Company Painting in India

Black Stork in a Landscape, ca. 1780. India (Lucknow). Watercolor on European paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Louis E. and Theresa S. Seley Purchase Fund for Islamic Art and Rogers Fund, 2000 (2000.266)

After moving to New York, one of the first things I did was paper my walls with postcards from my travels. My room is a documentation of experiences I’ve had and things I’ve seen, but the snapshots from museums and monuments, streets and storefronts are not holistic portraits of places I’ve been. If someone were to try to glean information about Paris from my photos, they’d only get a limited view, not the big picture: I’m sure Parisians eat things other than dainty pastries and crepes, but I didn’t. Similarly, there are some buildings in Rome that aren’t churches, but I don’t have pictures of any. The images that decorate my room represent a particular experience, not a universal one. I love that my collaged walls tell the story of the life I live, but the limited scope of a representation of a place or experience becomes problematic when the depiction in question is viewed as a historical document. I’ve been thinking about this issue in terms of Company Paintings from India.

Throughout the 1700s, members of the British East India Company wanted souvenirs of the novel sights they encountered in India. While modern tourists would snap photos with a camera (or their iPhones), these travelers enlisted Indian painters to “document” the environs. Many images of this period catalog the flora and fauna of the region, such as this delicate stork.

Other works more explicitly catered to Europeans’ fetish for the exotic. These images depicted festivals, castes, and costumes.

Eight Men in Indian and Burmese Costume, 19th century. India (Delhi). Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Dr. Julius Hoffman, 1909 (09.227.1)

It’s interesting to consider the complex ways in which enterprising Indians participated in the colonial system. By creating work that pandered to the European taste, and successfully snagging European patrons, Indian artists were able to make a living. However, producing work that was attractive to European collectors sometimes meant exploiting the same kinds of deprecating depictions that were often used to justify colonial projects. How objective were these works? How much—and what—can they tell us about the realities of daily life, and to what extent did they involve exaggerations or salacious additions intended to pique foreigners’ interest? In what ways are these historical artifacts that can tell us about self-representation under colonial rule? Do they represent a particular experience, or a generalized one: do they belong on someone’s wall as a personal artifact, or in an archive as a generalize-able one?

Source:

Sardar, Marika. "Company Painting in Nineteenth-Century India". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cpin/hd_cpin.htm (October 2004)

Stieglitz and O'Keeffe

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864–1946), Georgia O'Keeffe, 1921. Palladium print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Georgia O'Keeffe through the generosity of The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation and Jennifer and Joseph Duke, 1997 (1997.61.19)

“His idea of a portrait was not just one picture. His dream was to start with a child at birth and photograph that child in all of its activities as it grew to be a person and on throughout its adult life. As a portrait it would be a photographic diary."

—Georgia O'Keeffe, 1978

This photo of Georgia O'Keefe is one of some 300 taken by her one-time husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz attempted to create a complex composite portrait of O'Keefe, and denounced the idea that any single image could represent a holistic identity. Only through amassing a photographic compilation could he approximate the sense of portraying a complex self.

In this image, we can't see O'Keeffe's face; her identifying features are obscured, but the photographer emphasizes body parts that are central to the artist's identity: her hands. These deft, agile fingers, held here with such deliberateness, created beautiful, important works, and for O'Keeffe, may have been just as important as her eyes or nose. Like these sensory organs, they were ways in which she perceived—and created—the world. The image is not at all obscene, but is highly erotic: the languid arch of her neck and protrusion of her clavicle are sensual without being explicitly sexual. Even at this cropped range, which omits any of the body parts that usually signal sexuality, O’Keeffe is elegant, mysterious, and alluring.

Source:

"Alfred Stieglitz: Georgia O'Keeffe (1997.61.19)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1997.61.19 (October 2006)

The Project

One thing I loved about college was the fact that I learned something new every day. From research methodologies to marinating chicken, each day offered an intellectual, sartorial, culinary, interpersonal, or practical challenge (it turns out that a sledgehammer—even a small one—is heftier than necessary when hanging a picture frame. How am I going to fix this huge hole in my wall?). I’m still having trouble navigating the currents of the working world, and still experiencing shocking misadventures with cooking, but one thing is for sure: I’m definitely learning less right now than I was six months ago.

Mark Twain once said, “Don’t let education get in the way of your learning,” but for me, the classroom wasn’t an impediment to curiosity. I’ve always known that knowledge isn’t only generated in solitary corners of dusty libraries, but also in museums, public spaces, and every other imaginable place. Coursework didn’t make me disinclined to learn: instead, like an addict, I craved ever-increasing amounts of knowledge and devoured books with a ravenousness that led me to stay in some wintry Friday nights, bundled up in a blanket and huddled next to my sputtering radiator with my nose buried in the pages. Everything’s changed since I packed up my books, collected my diploma, and started work.

After spending all day either struggling to keep my balance on the subway or keep my cool in my cubicle, I am often too lethargic to read or go to lectures. I don’t want to turn on my brain: I just want to trudge home, throw together the simplest possible dinner (Annie’s mac and cheese and frozen peas), and slump face-first onto my pillows until it’s time to wake up and repeat. Since I don’t have WiFi in my bedroom or the ability to read at work, some days, the only news I receive comes from my Snapple bottles. As much as I like learning about polar bear fur or the fear of vegetables, I still feel like my brain is atrophying. Four years ago, I gained the Freshman 15 (and then some). Now, I’ve lost the Post-College 3—and it’s all from my brain.

I am now working at an art institution home to tens of thousands of objects. Instead of just shuffling past them every morning in a sleepy stupor, I’ve decided to research one artwork per day. Art Project is my attempt to learn more about art, and to use art to keep learning. Thanks for reading! I hope we both learn something.