Desicritics Author: Natalie Bennett

Exhibition Review: Chola Bronzes at the Royal Academy, London

Natalie Bennett — Tue, 2 Jan 2007 08:42:36 EST

On a wet Saturday afternoon at the Royal Academy of Arts in London you’ve now got two choices. There’s the Rodin blockbuster exhibition, predictably heaving and really only suitable for those who view gallery visiting as a contact sport. But if you climb higher, you can venture into another world. The gallery is almost empty, but the art – that of southern India from the 10th to 13th centuries -- is every bit as spectacular.

You are entering the empire of Chola, one of the greatest Hindu empires. It traded with the Tang in China, Jewish traders in Aden and the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, yet it developed from the indigenous tradition a form of art all its own – the sacred bronze statue, designed often to be carried through the streets.

For it’s a curious fact that roughly contemporary with similar developments in Catholicism, the worship of Shiva here emerged from religious sanctuaries and on to the streets, associated with a great, emperor-supported temple-building programme, just as Europe was building its great cathedrals.

The visitor is greeted by a classic Shiva as Natajara, lord of the dance, from the 11th century. The god is within hoop of fire, balancing with the perfect poise of a prima donna. Every tilt of finger, every angle of every limb, is in perfect balance. This is an art at its peak. It fits perfectly with a hymn scripted on the wall:

If one may but see
The beauty of his lifted foot
Of golden glow,
Then indeed one would wish
For human birth upon this earth.

The exhibition then returns to the roots of this great outpouring in the 10th century. This work has the same iconographic dictionary as the later art: in a Shiva as Tripuravijaya (“victor of three cities”) the antelope (symbolizing mastery over nature) leaps from his top left forefinger, and the battleaxe (which is to conquer human ignorance) from the right. But it is all stiff, formulaic. You can almost feel the fear, the caution, the inexperience of the artists, feeling their way to a new tradition. But as you progress through the exhibition you see the confidence, the joy of artistic creation, shine through.

Some might fear that the art here is so foreign, so outside their experience, that they won’t be able to relate to it. But fear not, just seek out Ganesh, the elephant-headed god - a plump jolly child who brings out the same cross-cultural reaction as a fluffy kitten. You really can’t but smile at Ganesh.

And there are reminders that this was a multi-religious society. The same workshops that made the spectacular Shivas also made images of the Buddha and the Jina, as both religions flourished in South India at the same time.

In addition to the statues of the gods and their companions, such as Shiva’s bull Nandi, shown here in fine anatomical precision, mid head-toss, the artists could also let their talents loose on the images of the 63 wandering nayanmar (“saints”) of Shiva, whose images were usually found around the temple sanctum.

The most striking image here is of one of the three female saints, Karaikkal Ammaiyar, who as a young woman (she lived in coastal town of Karaikkal in the 6th century) asked Shiva to take away her beauty so she could devote herself to his worship. She is represented here as a stunning little bronze hunchback, gaunt so her ribs show and with the pendulous breast of an old woman. But innocent, joyous, youthful faith shines from her face, and she has the lithe limbs of an adolescent. (Handy, perhaps, for a wandering saint.)
It was perhaps inspired by one of her poems, which is reproduced in the catalogue:

Sagging breasts and swollen veins.
Protruding eyes. Bare white teeth and shrunken belly.
Reddened hair and pointed teeth,
Skeletal legs and knobbly knees
Has this female ghoul

It is an unforgettable image, like several others here.

The exhibition continues until February 25. With online booking. There’s a fine online gallery of similar bronzes here and a description of the method of production.

Myths of Bengal at the British Museum

Natalie Bennett — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 00:24:58 EDT

What is conjured up in your mind by the phrase "women of India"? You might think the powerful figure of Indira Gandhi, but more likely you'll be thinking about dowry killings, sati, underfed girl-children -- images of abuse and suffering. It is striking then that what shines out of the British Museum's new Myths of Bengal exhibition is a vision of female power -- dangerous, often out-of-control power, but certainly of a force to be reckoned with.

