Analysis of Storyscrolls on Contemporary subjects

Example 6

Example 5

Example 4

Example 3

Example 2

Example 1

Example of how a storyscroll is formed from start to end

Tsunami (a book by Tara Books)

Tsunami

Joydeb and Moyna Chitrakar

In the traditional manner of Patua art, this innovative scroll-book transforms the dramatic news into a moving and artfully rendered fable. Dirge-like in tone and translated from the original Bengali song, the Tsunami ballad evokes, as all ancient forms fo keening do, the persistence of life in death.

The extraordinary imagination of the Patua artists introduces an old fashioned empathy into modern reportage—and in the process, creates a moving take that transforms the ephemera of newsrooms into art with a universal resonance.

This is the first time a Patua scroll has been rendered into the form of a book. The scroll-book is silk-screen-printed by hand.

Bibliography

Date of information accessed : 18th Nov 2010

https://www.tarabooks.com/2009/09/08/tsunami/

https://www.tarabooks.com/books/books/handmade-books/tsunami/

Patachitra Analysis report

Reference 2

Bibliography

Author of the article: Jyotindra Jain

Title of the articles: The Art of Indian Picture Showmen: Tradition and Transformation

Demonstrations, Pat (West Bengal)

Book title: Akhyan – A Celebration of Masks, Puppets & Picture Showmen Tradition of India

Publishers - Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts along with Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi

Page no. 15 -27, 87

Inference:

This article brought many interesting phases of Bengal Patachitra forward. Broadly it can be categorized into 2 important areas

a) It is remarkable to see the response of these rural patuas scroll painters and storytellers to the contemporary changes happening from the second half of the 19^th century – on the one hand resisting the change often with sarcastic ridicule and on the other adopting many of its features in professional practice, even using it as a tool for more effective expression and a wider outreach.

b) It is fascinating to observe how a Patua’s art portraits contemporary stories taking interesting inspirations from the tradition scrolls

Patuas teach us a very important lesson “To survive and grow one need to be with the present time”

Reference 1

Bibliography

Author of the article: Kim Arora

Title of the article: BENGAL’S ARTISTIC BRUSH WITH MYTH & REALITY

TIMES CITY, Page no. 6

THE TIMES OF INDIA, NEW DELHI

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2010

(Cont).Interviewed Patachitra artist – Anwar At Dastkaar Fair, New Delhi

Illustration style

Since the Patuas are not trained artists from any art school they believe what one make is fine. They are always very self satisfied with their work. No Patua can point out any mistake in other’s work as there is nothing as right or wrong in terms of proportions, movements, action etc. Thus, there are no rules and no limitations!

Patuas believe that any drawing that they draw is worth only if it is able to tell the sto

Patuas are very passionate artists as they always want to put what they see around in their paintings. Thus, the paintings come out to be a reflection of one’s own environment blend with the Patua’s imagination and their thoughts.

All Patuas have the freedom to interpret the things as they want to

Interesting points to look for:

- Black outline and big eyes are the two most important significant characteristics of Bengal Patachitra.

- Use of symbols depends completely from Patua to Patua. There is no fixed list of symbols used in these paintings. It varies from what the particular story demands.

- There is no rule in anatomy for the Patuas. They do try to put their best efforts to make it look as close to the real but then there are no rules.

- There is not much experimentation with the angles. The characters are generally drawn in front or side view

- If any character needs to be shown dead, then it is drawn lying horizontally in front angle

- Patuas have the liberty to use their own imagination and exaggerate as they want to express the story effectively

- Borders are also an important aspect of Patachitra. Borders are not just the outer margin area around the scroll but it is also used to make division between various panels.

- There is very less play with hand movements. No actual gripping of objects will be found. Even in the folded fingers one can see five fingers in a row. There are no rules!

