Ganesh Gopal Jogi

Gandhiji was no artist, in the “formal” sense of the word. But around the world these days, connoisseurs of art interested in collection and promotion of artworks, gallery owners, art critics and historians visit India for assimilating what the father of the nation said about the India he knew more than any other leader worth the name- that the spirit of India lives in its villages. Artists from these villages, especially uneducated ones, who follow no criteria or lessons laid down by the western canon and hence no style of contemporary art, modern or postmodern, have been dubbed “folk artists” by hegemonic masters who dominated the art world. Yet, since early 1990s, after the process of globalization has been set in motion, the fresh and enthralling naiveté of colours and figures, the unassuming and unschooled taste of folk art, its adherence to local and provincial cultural
traditions -- unadulterated by colonial and western overtones - have infused rich strains of blood through the veins of Indian art. Ganesh Gopal Jogi is one such artist for whom painting and music dovetail into each other. As a mendicant ballad singer traditionally wont to wander far and wide and sing for awakening the neighbourhood in the mornings and entertaining gatherings in the evenings and to earn a living, painting as an art form was a late discovery for this artist hailing from the village of Magri-vadu in the valleys of Mount Abu in Rajasthan.

Ganesh Gopal Jogi belongs to the marginalized landless balladeer “paua” caste of the state of Rajasthan. He was forced to leave his native village by a catastrophic drought for Ahmadabad, in the neighbouring state of Gujarat, in search of livelihood. His chance meeting there with Haku Shah, the renowned artist, cultural anthropologist and author, while singing in front of the latter’s residence, changed the whole complexion of his life, and since then, by the sheer dint of his artistry, he has become known worldwide for his art. A strange similarity with is suggested with J. M. Synge, the Irish playwright, who, it is said, was discovered by W. B. Yeats while the former was wandering in Paris. The illiterate Jogi, using a pen for the first time in his life, narrated nonchalantly and frankly the horrible plight of his drought stricken family with dots and images he could remember. He invented figures to depict what Fredric Jameson would call the “seeds of time” unfolding the past, narrating the present and visualizing the future. The antinomy of nature, especially the sun, its scorching heat causing the devastating drought and the consequent human waste and its terrible beauty manifested in various forms, are captured in a series of drawings with which Jogi was launched as a painter, discovered, encouraged and inspired by Haku Shah. These drawings catch the world very familiar to Jogi: the remote village where he was born and brought up, the closely clustered houses, the people he knew personally, the men and women engaged in work, the little greenery it has, the cattle and the dromedary, the boulder strewn valley, all protected by Lord Krishna. Along with these are the stylized jungle scenes depicting leopards and foxes. These very pleasant memories change for the worse after the drought when the trees lose their rich foliage, the herds of buffaloes, cows and the camels are reduced to shrunken, emaciated figures with the men and women who rear them bearing a helpless, anxious and worried look among their dilapidated and abandoned huts. No doubt, the telling contrast of the same village before and after the drought has had a traumatic emotional impact on Jogi.

Once again, transcriptions from the personal experience of the artist become themes of another series of Jogi’s work. The contrast that he draws between the rural and the urban world is drawn from his forced migration from the native village to the city of Ahmadabad. One of the more impressive in this series of his “urban” work shows “new” images- the whole of his family on a railway platform for the first time, with Jogi in his ubiquitous orange turban holding his two children and Teju carrying a bundle on her head while the eldest of the children is clinging on to her. The hint of the “mechanical” in the anonymous crowds that throng the city centers, who are, in a way, “arranged” with their “busyness”, is in stark contrast to the earlier distinctiveness of individual identity, innocence and rural idiocy which are taken over by the complexity of standardization, uniformity and anonymity. School bred art critics may not have much “to write home” about how educated, sophisticated, balanced and scientific the “composition” of these works is. They are plain, simple and uncomplicated, communicating easily to one and all. City life of India with its congested slums, heavy traffic, the loud markets, the concrete jungle of skyscrapers, the foreign tourists with their intentions to take home all such impressions in indelible frames are detailed in strokes from different perspectives. Differences matter, Jogi seems to suggest. The different presentations of the city-bred cow and the cow from the village say it all.

Jogi was not alone in his wanderings. His wife, Teju, accompanied him wherever he went singing devotional songs, love songs, wedding songs, narrating popular tales, all in their native style. They have been quite like a pair of inseparable love birds. More often than not his paintings depict the themes of his songs. This is not surprising or unusual, given that the community he was born into lived by rousing, pleasing and entertaining others with their native music. Painting which came to Jogi much later is only another side of his native art. “The Singing Group” series presents the family of Jogi engaged in their ancestral profession: Jogi with his drum, Teju playing on the sarangi and their children playing on drum and cymbal. The artist, with all humility, is seated in front of his master; as the head of the family huddled with other members; as a painter looking on with the family members singing; in all these he is seen with his inimitable orange turban adorning his head.

It seems that Jogi is very much concerned with Identity, his own identity as an individual and as an artist. In many of his works one can discern his own portrait projecting himself in various situations of life among others as a balladeer and as an artist attempting to capture transient moments of history and life in a canvas. Maybe, this is a conscious effort by the artist trying to balance himself on the spaces he uses in his canvases with decorative strokes and use them as symbols of the life he lives and the world he lives in, or, maybe, his own struggle to place himself in the world after the discovery of himself as a painter. Anyhow, there is an aura of confidence and affirmation surrounding them revealing the highly imaginative and life affirming power of Jogi the artist.

Lord Krishna is an inevitable presence in many songs rendered into Jogi’s painting. Krishna the eternal lover has been an enduring figure in the folk tradition for centuries and his exploits in the idyllic “Gokul” have charmed the rural India until today, and as a true representative of this fast vanishing world, Jogi the artist translates the legends associated with Krishna onto his canvases by means of vibrant dots. The grassy land with the leaping animals, birds, fruits and flowers, all under the cantilevered canopy of a huge tree that gives shelter and shade to all underneath, is specially impressive. And, Krishna playing on his flute overlooking all these could well be a significant symbol of Jogi’s world view.

Jogi appear also to have fond dreams of his own native village, a few years from now when it will be blazing in electric lights that highlight the new structures of progress and prosperity with plenty of water to bathe the arid landscape, and providing an atmosphere of peace and harmony for all living organisms. He articulates the dream symbolically by letting the trees expand in ornamental shapes. This idea of harmonious coexistence is expressed by the diversity of nature with the sun radiating the hope of a better life ahead. And, Jogi died in peace in front of a temple singing hymns to his dream!

These immensely attractive works are vividly realistic, without abstraction. Though made by an uneducated artist who is inspired by his experiences, these works still conjure up a conceptual landscape, peopled by his dreams. The fact that they are not much amenable to reproduction or commercialization, poses some disturbing questions in a consumerist world hegemonized by market forces.

Portfolio Name: Ganesh Gopal Jogi
Source: Lalit Kala Akademi