At its centre - physically and intellectually - is Durga, the supremely powerful goddess created by all of her fellow divine beings at a time when they had been almost overwhelmed by demons. Armed with a weapon donated by each of the gods, and mounted on a lion, she ensured that, after an appropriately fierce battle, order was restored to the world.

Durga greets visitors to the exhibition in a fantastically detailed carving of the malleable "pith from the inside of a shola weed" (surely a curator's nightmare to handle). Serenely triumphant in victory, she's totally in control - the matriarch - flanked by her daughters Lakshmi and Saraswati and at the bottom (unusually enough), her sons, Ganesh and Kartik.

Yet soon, the visitor sees, her story is more problematic as a vision of female power. Charted in historical prints and modern-day photographs is the annual Durga Puja in Bengal, when her victory is celebrated. But like the Greek Persephone, she must leave this happy scene at the end of the ceremony to return to her husband Shiva, who stays far away in the Himalayas. Her sorrow is heavy as she turns her steps towards him -- reflecting no doubt the anguish of many a young mortal bride.

Yet there is, there must be, consolation. Among the items here is a 19th-century "modern" revelation, a salesman's catalogue of 75 examples of cheap coloured prints. Once that young wife would have had to visit the temple (if she was allowed such a freedom) to see images of the goddess and her suffering, to be comforted perhaps by the parallel with her own circumstances -- now she could have it in her own home. And if the colours are tawdry, the printing rough, to our sophisticated 21st century eye, that doesn't detract from the human stories you can imagine behind them.

Yet for all her power, Durga is tamed. But what of her other daughter, the fearsome Kali, so often shown with her necklace of skulls, who is pictured here in two vivid, lively sculptures and several prints trampling all over the body of her husband, Shiva? (Yes - the same Shiva - Indian gods, like the Greek, do get a bit incestuous, their relationships a bit complicated.)

Ah, but there's a reason for his position. Kali was born of Durga's anger during the battle with the demons, springing full-blown from her mother's blackened forehead. She ran trumpeting that emotion through the universe, out of control, until Shiva chose to lie down in her path. The realisation that she was trampling on "her lord", as the gallery display puts it, brought her to her senses. Once again, rightful female anger is tamed, domesticated, controlled.

After all that depressing goddess-taming, it is a nice change of pace to enter the calm of domestic life -- of achievements of what is possible within its limits with a small but delightful collection of kanthas, embroidered quilts that paint a personal, lively picture of the lives of their female creators. Members of London's Bengali community helped curators interpret these, so Tasneem Khan from Essex explains, they "showed the things that were happening inside the woman's head - losing her husband in battle, her brothers not coming home, things like that. They could not express it so they expressed it through the kantha."

The central kantha here is a tale of an Indian century -- British soldiers, trains, much travel and movement, interspersed with more traditional images of animals and gods. The work is lively, captivating -- entirely deserving of the title of masterpiece.

Uniting the human and divine in the final part of the exhibition is the story of the goddess Manassa. The local Bengali deity only appears in the "mainstream" national Hindu story around 1400 AD, but a dramatic, Khujaraho-style carving here, dated to the 12th century, in which she displays her characteristic association of pots and snakes, shows she'd been around for far longer.

Manassa asserts her position through the figure of Behula, a devoted widow. The story goes that Chando is a merchant who stubbornly rejects the goddess, clinging to the worship of Shiva. In response, Manassa kills all his sons, including Behula's husband, Lakhinder. But she is so devoted that she remains with her husband's body, sailing off into the ocean with it (an image that in a modern scroll painting - an adaption of the traditional story-teller's prompt - sends a shiver down the spine). Shiva then persuades Manassa to relent, if Chando will bow down to her. He grudgingly agrees, and gets his sons back, but it was the will of Behula that was really responsible. A woman to the rescue -- but again, only within the restrictions of a "proper", womanly role.