- The waist(kamar) of the female is generally made a bit wide(choda) as compared to how we generally draw a female body

- There is generally flat use of colors. Also there is no play of shadows in Patachitra except in Kalighat style

- Major differentiation can be made among various characters through their different skin tones, moustache and beard styles, clothes and body movements

- In order to make the tribal people look like living in jungle their faces are drawn having a strong resemblance with animal faces

- Generally characters are made without eyelashes, nails and with their mouth closed. Anything opposite then this is only drawn when the figure is shown in exaggerated proportions

- Mostly the female characters are draped in sari with no blouses and the designs of the sari is done with black lines

- The hand gestures, body movements and the important elements are generally rhythmic in nature

- Eyeball is the last thing which is done in the painting as it is believed that once the eyeball is done, the painting comes to life

(Cont.)Interviewed Patachitra artist – Anwar At Dastkaar Fair, New Delhi

Layout design

Once the song is ready, the Patuas start with the pencil drawing of the scroll painting

Mythological stories don’t have much experiment in layouts as all Patuas work on the same storyline and they don’t want to break their ancestral traditional style.

The size of the scroll varies from story to story.

Border space is the first thing to be marked followed by planning and distributing the story into different panels. The size of each panel depends upon the weight of the scene to be depicted. Important scenes are always depicted in bigger panels.

Patuas experiment a lot with layouts. They explore interesting ways to depict a story to get the desired response from the audience.

Layout design completely depends on the nature and the demand of the storyline. In order to classify them to understand better one can mainly divide them into 3 major styles of layouts-

a) Distribute the story into various boxes (panels)

In this the first box is the most attractive and largest in size to catch the viewer’s attention and the following boxes are planned as half, one-third or one forth to the first box depending on the requirement of the story

b) Pick the most important character from the story and place it large on the whole scroll

The scenes to be depicted are planned around this which makes the whole appearance of the scroll look very dynamic.

c) Combination of both the layout styles mentioned above

Patuas try to make the layout look as rhythmic as they can so that the pictures blend well with the flow of the song when sung in front of the audience.

(Cont.)Interviewed Patachitra artist – Anwar At Dastkaar Fair, New Delhi

Sur

Once the story is decided, special sur is prepared for it. This is an important identity of Bengal Patachitra.

Sur is prepared depending on the subject of story. There are different sur for different stories such as

-Happy

-Sad

- Blaming someone (Doshi karar/ Insaan ko kos rahe hai

Example for the story on Tsunami, the sur prepared had sorrow feeling of a sudden incident happening which destroyed life of many people.

Once the sur is prepared, words (bol) are added to it in Bengali language.

Patachitra and the Urban Market Scenario

Patuas believe that powerful stories will always be the strongest element which makes Patachitra unique but these days attractive visual presentation is becoming more and more important. This is the first step to catch the attention of the buyer. Thus Patuas have now become more conscious about the colour combinations, colour applications, sharp strong outlines and many more to attract the target audience.

Even the length of Patachitra scrolls plays an important role. Earlier the Patachitra scrolls were made about 15-20 feet long. But seeing today’s market they are reduced and brought down to maximum 10-12 feet. The length of scrolls is decreasing more and more offering a lot of variety to fit in the urban market buying structure.

(Cont.)Interviewed Patachitra artist – Anwar At Dastkaar Fair, New Delhi

Sur

Once the story is decided, special sur is prepared for it. This is an important identity of Bengal Patachitra.

Sur is prepared depending on the subject of story. There are different sur for different stories such as

-Happy

-Sad

- Blaming someone (Doshi karar/ Insaan ko kos rahe hai

Example for the story on Tsunami, the sur prepared had sorrow feeling of a sudden incident happening which destroyed life of many people.

Once the sur is prepared, words (bol) are added to it in Bengali language.

Patachitra and the Urban Market Scenario

Patuas believe that these days attractive visual presentation is becoming more and more important. This is the first step to catch the attention of the buyer. Thus Patuas have now become more conscious about the colour combinations, colour applications, sharp strong outlines and many more to attract the target audience.

Even the length of Patachitra scrolls plays an important role. Earlier the Patachitra scrolls were made about 15-20 feet long. But seeing today’s market they are reduced and brought down to maximum 10-12 feet. The length of scrolls is decreasing more and more offering a lot of variety to fit in the urban market buying structure.

Attended a public lecture by Prof. Jyotindra Jain on the subject – “Indian Picture Showmen : Tradition and Transformation” at IGNCA on 29-10-2010

Bengal Patua Paintings (Patachitra)

Interestingly from 19^th century, the folk and tribal started showing tremendous response to contemporary environment

The Patuas (chitrakars) started responding to new changes happening in the environment

It is really fascinating to see that the since the Patuas are part Muslim and part Hindu, the women of this community put sindoor and also wear white and red bangles. A lot of these Muslim Patuas were asked by the Hindu communities for converting into Hinduism. But because of many religious and political reasons many went back to the previous. The most important part is no one knows the Hindu Mythology better than these Muslims.

In the 19^th century, paintings were made on Ramayana, Durga Maa, Chandi Mangal and further if one goes we can see a new social element entering in the 19^th century itself. One of the painting shows husband pampering his wife and mother left in pain.

The scroll paintings also show the Cinema coming in Bengal in the 20^th century.

It shows young couples, kids, families and old people going to Cinema. The painting reflects people deviating from tradition and adapting contemporary.

These paintings shows Patuas bitterness about Cinema, the influence of cinema and their importance decreasing as storytellers

There are paintings which shows how poverty came to Bengal, expressions from the surroundings, bad influence of cinema and many more

Interestingly scrolls became the medium of expression of development of Bengal and all Patuas came with their own interpretations

It is very captivating to see how the Patuas adopt the contemporary scrolls in pattern of religious scrolls!

Now observe how they have used the Durga scroll pattern in the modern Indira Gandhi scroll ….

In the tradition religious scroll painting, the 1^st big panel(sections of the paintings) has Durga Maa’s painted which shows the scrolls starts with worshiping her power followed by other panels depicting the rest of the story which include other characters

In the contemporary Indira Gandhi scroll, the 1^st big panel has a big newspaper cutout of Indira Gandhi which shows her power as a leader of the country followed by other panels depicting the rest of the story which include other characters

The scroll also shows Rajiv Gandhi. Interestingly to show Rajiv Gandhi as a big power man they have used the symbols of Fan and clock in that particular panel. Note how the Patuas symbolize a big power guy of 1986 with a fan and a clock!

In the 9/11 incident scrolls Osama bin laden is interpreted as devil! The Patuas vivid imagination is very fascinating to see in all scroll paintings. The Hell and Heaven concepts from the religious stories are very well adopted in the contemporary stories.

The important aesthetic elements from the religious traditional scrolls are very well used in new context.

A very popular example of adaptation showing the changing life of Urban Calcutta is the Kalighat paintings

All these scroll paintings tells us that every image has a role, a power to express …

The tsunami scrolls is one such example. These scrolls give one a real overview of how tragically it affected the life of the natives and how the media people used this opportunity to increase their TRPs. The photographers and the press people are shown busy capturing for their coverage instead of helping people who have actually lost every bit of their living.

Scrolls on Santhal tribes

-The Chakshuban scrolls are one of important scrolls

Santhal tribe believes if someone dies or some mishap happen it means that their spirits are in trouble. The Patuas then make the painting of the dead person, be it an old man, women etc without the eyeball and he ask the related people if they donate something he will put eye balls on those painting and then the died person will be free to go to heaven. Then people donate and give food to the Patua to do so.

-Scrolls depicting their Myth of Creation

-There are scrolls in which Lord Shiva is shown with policemen wearing uniform and guns. The Patuas have compared the power of Lord Shiva with a Politician and how he carries security guards with himself.

The image of Policeman is always shown very powerful in their paintings because they are the people who decide the life of these tribal people

Interesting question asked by a listener to the speaker:

“ Do you think giving a contemporary touch to the paintings by the Patuas is actually killing the traditional Patachitra?”

Jyotindra Jain replied that in his opinion anything that remains constant and rigid becomes dead with time. It becomes mere objects to be kept in Museums.

