Madhu Khanna – “Karmic connections bring people and places together”
The artist historian, who won the Oxford Bookstore Art Book Prize 2024 for ‘Tantra on the Edge’, that examines the work of KCS Paniker, SH Raza and Gogi Saroj Pal, among others, talks about the impact of Tantra on modern Indian art
How does it feel to win the Oxford Bookstore Art Book Prize for Tantra on the Edge? What significance does this win hold for you as a scholar who has been studying, writing, lecturing and curating exhibitions on Tantra art since you were a PhD student?
My recognition is a personal pleasure and surprise and a significant victory for Indian patronage. I am deeply honoured that the Apeejay Surrendra Group has recognized the importance of a publication on the art of Tantra. This recognition will undoubtedly reach a wider public readership and stimulate interest in fostering a discourse on the art of Tantra.
When one has engaged with an area of enquiry for a sufficiently long time, a sense of complacency can set in if one isn’t watchful. How do you keep the student in you alive?
Like many others, my scholarly and creative writings have only scratched the surface of the vast knowledge of Tantra. Tantra, a Vedic exegesis and an extra-Vedic tradition and culture, is a rich heritage primarily preserved in manuscripts, books, sacred objects, architecture, and visual and performative arts. The vastness of this subject, which has a substantial amount of undocumented literature yet to be unearthed, is a source of endless fascination. Modern scholarship has revealed the diverse schools of Tantric tradition that flourished in India and Nepal, Tibet, China, Japan, and South east Asia. The scope of Tantra is so vast that there is always more to discover and learn, with each day bringing a new surprise. This ongoing process of discovery and learning underscores the continuous evolution and growth of knowledge in Tantra.
How did Tantra on the Edge come into being as an exhibition and a book?
Synchronicity and karmic connections bring people and places together. Positive energy and invisible forces work. In my case, fate brought Ashish Anand and me together through an introduction by an American scholar friend. Ashish Anand’s quest for excellence in all art forms, artists, and creative scholars is well known. What always fascinated me was DAG’s commitment to research and publishing sumptuous art books. DAG has preserved a large number of works in the collection of such well-known artists as GR Santosh, Sohan Qadri, KCS Paniker, Manu Parekh, Shobha Broota, Biren De and others who have made significant contributions to the ever-growing repository of art that originated from the classical imagery of Tantra. The project of bringing the works of these artists into the public domain has been in gestation for over a decade. After a meeting with Ashish Anand, Kishore Singh and his committed team contacted me to be on board as the curator and author of this highly challenging project. I am grateful to DAG for providing contextual material on artists and their works from their ever-growing archives. They were also instrumental in getting supporting material from several sources for the book. The groundbreaking exhibition and the book would not have been possible without their unwavering support for the realization of this project.
When you set out to tell the story of the impact of Tantra on modern Indian art, what were your biggest priorities as a curator? How did you zero in on the final set of artists?
I wanted to present those artists with whom I found hard evidence of their link with Tantra either in their works, in their writings, or in recorded conversations about them in journals where critics and authors have identified their works as having been influenced by Tantra. These artists’ connection to Tantra is not just a casual influence but a deep and significant part of their artistic expression. This observation also refers to the artists experimenting with tantric imagery briefly. Each artist featured in the book reinvented their abiding link with Tantra and translated their expression of Tantra. The concurrent plurality of artistic expressions only goes to show the individuality and commitment of each artist.
In the book, you write, “Artists who rejected imported styles of expression to create tantra-inspired art that is distinctly Indian have not received the prestige they deserve.” What are the reasons behind this?
True innovation is rarely recognised during the artist’s lifetime. The artists presented in the book were self-absorbed in their quest and did not play to the gallery and the fashion of their times. Nor were they contacted by the mainstream to showcase their works.
GR Santosh spoke about how a pilgrimage to Amarnath, and his encounter with Kashmiri Shaivism influenced his art. Sohan Qadri’s art was informed by his Vajrayana practice. While researching their work, what gaps did you find in critical commentary about their art? To what extent is scholarship able to capture inner experiences?
The research reinvented a language of their arts, which is complete in itself. All mandates have boundaries. The spectators and viewers behold the remainder of each artist’s creative process.
SH Raza was reluctant to label his paintings as tantric because he claimed that he knew little about the philosophy and rituals associated with Tantra. You note that the influence of tantric ideas has gone unacknowledged in his work. Why do you think so?
My research proves that SH Raza’s position as an artist who drew strong inspiration from Tantra is deliberately evasive. Raza’s non-representational abstraction has drawn heavily from the signs and symbols that superficially resemble ancient tantric paintings. Hence, it is given that his works are fine examples of what I designate as “optical tantra”, which excites the eye stimuli by appropriating a pattern without its philosophical referent in Tantra. The formal aesthetic signs in Raza’s paintings are mirror images from some tantric paintings, as shown in my book. However reluctant modern art historians are to label his work having any connection to Tantra, one would still need to explain why he chose Sanskrit titles such as Purusha-Prakriti, Bindu, Mandala, Kundalini, Ankur, Bija, Nada, Panch-tattva, which are central doctrines discussed in Hindu tantric texts. These words do not come from casual use. They are heavily overlayered with philosophical concepts. Had Raza given these titles in English, ie, Man-Nature, Dot, Circle, Coiled One, Embryo, Seed and Five Elements, his works may have lost their Indic flavour. Raza was deeply involved in the spiritual context of these words and, hence, the title. One should remember that immigrant artists have to negotiate their identity and east-west tension in several works produced in the West. His experiments in optical Tantra do not undermine his position as one of India’s foremost modernist painters. On the contrary, the titles of his works validate the perennial truth that these concepts carry.
Your book challenges generalizations about how women artists relate to Tantra as opposed to men. Shobha Broota’s work looks so different from Gogi Saroj Pal’s and Priya Mookerjee’s work. What are your thoughts on using gender as a lens to interpret their art? What are the possibilities and limitations involved in such an approach?
The works of these artists offer positive constructs of their inspirations, which serve as alternatives to sexist ideology. Their deep connection to excavate signs and symbols — whether from mythology as Gogi Saroj Pal does in her Hathayogini series, or from archetypes that define creation seen in Mookerjee’s work or in the minimal representations in Shobha Broota’s paintings — is a testament to their unwavering commitment to their inspirations.
These artists make explicit visual statements about their female choices and, thereby, their sovereignty. The fact is that women’s subjectivity, irrespective of their caste, class, and denomination, is the norm as they live, and it is enough proof of their authenticity of representation. By believing in their inspirations, these three female artists have rid themselves of the false consciousness created by the patriarchy. There are no limitations, and the world is open to us.
Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, journalist and book reviewer.