The art here is broadly what would once have been called - deprecated as - "folk art", yet its power, its force, its emotional appeal cannot be denied. It brings home the power of tradition, against which women activists in India must fight. Yet there's hope too, in the wonderful outpouring of an unnamed and unnameable artistic soul who created that central kantha. Here's the quiet, subversive power of creation, female creation, doing what it can, how it can, and now rightly celebrated at the centre of the world’s greatest museum.

The exhibition continues until January 7 in Gallery 91. It is part of the Museum's Voices of Bengal season. There's also an exhibition of paintings by the poet Tagore until November 12 in Gallery 3 (to the right of the main entrance), and the creation of a traditional Durga Puja tableau in the Great Court.

Google Books Starts To Make the Virtual Bookshelf a Reality

Natalie Bennett — Fri, 1 Sep 2006 01:53:38 EDT

Two centuries ago, in a poem titled The Biblomania, John Ferriar wrote of the "tall Book-shelf" that "Displays, yet guards the tempting charms within". Back at the start of the 19th century, books were expensive, precious objects, beyond the pocket of all but the rich or the truly devoted; the latter might have to choose between reading material and food.

At first glance today, when you wander into your local chain bookstore, its walls groaning as more "three for two" offers are stacked against them, it seems we're in a new age of plenty. And provided you're happy to stick with reading the latest airport potboiler or celebrity biog, you can stack your own bookshelves to your heart's delight, at a real cost that keeps going down every year.

But, if you want to read other things, you might be in more difficulty. I often review university press books selling for well over three figures in US dollars -- priced only to go in a few academic libraries, which are closed to the general reader.

Now I'm lucky, I have a 20-minute cycle-ride away the spectacular private London Library, from which I can borrow at any one time up to 10 books that might all have that sort of value. And a 10-minute cycle away is the largest single physical repository of the world's knowledge, the British Library. So I can get access to pretty well any book I want.

But not everyone can live in the London NW1 postcode -- it is quite crowded and expensive enough already, thank you, or even within range of the occasional visit. There have been developing, slowly, some digital alternatives.

I use Questia. Its coverage is patchy -- there's a lot of out-of-copyright material from the Thirties and earlier, and quite a bit of recent stuff with which they've done deals with the publishers, but quite large gaps in-between. Still, at US$100 a year -- with lots of note-taking bells and whistles -- it comes in handy. And of course there's the Amazon "search inside this book" facility, which can be useful in seeing if a book is worth chasing up.

But now another step -- albeit it a small step -- has been taken. Google Books, which has, to the concern of the publishing industry, been scanning books into online digital formats at a furious rate, has started to make them available for download.

The company is starting small, and conservatively, with books that are really, really out of copyright, dating from the early 19th century and earlier, but hopefully the scheme will grow and spread.

Of course publishers and bookstores are going to fear that their sales will be hit, but the fact is that a 19th-century edition of some classic -- while it might be useful as a taster, or for someone wanting to take a quick glance, or for those who really can't afford to buy their own copy -- is not going to replace a modern edition for most readers. They'll want all of the footnotes and critical apparatus to help them through the text -- the value that the modern editions add.

And anything that makes more information available to more people around the world, for a cost approaching zero, has to be a good thing. It is fashionable these days to moan about an "information glut". I'd look at this the other way around. Throughout the history of the human race we've suffered from an information deficit, from the fact that a few people have been able to keep to themselves much of the world's knowledge. Now we've taken one more step to ending the drought.

All that seems to be lacking is a listing of the books available -- you have to search now by title and take pot luck. But if Google doesn't fill that particular hole, I'm sure that others will. If you know of anyone who's started a list of the books available, please let me know in the comments below.