He ends the session saying a very important point “ Do one want our traditions to go dead or grow with time ?”

How stories are formed?

The Religious and local folk stories are transferred orally from one generation to other. The Patuas don’t want to modify the story structures of religious subjects because these forms the traditional identity of Patachitra which they want to continue in the same manner how their ancestors used to do.

Other then religion, if any incident or issue is taken to build a story upon then follwing points are kept in due consideration

How much will be the prabhav(impact) of the story?

How powerful is it to catch attention?

Will it interest and grab the audience?

Inside the subject matter, what all are the positive and important points?

Can the subject appeal to national as well as International audience?

Try to keep a common point where they put Hindu, Muslim, other religions together which is generally known as the human unity(Milan ) point

Stories either end with a message or with a question

Patuas takes inspirations from newspapers, T.V, books, observations and interactions then interpret in their own ways

Interviewed Patachitra artist – Anwar at Dastkaar Fair, New Delhi

About Anwar

Anwar is a Patachitra artist from Naya village, Dist-Pashim Medinipur, West Bengal, India, Pin -721140. His family is being doing this art from generations and he is a proud artist to take the legacy forward.

Introduction about Patachitra

It is a traditional storytelling medium of West Bengal. As explained by him “Pata means Katha (Story) and when we tell Katha along with Chitra( pictures) it is known as Patachitra.

The pictures depicting the story are in the form of a scroll painting and as the storyteller narrates the story using songs, he/she keeps on unfolding the scroll in front of the audience. It was earlier a major source of entertainment for the village people when there were no T.V, newspaper, cinema etc.

Stories of Patachitra scroll paintings are generally based on

- Ramayana

- Mahabharata

- Bengal local stories ( Anchalik)

- Mangal Kavay (Mansa Mangal,Mansa Devi is the name of snake god)

- Durga Maa

- Issues and incidents happening around the world

- Islamic – Gazi patas are made in the Border areas between Bangladesh and West Bengal

Originally, the artists who paint these narrative scrolls are known as Patuas. It is usually said that ‘Patuas have no religion in particular’. They used to always travel from one place to another; stay there for a while, collected stories from their society, then made paintings for that particular society and moved to other places.

Patuas believes that to make people enjoy and understand the story more effectively it is very important to take inputs from their society. Resulting the audience relate to it instantly.

Patuas collect the story material by observing and interacting with the target audience for whom they are making the picture story for. They do audience study in terms of their likes, dislikes, behaviour, habits, culture etc

Earlier since Patuas used to travel from one place to another, many of them changed their religion and became Muslims as the place they went had majority of Muslim living population. In order to work among them, they thought that there was no better way-out. Patuas are very secular in terms of their views about religion.

Anwar - the Patachitra artist sets a great example infront of us. Being a Muslim he follows all kinds of Hindu as well as Muslim rituals and also respects others and paints on all subjects with no discrimination. Because of the conversion of religion many Patuas have two names. In curiosity I asked Anwar whether he also has another. He smiled and replied, “I do have, but I have never used it till now. My other name is Boran.”

Proposal

Name: Kanika Nair

What is the theme or topic area that you are hoping to investigate in your research project?

Traditional storytelling medium – Patachitra of West Bengal

Can you identify two or more questions that the research will help you go some way towards answering?

Will be mainly studying paintings based on stories about various important issues and incidents happening around the world

- How the stories are formed?

- How the layouts of these scroll paintings are planned and executed according to varied storylines?

- Study elements and principles of design in their paintings

- Study various elements of their illustration style with its relevant significance

- Understand the relationship between the Chitrakar, storyteller and the receiver

- How various elements of storytelling such as poetry, drama, song , chant, illustration, text, forms, come together for effective communication ?

What sort of approaches will you employ to collect data for your research enquiry?

• Observe, study and interview(semi – structured) Chitrakars, storytellers and patrons
• Ethnographic photography, sketches
• Existing literature, case studies and research on the subject