(Avinash Karn, artist)
An earthquake in Bihar in 1934 did cause a great damage. But
it brought something unexpected to the fore. Hidden inside the homes where the
public couldn’t get any access, but now lay opened in devastation before the
prying eyes of the rehabilitators were some beautiful paintings done in a
peculiar style on the walls hitherto unknown to the world. Those were done by
the Brahmin ladies as a part of their religious and daily rituals. As its
origin was religious and caste oriented and heavily ridden by gender
restrictions none knew about the existence of such exquisite paintings. The
scholars among the rehabilitators called it ‘Madhubani’ style of painting.
Madhubani, a district in Bihar in Mithila region which is famed to be the birth
place of Sita, the epic heroine, lent its name to the painting style not only
because of the location of its origin but also because of the honey like
sweetness of its rendition. It took a few socio-cultural and caste meanderings
before it became a world renowned folk painting style, bringing several nuanced
expressions and styles within that umbrella term. Avinash Karn, a young
contemporary artist comes from this region and his fame is heavily depended on
the ‘Madhubani’ style.
(Paintings by Avinash Karn)
Graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Banaras Hindu
University, Uttar Pradesh, Avinash Karn, towards the end of his education had recognized
the mission of his life; to become an artist who did all what he could towards
propagating the homegrown Madhubani style all over the world, but with a
difference. Madhubani paintings have been a staple in most of the India
International Festivals, folk and tribal expos and emporium based markets.
Traditional Madhubani paintings have found their way to rich home across the
world and in some international museums that catered to the global folk and
tribal aesthetics. This was a sort of sampling that reduced a vibrant art form into
a souvenir product if not a museum piece. Madhubani style, over the years also
has become a painting mode of the ‘self-taught’ women artists in urban India
who often painted in various styles as they thought art was a safety valve and
it could be done in any style they fancied good and practical.
(Paintings by Avinash Karn)
Avinash Karn left his sculptural ambitions for taking up the
Madhubani style, which in fact is still seen as a feminine mode of making art
due to its homely ritualistic origins. Before him another artist, Santhosh
Kumar Das, a veteran from the Fine Arts Faculty, MS University, Baroda, again a
native of Mithila region had taken up this mission. Das maintained a track of
Madhubani style purely in black and white, infusing it with contemporary
narratives, giving an edge to the graphic quality thereby making it a story
telling interface while keeping the painterly form intact. He has been
successful in doing and is now recognized for his very personal(ized) Madhubani
style of paintings. The refinement that the contemporary artists bring to the
traditional style of painting is what makes it more dynamic and saves them from
becoming a stagnant pool of traditional patterns and repeatable stories and
formats. Even the illiterate women artists from the same region, who have
picked up the art through apprenticeship under master women artists and
transcended both economic and caste barriers, are now capable of expanding the traditional
repertoire of images and making way to more contemporary imageries and familial
narratives. Perhaps, an artist like Avinash Karn stands as a link between these
illiterate women artists from the region and the more refined and sophisticated
versions of Madhubani style as practiced by artists like him, facilitating the
journey of the art form in a more dignified course that now ekes out not only
aesthetic attention but also academic interests at various levels of its
reception.
(Paintings by Avinash Karn)
The glossy super-flat surfaces that once beckoned the young
artists to create more contemporary art in a homogenized visual cultural approach
in order to gain quick traction among the buying class and recognition in the
international art market manipulated by the local cartels of galleries somehow
did not appeal to Avinash Karn who had experienced the aesthetic finesse of
Madhubani art and its inherent ability to move people visually. What he wanted
to do was to make himself a sophisticated medium so that he could not only
paint in the chosen style but also could articulate his concerns regarding the
style before an interested public and aestheticians. He did achieve that feat
and could take his art to various national and international platforms, all
this while incorporating the new locales that he found himself in in the
process. This enriched the visual ensemble of his paintings and the scope of
manipulating the images which were traditionally not there in the ‘original’
Madhubani paintings. For example, the traditional women painters knew how to
portray godheads and village life in tiered narratives, using adequate
distortions and abstractions through spatial arrangements whereas they were not
sure how a television set or a gas cylinder was brought into the painting. The
major achievement that Avinash Karn made in his works and also contributed to
the stylistic repertoire of Madhubani paintings is this that he could bring in anything
that he saw around him, be it Qutub Minar, metro trains, Victoria Terminus,
Writer’s Building, Gateway of India and so on.
(Paintings by Avinash Karn)
So long as a traditional artistic style remains within the
confines of its origin in terms of geographical territory or variable aesthetical
grammar maintaining a visual cohesiveness, contemporary urban (read modern) art
does not feel any threat from it. It could always be treated as a country
cousin of the mainstream art however it tries to be a coat-tie wearing urban
lad. The comic interludes may be expected out of such art but not a regular
lead. Avinash Karn brought his style and pivoted it right in the middle of the
urban contemporary art almost shaking up the claims of modernism upheld by the
urban art (especially the ones that came out of the famed art colleges). Here
was a new and curious body of works that almost looked folkish but a closer
look thwarted such comforts for it was showing all what an urban narrative
could do in its modern painterly style. It was both awe-inspiring and moving,
and perhaps evoked a discourse more vigorous than the former one could have
done. Writing in past tense does not make Avinash Karn’s works a thing of past
but my intention is to say that this was what he did to the art world, in the
meanwhile smiling all the way to the bank.
(Paintings by Avinash Karn)
By now Avinash Karn has achieved such felicity and skill
that he could handle paper, canvas and walls alike. He has also forayed into
digital production of his works, not as a copying methodology but the digital technology
as a method to enhance the possibilities of the style that he has been
instrumental in making and propagating. Interested in local histories, his
research has taken him to the history of production of images through crude
photographic methods and he has even experimented with a body of works that
made use of the paraphernalia of the older traditions of local photography. He
travels a lot these days and each sojourn adds to the visual coffer that he gleefully
flaunts in his works. Looking carefully at his works, one could see that the traditional
hues of Madhubani are no longer there in his works but an aesthetical recalling
of them through synthetic colors that allows the artist to go for bigger
formats and surfaces. The intimate scale of traditional Madhubani style has
been bartered for experimentations, which in fact has become a habit even of
the traditional artists from various parts of India as they have started
attending national and international art symposiums and camps where they are
expected to use modern canvases and synthetic colors. Avinash Karn’s works are
a bold intervention in the contemporary scenario of art where the artist’s
modern education becomes a tool for him to further his regional art style while
taking a great care not to fall into the trap of becoming an internal colonizer
of tastes.
-JohnyML
A very beautifully written article.Congratulations to Avinash.
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