.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Jagdish Swaminathan began combining elements from nature in his surreal landscapes, settling upon a pared down visual aesthetic and philosophy that sought to reveal, in moments of epiphany, the ‘para-natural’ or magical and mysterious essence of things that is omnipresent yet unavailable to the senses. Mountains, trees and the figures of archetypal birds that defied gravity were juxtaposed against wide swathes of pure color in these paintings to create a state of emotion in the viewer that would unlock the ‘numinous image’ which lay hidden beneath the surface.
Over the course of his artistic career, “Swaminathan returned time and again to the tensions between the numinous, revolution and revelation: he deconstructed sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Pahari painting and the works of Paul Klee to fashion a mystical vision that sought to invoke bhakti’s shared relationship between worshipper [...] and God [...] For Swaminathan, the devotional eye takes the pictorial surface as a device for rumination on ontology: the pictorial surface offers a glimpse into the question of being qua becoming” (N. Eaton, Colour, Art and Empire: Visual Culture and the Nomadism of Representation, London, 2013, p. 294).
The present lot epitomizes Swaminathan’s fascination with development of a pure and true form of representation through art. As if suspended in time, the bird floats in space above twin mountains, each surmounted by a tree. The vast emptiness between the forms transcends time and space, inducing a meditative stillness that begins to unveil the para-natural. “The bird is there – constantly and faithfully – as a messenger and a message; as one’s redemption. And it sings hymns of awareness, coaxingly and persuasively, as a perforation in space releasing the all-enveloping presence. But the bird is not bird: It is also snake, tree and leaf, linking up and holding together spaces and pointing to more. And the mountain is also cloud, human torso and curtain, mischievously inviting to be parted to reveal the vistas beyond” (S. Navlakha, Fleeting Images, exhibition catalogue, New Delhi, 1979, p. 4).
Over the course of his artistic career, “Swaminathan returned time and again to the tensions between the numinous, revolution and revelation: he deconstructed sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Pahari painting and the works of Paul Klee to fashion a mystical vision that sought to invoke bhakti’s shared relationship between worshipper [...] and God [...] For Swaminathan, the devotional eye takes the pictorial surface as a device for rumination on ontology: the pictorial surface offers a glimpse into the question of being qua becoming” (N. Eaton, Colour, Art and Empire: Visual Culture and the Nomadism of Representation, London, 2013, p. 294).
The present lot epitomizes Swaminathan’s fascination with development of a pure and true form of representation through art. As if suspended in time, the bird floats in space above twin mountains, each surmounted by a tree. The vast emptiness between the forms transcends time and space, inducing a meditative stillness that begins to unveil the para-natural. “The bird is there – constantly and faithfully – as a messenger and a message; as one’s redemption. And it sings hymns of awareness, coaxingly and persuasively, as a perforation in space releasing the all-enveloping presence. But the bird is not bird: It is also snake, tree and leaf, linking up and holding together spaces and pointing to more. And the mountain is also cloud, human torso and curtain, mischievously inviting to be parted to reveal the vistas beyond” (S. Navlakha, Fleeting Images, exhibition catalogue, New Delhi, 1979, p. 4).