Theater Review: Sugar Mummies At The Royal Court, London

Natalie Bennett — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 12:42:27 EDT

Paradise means - to the imagination of cold, grey, pinched Western Europe - sun, sand, palm trees, clear blue skies. And that's what floats ethereally around the heads of the Englishwomen on the Jamaican beach on which Sugar Mummies is set. Floating through their minds is the idea of the perfect man - loving, caring, young, fit. Floating before their eyes are the men who meet that fantasy.

All that's needed to turn fantasy to clenching reality is a little cash. It is these transactions, the female sex tourism now understood as standard in certain small parts of the world, that are the subject of Tanika Gupta's new play at the Royal Court in West London. It seems it is a subject whose time has come - recently covered in the RSC's excellent Trade, and Charlotte Rampling's movie Heading South, about 1970s Haiti.

And Gupta could hardly have picked a better topic to produce a flood of free publicity from male-edited newspaper editors wondering what it is their wives get up to "girls' weeks away". The Daily Mail was particularly exercised by the fact that the actress playing Maggie (Linda Bellingham), the oldest and most cynical of the women, had been the face of wholesome British motherhood in Oxo adverts.

But beyond the news value, what is the value of the play, and the production?

First the play: a neat structure - too neat. There's the women: cynical old Maggie, who just wants the sex; the desperate-for-romance-and-children schoolteacher Kitty (Heather Crane); the young innocent Naomi (Vinette Robinson); and the token black American, Yolanda (Adjoa Andoh), who is knowing and wise to the ways of this world. Her compatriot among the males (and her partner) is Reefie (Victor Romero Evans), who arranges "jobs" for the youngsters on the beach. The young innocent desperate to join the game is Antonio (Jason Frederick); the old hand Andre (who perfectly meets Kitty's fantasies); Andre (Marcel McCalla) the man standing self-righteously aside from this, nursing his dreams of cooking school. Watching over it all is Angel (Lorna Gayle), Andre's mother, like a solid mother goddess who has lost most of her powers.

These are far too much sketched/predictable characters - it is only Naomi, whose tale is about the second-generation effects of the trade, but also a very ordinary story of a young woman seeking a parental guide, who emerges with any really humanity. And the obvious balance of the play mean the revelation of the identity of her father is all too obvious long before it formally emerges.

The characters too don't so much interact as bounce - sometimes all too explicitly - off each other. They seem to always be either grappling or yelling - all points of conflict are dealt with in one of these non-verbal, non-informative, and non-resolutional ways. And some of the women's behaviour when angry is wholly unbelievable - the overt references to slavery - the whipping, the "unsayable" insults - seem to shoehorn a message - "look, this is almost slavery - a replay of it" - where it simply doesn't fit.

So that's the play - what of the production? Well it leaves little to the imagination, and not in a way that provokes good feelings. One scene between Sly and Kitty - involving rapid food consumption and desultory female pleasing - sticks in the mind as particularly wince-inducing.

Robinson's is the standout performance - she imbues this edgy young woman with a believable flood of innocent desire. Evans too is powerful as Reefie; most of the others are bigger on enthusiasm than subtlety.

There are some fun slapstick scenes early in the play, but black comedy is a tough trick to pull off; it is with the darkening tone that this play, and production, really come a cropper. There is no doubt in the real-life story being told here a mismatch between romantic fantasies and nasty physical and social realities, but to display them in the theatre requires a surer grasp of tone and a subtler portrayal of motivation and desire.

The production continues until in London September 2. It will then tour to Bolton and Birmingham.

The theatre (with online booking).

Friday Femmes Fatales No 59 (Women Bloggers)

Natalie Bennett — Fri, 9 Jun 2006 08:18:19 EDT

Ten great posts from 10 new (to me) women bloggers. It is here every Friday (more or less...)

It seems to be a particularly international edition this week. I don't know how it happens precisely, but each week seems to find its own identity.

