Art: Ponies, Peacocks & Pilgrims

One of the least-known bodies of primitive art is that produced in the villages and aboriginal settlements of India. It has remained unknown primarily because educated Indians long placed a low value on it. Recently, a resurgence of pride in the nation's heritage has led to a rediscovery of Indian folk art. How rich a tradition it has is shown in an exhibit of 470 masks, statues, weavings, paintings and puppets now touring the U.S. (see color page). Organized by the U.S.'s Stella Kramrisch for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the show is currently at San Francisco's De Young Memorial Museum.

What makes Indian folk art engaging, despite its perishable wood and terra cotta, are the extravagant whimsies with which its untutored creators embellish formal Hindu legend and gods. The destroyer Shiva, as portrayed by the aboriginal Maria tribe of Madhya Pradesh in a ritual mask, takes on the unkempt, disheveled appearance of a wandering mendicant.

Small equestrian figures are prevalent in village shrines, in part because of the horse's aristocratic connotations and in part for his mystical significance: his fleet hoofs are believed to bear riders safely to the spirit world. The cat is held in reverence by the Bengalis of Calcutta because it is the bahana, or mount, of Shashti, the Bengalese goddess of fecundity. Brightly colored Kalighat paintings of cats were made by street painters for sale to pilgrims to Calcutta's Temple of Kali. One of the most impressive objects is a brass figurine from Orissa; it shows the hero Krishna trying to deceive one of his admirers by assuming the head of a peacock, the body of a tiger, the hump of a camel, one leg of an elephant, one leg of a horse, and one hand of a girl holding a flower. The devotee, says the legend, saw through the disguise.