Elements of Abstraction in Ragamala Paintings

The genius of Indian artists comes forth not only in their ability to represent faithfully, and with marked skill, what they saw or observed, but also in their imaginative portrayal of spiritual and ephemeral themes. Perhaps the best examples of this are Ragamala paintings—visual translations of musical compositions. A raga is, as defined by Gangoly: “something that colours, or tinges the mind with some definite feeling—a wave of passion, or emotion.” Though abstraction in art has mostly been regarded as a Western concept, these remarkable paintings show that Indian artists not only understood the use of abstraction but also used it to make their art meaningful above and beyond its visual appeal. These paintings are not simply “illustrations” of poetry, but use a highly developed vocabulary to evoke the essence of music in a purely visual medium.

Artists in workshops are usually perceived as artisans confined by a school, style, or patron’s taste, but these examples demonstrate a crucial understanding of the use of symbols to evoke vast and inexplicable concepts such as emotions and sentiments, successfully representing purely abstract ideas within the framework of figurative art. Just as different musicians have varying styles of playing the same raga, each set of Ragamala paintings shows the artists’ unique interpretation of the theme, and the varying levels of abstraction with which they captured the mood of the melodies.

Celebrating the importance of music in the Indian way of life, Ragamala paintings are representations of devotion, and of lovers in the angst of their separation, often dejected, or in the intimate revelling of their long awaited unions. Accompanying the personified figures of ragas and raginis, elements of nature became integral to the depictions. The time of the day, the season, the landscape, animals and birds, were all absorbed into the iconography, and used, sometimes in highly abstracted forms, as physical manifestations of the mood of the hero or heroine.

Relevant verses of poetry, in Sanskrit or regional dialects, accompanied the visuals, added in the designated margins by a scribe upon completion of the painting. Ebeling has referred to the diversions between the text and the paintings as “mistakes”, owing to, what he considers to be the artists’ incomplete understanding of their subject. While it is quite possible that artists were not familiar with the finer details of each raga, this clearly did not hinder the sensitivity with which they portrayed the mental state of their subjects. These paintings are exceptional not in how closely they follow the text, but in what they add to it.

References:

• Dahmen-Dallapiccola, Anna Libera. Ragamala Miniaturen von 1475 bis 1700. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1975.
• Ebeling, Klaus. Ragamala Painting. Basel: R. Kumar, 1973.
• Gangoly, O. C. Ragas and Raginis. Mumbai: Nalanda Publications, 1948.

Citation: Vrinda Agrawal. "Elements of Abstraction in Ragamala Paintings", La Lumiere de la Lune et du Soleil: The Arts of South Asia and Beyond, 1500-1930. (London: Prahlad Bubbar Ltd., 2016), p. 32.