Subodh Gupta’s rural rhythms

Janamashtami the birth of Lord Krishna resonates with his love for cows. Miniatures in Indian art are replete with many examples of Lord Krishna the gopas and the cows that sit in rapt adoration always near their Lord.

Speaking of cows, one artist who has celebrated the many cultural references that come with the mention of the cow is installation artist and genius Subodh Gupta. Gupta’s earliest installation of the cow was titled The Way Home, in a show of the same name at Chemould Gallery Mumbai. In a conversation from London on the phone he says: “ My installation of the seated cow , with all the different vessels around was about culture, it was about an everyday lifestyle but it was also about state of mind.”

The objects he used in his work appear as emblems of the everyday idiom,  icons which with an elegant simplicity which reflects the complex social and economic, as well as the cultural, situation of present-day India.

Rituals and memories

Gupta gives an example: “ Rituals and memories are so important for me, I remember in my home town in Bihar my mother would tell me to get 3 things for the pooja, the mango leaf, the doodhiya grass and cow dung. The ritual and the smell of the cow dung cake everything created its own alchemy. Every morning I would go to the gaushaala to get milk.  But when I came to Delhi , milk came to my home on a bicycle. So when I created installations the memory and experience translated into the bicycle with pails, the scooter with pails and the motor cycle with milk vessels.”

Milk becomes the agent and the cow a living example of the dependence of man on the animal. Over the years Gupta has used a rich variety of means to express and produce large sculptures, paintings, installations, photography, video and performance.

In his solo show Everyday Divine (2016)  his installation Cow 2003 was another masterpiece. Cow, 2003, a bronze and aluminium sculpture of a life-sized bicycle and milk pails, was a representative of  the travels and travails of everyday village life.  Gupta says: ’The bicycle was like a mechanised cow in the city’. In the village  I would go to the cows to get it; in the city, the bicycle became the agent. While I was thinking about the milk I was also thinking about the vessel that transports it. ’

Cast it in bronze and aluminium,  transforming the material and giving it an added aura of a revered dictum in the rituals of everyday living, this work in different series has been a head turner anywhere in the world. The polished finish of the work is appropriate for an object of veneration, which both cows and art are in different cultural contexts.

Meanings and messages

When you look at the different works in the series you realise that the physical presence of the object, personifies the aesthetics and symbolic attributes of materials, as well as the relationship between time, space,  and the object so realised.

Gupta says he recalls the rituals done by his mother ,” They were in the moment of the sat narayan swamy prayer an abstract ritual filled with its own ethical codes. The square mandala had its own meaning and message. Suddenly you realise that ritual art, calendar art and memory all become important facets that shape our perspectives and perception.”

Gupta’s painting of a cow is another arresting work. Majestic and lifelike she stands in her own graceful poise. He calls it Gauri. “ I knew a lady who called this Gauri and she loved her very much. I used cow dung to paint too and named the work Gauri Cows must be loved and fed and looked after but there is nothing religious about the cows in my installations and paintings. For me the cow is about reality ,about life and about our habits, so you can see many references and note the economic and historical meanings attached to the animal.”

The vessel and poet Kabir

The milk vessel becomes the art object and element that stands as a symbol of time. It takes us into the corridors of time,  to the archetypal paatram or vessel that goes back three to four thousand years in Hindu mythology and appears as the vessel used by the gods for carrying nectar. For Gupta the vessel opens up various perspectives of inquiry and interpretation. In so doing, they set in motion a narrative that is simultaneously symbolic, and enigmatic.

The mention of the vessel recalls a historic show at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano (2016)  called In this vessel lies the philosopher’s stone. Immediately Gupta recites the dohas of poet Kabir and says:

Iss ghat antar baag bagiche

Iss hi mein sirjanhaara,

Iss ghat antar saat samundar

Iss hi mein nau lakh taara,

Iss ghat antar paaras moti

Iss hi mein parkhan haara,

Iss ghat antar anahad garje

Iss hi mein urat phoohaara

Kahat Kabīr suno bhaai saadho

Iss hi mein saain hamaara.

Translated it reads:

In this vessel lie groves and gardens

In it, too, lives the creator,

In this vessel lie the seven seas In it, too, the nine hundred thousand stars,

In this vessel lies the philosopher’s stone

In it, too, the appraiser,

In this vessel unstruck sound reverberates

In it, too, bursts forth the fountain

Says Kabīr, listen dear wise men

In this, itself, is the Supreme Being we seek.

Gupta elucidates: “ Even today this 15th-century poet Sant Kabirdas can be quoted . These lines are universal, we can relate to these rumination on the physical level, the metaphysical level, and also reflect on their interconnections. For me as an installation artist, the vessel is its own universe, it captures and carries the cosmic and the everyday. The vessel for me becomes the form that transforms something ordinary to something extraordinary. Then coming back to the milk vessels they are examples of the ordinary object that becomes an art object. And the human understanding and references all happen when the viewer gazes at the object. My vessels speak differently to different people. Each place I believe has its own energy and its own language in the meanings we attach to materials.”