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Articles
New Myths
Artist and photographer Waswo X.Waswo shares some of his thoughts on his new series on works, as ‘New Myths: (First Incarnation)’ his solo show, opened in Bombay Art Gallery, Mumbai recently.
When I was entering my teens the public school of my hometown administered a test engineered to help a young person find a career suitable to his temperament. A series of multiple choice questions were asked, such as, “On a sunny Sunday afternoon would you rather a) read a book, b) play football, or c) take a long walk in the woods.” The answers a student gave were matched with the responses of people in various professions, and thus a young person might be helped to better understand his own inclinations. After the “career councillors” had evaluated my answers it became clear that I shared common traits with people in three quite diverse professions: I was destined to become a librarian, an interior decorator, or (the number one choice) a “priest or minister”. Perhaps I eventually rolled these three careers together and became an artist. I have been walking in the woods ever since, and carrying my books with me.
In America’s Midwest I was brought up a Christian. My parents held what is really a not-so-strange mix of religious orthodoxy and soft-spoken liberalism. But under the influence of a brilliant and scientifically minded elder brother I soon embraced a healthy scepticism, questioning all that was unproved by reason. “The religions of today are no different than the myths of ancient Greece,” he would mutter while paging through some book on non-Euclidean geometry. I couldn’t disagree with my brother’s rationality. But the simple moral lessons taught at my parents’ church stuck with me.
Like most of us, I think of myself as a person with values: a sense of right and wrong, a feeling for what is just and what is not, a person sensitive enough to emphasize with someone else’s misfortune or feel happiness at someone else’s joy. But I remain a non-religious man in the sense that I belong to no collective faith. “Spiritual” is a word that gets tossed around and I sometimes find thrown in my direction. But I’m still quite prone to fumble that ball and I really would rather not get dragged into that game.
New Myths began as a playful diversion and became an excursion into the mirror of self awareness. Where and how were my values shaped? The Bible stories (myths!) of my childhood portrayed Jesus as a working-class god-of-the-people...a simple carpenter’s son who eschewed material comforts and mingled with fishermen and prostitutes. The Jesus of so much latter day religious art...wavy-haired, fair-skinned, and pure-white robed...seems horribly sterile, middle-class, and totally disconnected from the original character, who in reality probably looked more like an Indian Sadhu than a bourgeois European.
As one of world’s oldest religions, Hinduism is too rich and diverse for any one interpretation of its stories and teachings to prevail. But for the little I know, I find in Krishna a somewhat similar god-of-the-people. He is born to a simple dairy farming family, is a natkhat stealer-of-butter, a cowherd friend to his gai-wallah friends, a lover of music and a chaser of gopis. He is the playful thief who absconds with the clothes of bathing beauties. Certainly more playful than the ever-earnest Jesus, Krishna can devise a million tricks and steal ten thousand hearts. Yet he will hold up a mountain to save one humble village. Of course he is unable to keep from showing off a bit, balancing the mountain on one finger (with a mischievous grin).
Krishna manifests all of the moral astuteness of Jesus, but in his sheer good-natured humanness he becomes far more likable.
A friend who is a woman and a professor of art grabs me by the arm just now and warns, “Watch where you are going! This is dangerous stuff! Are you being intentionally provocative?” My other arm is grabbed by my gallerist, “Please do not refer to this character as ‘Krishna’. We don’t want to run into unnecessary confrontations!”
“Lord,” I moan. Dangerous stuff? I sit back and look again at the photographs that I have made. They are just a pleasant walk in the woods, a sylvan fantasy of happy myth. Provocative? Have we really become that touchy? “But the model’s name is Krishna!” I protest. “He is Krishna! What else can I call him?” It’s a weak argument, but I fall back on it.
I flip through a book I have, Form of Beauty: The Krishna Art of B.G.Sharma. Everyone in these images is so ornately dressed! An image titled Balaram displays the plowman with a small red implement thrown over his shoulder. The tool is so lean and elegant and frail that it looks as if it would snap at the first attempt to dig a furrow. I look back at my photos. No, this is not Krishna and his cohorts, at least not the cherub-faced baby Krishna of India’s art calendars!
Now even my rickshaw-wallah grabs my arm. He speaks in his broken English. “Krishna eating butter is small Krishna! Baby! Why you showing older Krishna eating butter? He must be baby, baby reaching up! Butter pots hanging up like this...” he demonstrates with a reach toward the sky. He has obviously seen a lot of calendar art.
“But if Krishna loved butter enough to steal it as a child, don’t you think he might indulge himself with a pot of butter as an adult?” It seems proper reasoning to me. Reason...the ever dangerous.
But I acquiesce. I tell Rajesh my hand-colourist not to paint the model-whose-name-is-Krishna blue. He shall remain a cold photo grey. This is not Krishna. This is “a Krishna-like character who is grey, not blue”. Some might imagine this greyness a divine blueness, but if they do that is their own perception.
The catalogue for the exhibition is being designed and I see my photographs arranged side by side in the dummy book the printer has sent to me from Hyderabad. The Krishna-like character who is grey, not blue, feasts upon butter, plays a simple flute and a soulful saxophone, prowls for girls on a vintage scootie, and multiplies himself in the enjoyment of life. In a mirror he enjoys his own looks...as if he might be vain enough to imagine he could hold up a mountain on one fingertip.
My neighbour’s children have the TV blaring. It is a cartoon show called The New Adventures of Hanuman. “Strange world,” I think. It seems that myth and its creation is still very much alive. Does myth teach us our values? Does it all boil down to Aesop’s fables? It was Voltaire who said “If god did not exist he would have to be invented.” Whatever the case, I am always happy for the chance to walk through the woods.
(Waswo X.Waswo makes his home in Udaipur, Rajastan, where he has been pursuing collaborative work with various local artists. He can be reached via email at: waswoxwaswo@yahoo.com)
