KALIGHAT

ART

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

• In Calcutta during the 19th century
• Formed through ex-scroll painters and ex-potters who migrated to Calcutta
• Sold in front of the Kalighat temple (hint that's where the name came from) a pilgrimage destination and tourist attraction

FUN FACT!

• JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPING (1837-1911) WAS AN ENGLISH ART TEACHER/CURATOR AND HAD THE BIGGEST KALIGHAT COLLECTION, EVER (EVENTUALLY DONATES IT TO MUSEUMS IN LONDON)

THE ART

• Most significant images were religious in nature and were of Hindu gods and goddesses
• Dramatic outlines and bold flat forms
• Minimal use of shading
• Usually no backgrounds
• The lines look as if the brush was never lifted (contour lines looking)

ART ART ART

• Made in like an assembly line form
• The PATUAS (usually a man) draws the outline then passes it on the the women who each put in one color
• Made so quickly due to the fact that it was on high demand from the tourist and pilgrims and also it was...

NEXT

• PAINTED in watercolor, which dries pretty darn quickly when it's being painted on rectangular MILLMADE paper

BUT

• It was replaced by the cheaper, more mechanized color lithography pro- cess. Today, shops in the Kalighat area continue to sell these color prints, with imagery ranging from traditional religious figures to contemporary politicians and Bollywood film stars.

VIEW ON WESTERNERS

• "The power process of colonialism is “the social assertion by a dominant power over an indigenous people based on the colonizer’s belief in its own unique superiority that give it the right to dominate indigenous people politically and culturally and to take control of their raw materials and land," does not lend itself to freedom of expression by those oppressed by its influence."
• Images of westerners in art were mostly seen in photographs. How the westerner was made to look depended on who made the art piece and who they were planning on selling it to.

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ENGLISHMAN ON TIGER HUNT

• 17 inch x 11 inch Kalighat painting is one of ap- proximately 650 owned by the Victoria and Albert Mu- seum in London
• Depicts contemporary life in Calcutta which included westerners and tourist who made great subject matter for the artist
• Remember, on both sides each culture was exotic to the other

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• One very notable detail is the way the Englishman clasps his rifle. The gun, with its long barrel, is held up- side down. Is this an error on the part of the painter, showing a lack of understanding of Western firearms? Or is it intended to make the man look hapless and silly, unable to handle his weapon with skill?

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• W.G. Archer also points out that normally the hunter would be contained in a howdah, a type of small carriage enclosure placed on the back of the elephant, and that the elephant typically would have been driven by a mahout, or elephant trainer
• By the clothing it would assume this was around the 1820-30s
• all of the figures are somewhat unnaturally positioned within the over- all composition—stacked one above the other without much sense of depth within the scene overall. There are no details of setting, and the figures are silhouetted starkly against the white background of the paper, your average Kalighat styles

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