessary to understand the traditional hierarchy of arts and artisans. As in our own culture, manual labor and handmade art such as sculpture or painting have, in spite of highly developed techniques and theories, been considered less prestigious professions than mental labor and intellectual art like poetry. In a male-dominated hierarchica society like India’s, the latter sphere is traditionally occupied, with few exceptions, by men of high rank. Tasks requiring skilled hands ar- relegated to low-caste occupational specialists

In addition to the arts and crafts of specialists, nonprofessional domestic art is produced by women as part of their household duties. Orna mental decoration with symbolic meaning is made on festive occasions to beautify the home, household utensils, and those who live in the house. The numerous festivities of the life and calendar cycles, especially marriages, are functional occasions for the art of women. The most eye-catching of the domestic arts are the wall and floor drawings, two aspects of the total range of women’s traditional arts which use many media, styles and contents. Wall murals feature motifs of gods and goddesses, epic scenes, brides and grooms and fertility symbols. Floor designs are made with rice flour dissolved in water and drawn with the fingers to mark a kind of ground altar for household rituals. What is considered the ritual center of the drawing is covered very carefully with earth after ritual use so that no one will accidentally step on it. The other ornamental forms, however, remain exposed to the sun and rain.

Objects of high aesthetic quality are created as gifts for friends and relatives and as donations to the gods. Such domestic art done by women is usually not highly esteemed. In fact the concept of art is usually not applied to it though its creative qualities equal those of classical art There are various explanations for the low prestige of women’s traditional domestic arts:

The objects are primarily functional, having an everyday household use rather than being representative monuments of social prestige. In addition, symbolic items are prepared for one time use only in a specific ritual context

The raw material out of which the art is made is usually regarded as being of little value because it is freely available, e.g., grass, mud. flowers and other organic material, self-prepared colors. Also, the materials tend not to be durable so that objects become unattractive within a short time. The objects are predominantly hand-worked. Highly developed tools and technologies are rarely used in their production. Thi kind of art is available without cost, a feature which tends to undermine its appreciation

High-caste Brahman males may become defiled by doing manual labor; thus domestic work is left to low-caste servants and housewives. In this context, how was it possible that out of the mass of women in India a few could break out of the rigid traditional value system to become famous as a group in the world market of naive and folk art, producing paintings which sell as “Mithila paintings”?

A clue to the answer lies in the word “market.” In 1967-1968, after a famine, the government of India carried out a relief program in North Bihar. At that time, various handicrafts were bought and women were encouraged to prepare sikki grass work and other traditional folk arts on payment. Pupul Jayakar, the woman who headed the Handicrafts and Handlooms Exports Corporation at that time in Delhi, introduced the idea of distributing handmade paper among village women so that they could transfer their traditional motifs from murals and floor designs or to paper and create marketable products. The All-India Handicrafts Board promoted this project. In response to a Western demand for naive and folk art with ritual and oriental themes, the Mithila paintings became commercially successful. Unlike the ritual traditional art forms, the paintings on paper are not symbolic forms of meditation and prayer, but are made explicitly in order to eamn money. (When the demand is there, they are produced daily.) This, at least, is the way the women themselves view their artistic achievements

About 500 women in the region paint for the market. For most women painting is not the main source of family income. The money earned through painting is rarely available for personal use. In most cases, male members of the family collect and spend the money the women earn. But even though the earnings are not theirs to keep, most benefit from their work either psychologically or by eliciting what has rarely beer possible for them—social prestige and respect from male family members. (Three of the women received the highest prize, the “Nationa Award of Master-Craftsmen” from the All-India Handicrafts Board.) Together, the women painters of Mithila have achieved collective acclaim for their region

The concepts of art and creativity in our Westem sense do not exist at all in this context. What we mean by traditional art is for these women a part of domestic ritual decoration, which extends far beyond the area of drawing and painting. Painting has been selected for promotion from the whole complex of domestic art skills because critical criteria have been brought in from the outside. These criteria, deduced from Western traditional art academic categories, value painting as highly-esteemed bourgeois art. Typical female skills like embroidery do not have much worth on such scales. The women of Mithila in fact value textile art skills and, above all, the fine weaving of sikki, higher than painting Interestingly, when formerly disregarded female work succeeds commercially, males join the ranks, and, in this case, even Brahman mer have acted as helpers, publicity agents or even as painters.

The art of the women of Mithila is exemplary of an indigenous woman’s art as opposed to women’s art in the West which still, in the realm of "fine” arts, may be regarded as imitative of dominating male art styles. The ideology that male artists have been the major creative geniuses and that women have been the followers is usually accepted without question on the simple basis that there have been more famous male artists in the history of art. Only in some seemingly insignificant corners of the world has female creativity had the chance to develop without male competition, mainly in the domestic sphere