Blog
*The difficulties of painting about another culture
03/10/2016
In January I had an exhibition of 16 heads of political agents* who had had worked in Udaipur for the royal family ('Roar Like a Paintbrush'). I painted their whiskery sepia faces with as much colour and life and as little inhibition as I could, enjoying experimenting with colour while just painting faces. Later I thought it would be interesting to paint the Indians they worked for as a counterpart, using archive photos dating from the mid C19th. I limited myself to using shades of black and white because I wanted to overpaint them afterwards with some colour, as had the court painters with their images, using only faces that I cut out from the rest of the photograph.
Wanting to find out more about the period, the people and the photos I had several conversations with historian Sean Willcock of the Paul Mellon Institute, who passed on images, books and articles which he thought would interest me, and through talking to him I honed in on several fascinating aspects of the use of photography as propaganda. I have done much wonderful background reading including Edward Said's Orientalism, Barthes "Camera Lucida', Flaubert's travels in Egypt, Willaim Dalrymple's 'White Moghuls', Jonathan Gil Harris' 'The First Firangis', was well as both 'Kim' and 'Flashman'.
Initially I responded viscerally to the beauty of the images with their intense dark eyes, baroque headgear and the sense of aliveness/deadness.The ideas that interested me included the Indian profile and the European gazes, 'darshan' - you behold the deity and the diety beholds you; the princes' distain for the portrait gift exchange system foisted on them by the British and the maharajahs' increasing refusal to wear the or richly symbolic nate costumes that led to the British perception that they ere decadent, mystical and in need of governance.
However I have found it increasingly difficult to both make a painting that works as a painting and means what I mean it to mean. If asked what the paintings were about I have said the frontal pose was reminiscent of the passport photo, the icon, the mugshot, the face on the mummy's case - the most direct engagement between subject and object, which I was then subverting with small painterly devices that defied engagement - blots of paint over the eyes, a tongue sticking out, a funny nose that to me conveyed the object refusing to be engaged with. They are about admiring the Indian's self-presentation, and having a living conversation with some dead people.
I became aware that what seemed to be to be droll in the painting could seem mocking, that in altering the images I was doing what Said railed against - not allowing the subjects to speak for themselves. I knew little of the horrible behaviour of the East India Company and then the British Raj, of post-colonial theory, or much of philosophy or cultural theory, beyond what a year of reading history has given me.
However I feel that these difficulties of negotiating an unfamiliar culture shouldn't preclude my making paintings that have a benign impulse behind them, while I'm also anxious that my naiveté will make them liable to be received as offensive and patronising in ways I'm not able to foresee.
*'A Resident or Political Agent was an official of the East India Company (and after 1813, the British Government), who was based in a princely state and who served as part diplomat, part adviser to the native ruler, and part monitor of activities in the princely state. He was an instrument of indirect rule of princely India by the British.' Wikipedia
Wanting to find out more about the period, the people and the photos I had several conversations with historian Sean Willcock of the Paul Mellon Institute, who passed on images, books and articles which he thought would interest me, and through talking to him I honed in on several fascinating aspects of the use of photography as propaganda. I have done much wonderful background reading including Edward Said's Orientalism, Barthes "Camera Lucida', Flaubert's travels in Egypt, Willaim Dalrymple's 'White Moghuls', Jonathan Gil Harris' 'The First Firangis', was well as both 'Kim' and 'Flashman'.
Initially I responded viscerally to the beauty of the images with their intense dark eyes, baroque headgear and the sense of aliveness/deadness.The ideas that interested me included the Indian profile and the European gazes, 'darshan' - you behold the deity and the diety beholds you; the princes' distain for the portrait gift exchange system foisted on them by the British and the maharajahs' increasing refusal to wear the or richly symbolic nate costumes that led to the British perception that they ere decadent, mystical and in need of governance.
However I have found it increasingly difficult to both make a painting that works as a painting and means what I mean it to mean. If asked what the paintings were about I have said the frontal pose was reminiscent of the passport photo, the icon, the mugshot, the face on the mummy's case - the most direct engagement between subject and object, which I was then subverting with small painterly devices that defied engagement - blots of paint over the eyes, a tongue sticking out, a funny nose that to me conveyed the object refusing to be engaged with. They are about admiring the Indian's self-presentation, and having a living conversation with some dead people.
I became aware that what seemed to be to be droll in the painting could seem mocking, that in altering the images I was doing what Said railed against - not allowing the subjects to speak for themselves. I knew little of the horrible behaviour of the East India Company and then the British Raj, of post-colonial theory, or much of philosophy or cultural theory, beyond what a year of reading history has given me.
However I feel that these difficulties of negotiating an unfamiliar culture shouldn't preclude my making paintings that have a benign impulse behind them, while I'm also anxious that my naiveté will make them liable to be received as offensive and patronising in ways I'm not able to foresee.
*'A Resident or Political Agent was an official of the East India Company (and after 1813, the British Government), who was based in a princely state and who served as part diplomat, part adviser to the native ruler, and part monitor of activities in the princely state. He was an instrument of indirect rule of princely India by the British.' Wikipedia
