Virtually Masterful: Raja Ravi Varma on Google Arts and Culture

A piece for the latest issue of India Today, on a new Raja Ravi Varma exhibition -- online.

In Reena Mohan’s 1992 documentary about Kamlabai Gokhale, there’s a moment when the remarkably lively nonagenarian actor remembers Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema, whose 1913 mythological Mohini Bhasmasur made Gokhale one of the first Indian women to appear on screen. Her gaze settles contentedly on an image she has clearly held in her mind for nearly 80 years. “Black sherwani, pagri on his head, spectacles,” she says. “He was like someone in a Ravi Varma painting. It made you happy to see him.”

Raja Ravi Varma may well be the only Indian artist to have achieved such instant recall, and retained it for a century and a half. Born in 1848 into a family close to the Travancore royals, he was already a household name in Gokhale’s turn-of-the-century childhood. Starting as a portraitist to princes, Varma’s printing press made his work wildly popular in reproduction. His chromolithographs of Hindu deities and his scenes from the epics and myths became calendar art and advertisements. Millions were happy to see them.

On April 29 this year, Ravi Varma’s 172nd birth anniversary, Google Arts and Culture unveiled a massive digital retrospective of his work, with over 700 images and videos. Although many of these were already online, the Google exhibit offers higher resolution images and new kinds of access by grouping works from across museums into thematic ‘stories’, creating a display that caters to a wide range of visitors.

You can choose, for instance, to go on a photographic tour of the Kilimanoor Palace in Kerala, Varma’s home. You can attend to his realistic detailing of jewellery, or look at plants in his images. You can focus on a particular painting, like ‘The Bombay Songstress’—displayed here with a brief musical clip from the classical singer Anjanibai Malpekar, who may have been its subject. You can go beyond Varma to works stylistically inspired by him, in portraiture or in popular advertising, where his style was copied as standard form. You can watch a video about designer khadi saris that duplicate Varma paintings. You can run a search for all the green images, or all the yellow ones. The ‘Art Transfer’ feature turns your photos into artworks, while ‘Art Projector’ can bring a work into your living room. “We aim to develop technology that lowers some of the barriers to accessing culture, and is playful and engaging,” Simon Rein, program manager at Google Arts and Culture, told me on email. “People who know and love Ravi Varma’s work already will have plenty to find when reading the stories and zooming into his masterpieces. But for everyone else, browsing by colour, to take your example, might just be the starting point to discover the beauty of his art for the first time.”

Google names nine partner organisations for this online exhibition, of whom the most important appear to be the Ganesh Shivaswamy Foundation, with eight stories, and the Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, with 20. Each individual image is usefully annotated, but curatorial text across stories is marred by repetition, contradiction, non-standardised spelling and even typos. 

For instance, a panel in one story reads: “Repeated demand for copies of his paintings led Sir Madhava Rao, the diwan of Travancore, to suggest that Varma have some of his paintings reproduced as prints. Although paintings were earlier sent to Europe, mainly Germany, to be lithographed... Ravi Varma chose to set up his own printing press in Maharashtra in 1894 instead.” Another story narrates the same thing differently, and with alternate spellings: “It was the repeated demand for copies of his paintings which led to the suggestion by Dewan Sir Tanjavur Madhava Row that Ravi Varma send some of his paintings to Europe to have them oleographed.”

Elsewhere, the facts get confusing: “The Ravi Varma Fine Art Lithographic Press was set up in first in Ghatkopar and eventually in Lonavala”, we read in ‘The Gods Came Home’. But another story on the press states equally categorically that “The Ravi Varma Fine Art Lithographic Press was set up in Girgaum, Bombay, and commenced its operations.” These may seem like quibbles, but they represent a wider tendency, especially rife online. Google Arts and Culture wants its India-specific exhibitions to match those in the world’s great brick-and-mortar museums, more editorial oversight is needed.

 

SIDEBAR:

Three more Google Arts and Culture Themes Relating to India

Women in India: Unheard Stories is a marvellously thoughtful response to the skewed coverage of women in the media. Online exhibits range from "Inspirational Firsts' like Dr. Rakhmabai, the first practicing woman doctor in India to present-day women scientists, from depictions of the female body in Indian temple art to stories about women artists

Crafted in India, created in collaboration with the Dastkari Haat Samiti and others, is a rare virtual engagement with the stunning variety of artisanal skills that still survive in India. With videos that take you from a wood-carving town in UP to an Assamese organisation making paper from rhino and elephant dung, this is the best kind of travel, and not just in Covid-19 times.

The brilliant Indian Railways exhibit caters as much to history and engineering nerds as to wannabe virtual travellers, introducing you to station-masters and historic architecture as well allowing you to travel famous Indian railway routes in 360 degree glory.

Published in India Today, Sat 27 June 2020. 

The page as it appears in print below:

Gulabo Sitabo mines what remains of old Lucknow for visual a

Read more at:
https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/trisha-gupta/minding-the-gap/articleshow/76668202.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Gulabo Sitabo mines what remains of old Lucknow for visual a

Read more at:
https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/trisha-gupta/minding-the-gap/articleshow/76668202.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst