There is a certain cosmic element about large battles described in epics like the Iliad or the Mahabharata. Maybe the forces unleashed from the large seething masses of humanity numbering in the tens of thousands as they stand to square off in what could be the last day or night in their lives evokes out of control celestial bodies – or maybe it is the magnitude of destruction about to unfold while rational thought remains crucified at the battlefield entrance helplessly watching the bloodletting that ensues… I am not sure, but there is something other worldly about them that pricks our atavistic core. Childhood memories are fairly strong – or so neurologists say – it must be because our brain cells have not fully formed then and any available sliver of information is indelibly singed on our neurons… For some reason, to this day, I remember vicariously participating in the imaginary battles while the warring clans clashed under the overcast demeanor of Kurukshetra through comic books such as the Amar Chitra Katha…
One such scene from this epic tale unfolds with two very large armies about to face off each other over a vast battleground. Moments before the time of reckoning draws near and that first arrow rends the sky, one of the commanders experiences a sudden burst of self-doubt and starts a dialogue with his charioteer on the nature of humanity, the soul, our existence and filial duty. A striking tableau develops when his charioteer drives the chariot out to the midlines of the battle field and starts to explain the answers to some of the questions posed. The interesting exchange between the doubtful commander and his self assured charioteer is so powerful that it forms a separate section of the Mahabharata called the Gita. Though I would consider certain portions of the conversation between the two to be bit facile, a lot of the principles laid out in this conversation that took place thousands of years ago resonates even today.
Even if the words did prod my thinking in many ways, the aspect of the epic that was most retained in my mind from all those surreptitious nights of comic book mythology was the battle. This painting (below) is an attempt at trying to capture some those crucial moments before the impending battle. This scene is a familiar one and numerous Indian homes have a semblance of this tableau in some framed format. Owing to the scale and the gravity of the scene, I decided to try something large scale (though it was not really necessary) – I had not done anything so large before and the aspect of size in and of itself presented its own peculiar problems. Finished, the painting is about nine feet wide and six feet tall. I did make a mess of our basement completing the thing and am not sure how long that is going to take to clean the oil paint mish mash left on the floor. It took about two and a half months for me to go through the motions of the initial measurements, sketches, gesso ground and finally painting the canvas in three sections – the middle first, followed by the left and then the right side.
Sunil Gangadharan, ‘Everyman and the charioteer’, Oil on canvas, 101″ X 73″
Sunil,
Somehow the polychromatic detail of the armies has an exotic feel and strikes me as Indian, though I know very little about Indian art. This classic scene must have been depicted many times. Are there any particular aspects that were important to you that you wanted to emphasize? I’m sure the grandeur comes through in your large canvas, which the small web image can’t do justice to.
In particular, I would love to see some details of faces of both main characters and the massed warriors. I’m wondering whether they are like your individual portraits or more generalized.
Sunil:
Marvelous ambition. I take it that you employed an unstretched canvas lest you become as the fabled individual who built a boat in his basement.
I would ask after the order of battle as it appears that the most likely peril in the forthcoming fray might be drowning. For some reason the center part of the image registers as a body of water on my screen.
Again, I applaud the scale of your enterprise.
Steve,
The picture really does not do the theme justice. I wanted to ‘de-perspectivize’ the image effectively such that the central characters were focussed in an abstract way in relation to the maltitudes on the sides..
I will post some images of close ups – but I did not paint in any features – wanted a generalized look for the armies on either sides…
Jay,
Great observation – yes, I did work on an unstretched canvas that was taped onto the basement walls. The next challange will be to actually stretch the thing out on stretchers… The ‘body of water’ feeling is not apparent in the actual… On looking at the photo some more, I think it is an artifact of the photography…
Glad you liked it…
My replies are few and far between – the main reason being that this site has been blocked from my workplace and my time home is shared between our sons. Apologies for any unanswered questions before this, but I am sure sometime I shall come back and answer and comment…
Sunil
Sunil,
I am waiting eagerly for the close-ups. Chase those children off the computer and post them.
I like to work large, but have never painted a piece that big — I’ve done many textiles at least that size, but they are built up like a collage, not laid down with paint. I’m not surprised it took you so long, and I do admire what it must have taken to arrive at the final product.
I painted a relatively large piece in Basin, that I removed from the stretcher to bring home (it wouldn’t fit in the Honda Civic otherwise). It came through just fine, and I suspect your canvas will do beautifully when you get it stretched. Did you encounter any problems painting it unstretched?
The whole reminds me of an old map of the world: “Here lie dragons,” etc. I have no affinity for battles, large or small; most of my childhood stages were cowboys (or settlers) and indians [sic], one on one, hiding behind trees like Leatherstocking, or tracking through the woods as silently as a lynx. I’m wondering how much one’s childhood reading and fables form our mythological scenerios.
Some close ups here…
http://simplisticart.blogspot.com/2008/02/up-close-and-personal.html
Sunil,
Thanks for the enlarged details. The two armies are really seething, probably at having to wait for the long-winded discussion taking place in the middle of the field.