Starting literary, on Sarsaparilla, a new Australian literary blog, Laura has rediscovered a childhood favourite, a book about a carnivorous rabbit. Sounds like nightmares to me.

On Ping Pong Jubilee! an account of running away from home for the first time at the age of 16. It reminds me of being a bit older and finding student-living incredibly romantic (in a non-sexual sense). Never actually did it, which was undoubtedly a good job. Probably would have lasted about three days.

Michelle in South Africa on...Seeking Serenity meanwhile has another personal anecdote, a real ghost story. There's a camera involved too.

More politically, Imshin on Not a Fish, Provincially Speaking (no I don't know, you'll have to ask), is reflecting on the procession of cleaners through her government office. Poor pay, lousy treatment equals filthy toilets, unsurprisingly.

Turning personal, Anglefille (an American in London) describes why she can't find a man in the midst of hundreds of them. Mary Bloomington on Putting the Fist in Pacifist meanwhile finds Anti-feminists are just SO ADORABLE sometimes, you could SCREAM. She was responding to the responses to her post on the realities of dating.

Ms Glaze is about to start a job at a very posh restaurant in Paris. But first she's trying out the food as a customer. Staying Parisien, Maitresse reflects on the cows of Paris (and the dogs).

Shauna James is the Gluten-Free Girl. She's on television, and making perfect roast chicken. Don't go there hungry for fear of a Pavlovian reaction.

Finally, something quite different - an online novel, or story collection Adelaid Sprawls, written by ThirdCat of Adelaide Writer. So little in the way of fiction seems to really make use of the multidirectional possibilities of the web.

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If you missed last week's edition, it is on my home blog, Philobiblon.

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Please: In the next week, if you read or write a post by a woman blogger and think "that deserves a wider audience" (particularly someone who doesn't yet get many hits), drop a comment. It really does make my life easier. (Thanks to Penny this week!)

M F Hussain Art Exhibition in London Closed After Attack by Religious Extremists

Natalie Bennett — Tue, 30 May 2006 00:36:38 EDT

An art exhibition in London has been cancelled after an attack by Hindu extremists on two of the paintings. The excuse: "security reasons." How incredibly wimpish is that? Particularly when...

Maqbool Fida Hussain, 90, who has stirred controversy in India among militant Hindus by painting Durga, Saraswati, and other Hindu deities in the nude, came to London for the summer to seek a more tolerant artistic climate.

That was after he faced charges in India for hurting the sentiments of people. (A very curious charge. Lots of things offend my "sentiments" every day -- people driving planet-destroying 4WDs in London, for example, but I don't expect them to be charged because of my feelings.)

The artist, most usually known as M.F. Hussain, or just "Hussain," so well-known is he in India, has had a score of solo exhibitions around the world, going back to 1950. He was described by Forbes magazine as "the Picasso of India.. This is no young artist setting out to make a splash with controversy. (Not that it should matter if he were.)

After the attack, with black spray paint, Asia House's insurers have said they would not cover the exhibition. (Which surely they should not be allowed to do. They are insurers -- it might be reasonable to demand more security precautions or guards, but such actions only invite more similar actions. Have they not thought of that?)

I've linked above to the Telegraph story (short), and there was a comment piece in the Observer yesterday. That's it. (At least all that appears on Google News.) A blog piece by Sujit Nair, a PhD student in America, sets out some of the issues and refutes the arguments of those who would deny Hussain free speech.

A major exhibition, by an important international artist, has been forced to close by probably a handful of people. And hardly anyone seems to have noticed. This simply isn't good enough, from the media, from Asia House, from the artistic community, from London itself.

All references to the exhibition appear to have been removed from the Asia House website but the email address is there. If you care about artistic freedom, about freedom of speech, I'd suggest dropping them a line.

(The image, of a painting called "Mother India", is from MFHussain's website, which, when I found it, showed signs of being attacked by hackers but was still more or less functional. I don't know if it will stay that way.)