Women as Cultural Icons

Throughout the history of human civilisation and especially in India women have been cultural signifiers, the repositories of morales and ideals. The feminist discourse is woven into the fabric of the assumed notions of women and the passive role assigned to them in formulating/ defining their own position in articulating the cultural narrative. The dichotomy existing between the portrayals of women by men and women by women marks an interesting point to begin examining the position they occupy while representing the culture of a nation.

Be she the Devi, Yakshi, fertility goddess, Shalabhanjika, the mother, the politician, the model women have been emblemised, made into icons. In contemporary society women are still used as icons representing lifestyles and desirabilities, how else does one explain the overwhelming use of the female in advertisement selling everything from car batteries to mobile phones. Helmut Newton exploited the visual iconic power of women. Rather than portraying them as victims, Newton returned the authority to his women placing them in the dominant position.

In this paper I shall examine the representations of women by three artists who mark landmarks in the progression of modernism in India – Raja Ravi Varma, Amrita Sher Gil and M.F. Husain.

Raja Ravi Varma’s (1848-1906) artistic career coincides with the shift from the tradition of court painting of medieval India to the new systems to patronage in the colonial period. This shift articulated a new aesthetic based on the western model of desired beauty. Through his life he defined the parameters that constitute the realms of the ‘individual genius’ distinguished from the court and bazaar painters. Ravi Varma synthesised his traditional Hindu upbringing, his deep seated religious faith, his education in Sanskrit and Malayalam with what was viewed as the visual vocabulary of the modern world, synonymous with western academic realism. He combined the technique of oil painting, the medium of choice of the modern artist with the decorative attitudes of Tanjore glass painting and the drama of Marathi theatre to create a fusion between the east and west.

Though he was first recognised for his realistic portraits painted in oil, Ravi Varma simultaneously began making figure studies mostly of South Indian women. Although he used live models (or in their absence photographs) they were mythologised and exoticised to portray an archetype of feminine grace and ideal beauty. His woman was the confluence of two divergent female types he experienced. The first were the aristocratic ladies who inhabited his social milieu and the other were the images of women in the Victorian genre and French neo-classical paintings who had him enraptured. Out of these two conflicting influence Ravi Varma created a feminine type which was ‘life-like’, western, neo-classical and yet feasible Indian cultural symbols. As Guha Thakurta says, he had in his paintings to make a passage from western to Indian, from the ‘real’ to the ‘iconic’. Thus his women, though real, acquired aesthetic, religious, social, national and mythic allusions. Upper class Nair women became in the garb of literary romantic heroines – Shakuntala, Damayanti etc. Ravi Varmas’ women became the symbols of feminine beauty and grace, wives and daughters idealised as goddesses and apsaras.

Amrita Sher Gil, the first woman artist in modern India, falls very much within the celebrity framework. Carving a niche in a time obsessed with building a national vocabulary, Sher Gil became an icon herself, being the voice of the modern spirit. By consciously denying to participate in the feminine roles assigned by society, of wife, mother, home maker and pursuing a bohemian, romantic lifestyle she based herself on the male model creating the icon of female artist. She painted her women subjects as the “other” protecting them but also continuing with the tradition of positioning women as outside and aside, representations of ideas within a masculine society.

M.F. Husain has used already created feminine icons from within popular culture – Madhuri Dixit, Tabu and Urmila Mantodkar to symbolise the spirit of India. The mass idealisation of cinema stars where they begin being viewed as demigoddesses has Husain questioning the continued need in society for idealised super humans who portray the dreams and desires of the everyday man. A versatile artist who recognises the power of the visual medium, Husain exploits its many forms using the most powerful and sustained subject – the woman.