Although, as a kid, I marshalled plastic armies and had plenty of mock and real battles with neighborhood pals and enemies, it feels like a very remote part of my experience. I was shocked to read recently, in several essays regarding Deborah Butterfield, that it was an issue that most horse symbolism was war-related. Despite having gone in multiple directions with horses in my photography, that connection never once occurred to me. It is probably different in sculpture (think monuments) than in 2D art. I’m not sure whether she personally felt it as a barrier, but I imagine it was eventually a big plus in terms of gaining notice and interest for her very different horses.
I very much appreciate the composition and colors but the theme is alien to me.
Birgit,
Calling the theme ‘alien’ sounds too strong/WASPy for a concept familiar to about a billion people in India…
Just a quick observation…
Sunil
Sorry that I am so squeamish.
Having studied exhibits of medical practice in American Civil War museums, I tend to think of maimed bodies on the battle field and limbs chopped off without anesthetics and infections untreated by antibiotics rather than the glory of big, ancient battles.
Moreover, having grown up in post war Germany, I abhorr militarism no matter how decorative.
Sunil:
Had this not been identified as a battle I would have assumed that you had depicted a festival of colors. Your command of colors is a thing to behold, as is your abundant proliferation.
Sunil,
“Alien” is always dependent on where you stand (sort of like relativity). In Basin, one of the founders of the Refuge was fond of saying, when quizzed about the Refuge operations: “Well, it’s nothing exotic, you know.” I finally had to tell her that it might not be exotic to her — she’d been doing it for 15 years, but for me, it was exotic indeed.
It’s interesting that we no longer study the Iliad as a matter of course (it’s pretty exotic, come to think of it). And in Christianity, it’s a single person and then martyrs, singularly heroic, who are celebrated. Our only mass Christian scenes are things like the Crusades, which ended quite badly for the Europeans.
I have sometimes thought that communal action and community were lost in the western and U.S. cult of the individual. But I’m seeing a downside to certain kinds of community feeling. However, we in the U.S. seem to make up for it with an ultra-jingoistic nationalism, so I can’t claim any virtue.
What I am interested in is your choice to focus on this moment in the battle, and the way the primary characters are so central and head-on.
You say the charioteer “starts to explain the answers to some of the questions posed. The interesting exchange between the doubtful commander and his self assured charioteer is so powerful that it forms a separate section of the Mahabharata called the Gita. Though I would consider certain portions of the conversation between the two to be bit facile, a lot of the principles laid out in has comments that resonate in ethical terms even today”
— but you don’t tell us what those answers are. That may be why the scene is “alien” — — I can only imagine what ethical principles are being enunciated at such a crucial time in the battle.
The sparrow flying through the drinking hall in Beowulf resonates with me and I could paint it (I suppose). It might have a resonance with Birgit and other traditionally educated western humanists, but be alien to most of the country. Likewise, in spite of the billions who know this scene — you need to teach we,the ignorant, what the central meaning of that open space, that moment of poise before chaos, is. It makes a big difference — in the shapes and colors and abstract nature of the painting.
June:
Well said.
June,
Humanism! You have tossed me a lifeboat in my present despair over people using demagoguery and/or charisma to sway masses and, in their private sphere, lack an instinctive avoidance of mobsters.
Birgit,
These are times that try men’s souls — and require women to man the lifeboats — and throw them to their sisters in need, too!
Birgit and June,
Amidst eloquent comments about lifeboats thrown by sisters and trying times for men’s souls, I wanted to point out the following in response:
— ““Well, it’s nothing exotic, you know.” I finally had to tell her that it might not be exotic to her”
There is a huge perceptual difference implied by the words alien and exotic. While the concept presented here may be exotic to a person not familiar with the settings, calling it alien made it sound like (to me) the circumstances presented here were other worldly / other planet for some reason…
— “Interesting that we no longer study the Iliad as a matter of course”
Neither is the Iliad studied as a matter of course in India, but most people seem to know about it and there is a good chance that they may not call the circumstances presented there ‘alien’.
— “your choice to focus on this moment in the battle, and the way the primary characters are so central and head-on”
The Gita is a subtext in the middle of the epic Mahabharata that deals with concepts like dharma, karma, maya and atman. It might be difficult to explain it here, but central to the concepts being expounded are the characters presented who loom larger than the battle. The characters looming larger than the multitudes poised for war resonates with the implication that that the above mentioned concepts trump petty wars.
— “but you don’t tell us what those answers are”
Kindly see The Bhagawad Gita by Eknath Easwaran. The concepts cannot really be explained in a paragraph or a comment…
My apologies. I hope the painting sparked some interest in these concepts that are much needed in the ‘instafix’ world of today.
It indeed is serendipitous you mention Beowulf – because the first paragraph in Eknath Easwaran’s book talks about the same.
Sunil, you amaze me.
(1) Calling my expression WASPy, a racial slur! I am not going to recipricate calling you names.
I am not in the WASP category, either by heritage or by social associations. My mother was born in Strassbourg, Alsace Lorraine, France; and, over the last 500 years, my father’s family moved from Thuringia, central Germany, to Russia and finally back to Germany. My children are half Ashkenazi-Jewish.
(2) See one of the possible definitions of alien at http://www.answers.com/topic/alien?cat=biz-fin
Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature: emotions alien to her temperament.
I don’t think of WASP as a slur exactly, rather as a label that does tend to imply that the person labeled has the typical attributes associated with the group. A risky ploy to call someone that. However, the term wasn’t applied to a person, but to a statement that I think could be called one of rejection. However, that was not a rejection of Indians or their history, as I read it, but rather a statement that Birgit could in no way imagine herself or her feelings in that setting. To say “exotic” there would mean that her impressions would be very foreign or unusual compared to her daily life, usually with a positive connotation. “Alien” could imply from another planet (just watched the movie with that title with my kids last week), but I didn’t take it that way in this context.
Personally, I don’t find the battle setting especially strange–there are plenty of battle paintings in the European tradition–but I do find it odd that there would be this long intermission for a philosophical discussion. I’ve frequently heard the Bhagavad-Gita mentioned as a classic of literature, but I’m sorry to confess I never even knew this much about it. The more I learn, the more ignorant I feel…
Steve wrote: “The more I learn, the more ignorant I feel…” Me too.
In fact, I did indeed read the Bhagavad Gita, more years ago perhaps than you have been alive. I simply didn’t recognize your (Sunil’s) mode of referencing it (and I definitely would now be hard pressed to tell you anything of what I read). But I now have a better feel for what the pre-battle discussions might have included. Probably not “God be with you” and “May the best man (sic) win.” Even your (Sunil’s) “concepts like dharma, karma, maya and atman” convey to me information that I didn’t have before. I never encountered anyone who called the text the Gita before; so much for my learned past.
Incidentally, I didn’t think of “alien” as much different from “exotic” (“the more I learn” etc etc) I was thinking not in terms of outer space nor of people who enter the country without the proper papers, but rather “foreign,” “different from” “unknown” “unusual compared to her daily life” “exotic”, ie “alien”. All these are what the word “alien” conveys to me — but then, I don’t watch horror movies and I don’t call people “undocumented aliens.” So I am alienated to a large extent from certain attributes of popular culture.
I think this conversation makes me realize again the problem with thinking of art as a universal: a great deal of it is cultural. It would be foolish for me to assume that people from the heart of India would recognize that the Basin trailer with the tar-papered half-finished addition had a certain economic resonance — which it certainly does for me. And it would, alas, probably be foolish for you, Sunil, to assume that westerners would have a resonance and comprehension of even a tiny smidgeon of what this scene must mean to people who have been steeped in its textual, contextual, and visual qualities.
Steve, I rather recommend the Bhagavad Gita, insofar as I remember much about it. It was indeed exotic and alien to a small town protestant Christian, but I do remember vividly that it opened my eyes to ideas I never dreamed of. Call them what you will — exotic, alien, foreign, or the product of a culture older and wiser than the one I was brought up with —
So Sunil, you said: “I hope the painting sparked some interest in these concepts that are much needed in the ‘instafix’ world of today.”
I’m interested. I want to hear how the art would resonate with people familiar with the cultural givens — what are the traditional symbolic aspects that you chose to depict (the design of the whole? The massing of the warriors?) and what did you choose to make unique (the colors? the abstraction of the figures?) Would the mass of followers of the Gita understand instantly from the visual aspects what this represented — and would they read it in conventional ways? In other words, teach us further, through speaking of your painting, something about expectations for this kind of art and how you’ve followed and/or denied them.
And Birgit, massed warrior scenes also bring to my mind the American Civil War (as well as the Revolutionary War) where men (not sic) were gunned down in rows and left to rot on blood red battlefields. I guess there are a lot of “positive” war paintings and scenes in western culture, but the only one that resonates with me with anything different from horror was the scene in the Australian film Gallipoli, where the aria from the Bizet’s Pearl Fishers is sung and resounds over the camp the night before the battle. And that’s a love song between, I believe, two brothers.Who are about to part.
I recommend the Jussi Bjorling version…..
Please note that this is not a manifestation of jingoism towards Indian cultures or sub-cultures. This was just an unintended public display of my sadness at people labeling and banishing cultures that they do not understand to the dusty corner by simply labeling it with terms like ‘alien’. It is very easy to do so. I have seen it in a lot of people I met in America. In this case, I think Birgit became a unintended target of my cultural surveys. I would have reacted the same way if it were any other culture around the world.
I certainly did not mean WASP as a racial comment. If anything, I discovered some of the racial undertones behind that word. To any hurt feelings that I may have caused by alluding to race, please, my sincerest apologies… and, I mean that.
Sunil,
We are friends who explored their different experiences in growing up.
I grew up by defining my inner worth through my alienation of what many of my elders had done, overly sensitive of racial innuendos and fearful of charismatic authority sending people into battle. On the other extreme, some in my generation, in their confusion, reacted the opposite way and joined militant groups.
Your childhood appears to have been a happier spiritual experience.