Bhagwan Swaminarayan: A Saga in Paintings

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Ever since I was drawn to painting as an art, its two functions captured me intellectually and emotionally. The intellectual side of any painting sorted out the communication aspects in a painting, while the emotional side, I thought, revealed itself through the expressive aspect. This view about a painting fitted very well in my Hindu ethos about culture, civilization and philosophy, that believes in the fact that saguna (the real) and nirguna (the abstract) are inseparable. My natural inclination towards Hindustani classical raga music reconfirmed my belief in this inseparability when I discerned the inseparability of raga bandish-taal and khyaal in Hindustani music.
Truly speaking, quality realism in painting can be enjoyed on three levels as in music. That is to say that a painting can be enjoyed and discerned as shastra (science), vidya (knowledge) and kala (art) as in music. This, in fact, should have been the first task conceived and carried out in the post-independence era by Lalit Kala Akadami when it was formed in 1957. But people who mattered then had nothing to do with nation building. Quite naturally therefore, the realism in painting came to be totally elected in preference to the distorted trends from post-war Europe and the West.
Here I may perhaps be questioned about the relevance of realism to nation building, but probably the person who may raise the question will be one of those who has not ever heard about or seen the epic painterly works by artists like Olphonsse Mucha, Laurence Alma-Tadema, Raja Ravi Verma, Norman Rockwell, S.M. Pandit and the like. All these great painters glorified their respective country's history and cultural heritage.
Ever since S.M. Pandit passed away in 1993, I was under the impression that there will be a long gap before an Indian painter with epic qualities would emerge. But I was wrong. Because Vasudeo Kamath, whom I knew so well, was quietly engaging himself in a huge project to paint epic works on the life of Bhagwan Shri Swaminarayan. Thus from 1995 till the beginning of the 21st century Vasudeo completed 49 paintings on the subject. The subject involved a great deal of study of Bhagwan Shri Swaminarayan's life history, long tours throughout the length and breadth of Bharat and innumerable pictorial studies from live models and photographs. Apart from this, the project must have tested Vasudeo Kamath's great visualizing powers and painterly virtuosity to organize every single work in this project; particularly where he has handled composition involving more than five human figures. I particularly would like to mention a horizontal painting by Vasudeo in this book. It is a work depicting a huge procession where His Holiness Shri Neelkanth is entering some town. Every single figure here, a man, woman or a child, is very realistically painted. And one unmistakably witnesses a dramatic scene unfolding itself. This can be achieved only by such an artist who has the rare ability to be one with the chosen subject. This ability necessarily throws light on Vasudeo Kamath's intuitive approach to realism in art.
I do not know if Vasudeo personally would agree with me, however, I want to say that the kind of modernism that entered our art education, deprived the emphasis on the very qualities Vasudeo has displayed in the work for this project. Here, I want to highlight three works representing his rare qualities. It is not to say that only these three works are good. No, no! That is not my intention. Because I have liked each and every work of his from the point of view of pictorial organization, detailing relevant to the subject, his command over the paint medium and really first class figurative work.
The first painting that struck me in this respect was of Bhagwan Shri Swaminarayan who is shown carrying a stone slab himself, and the other awestricken sadhu and his fellow stone carvers looking at Shri Swaminarayan at the site of a temple construction Here Vasudeo Kamath's rare sense of perspective and his ability to handle architectural detail stands out effectively.
The second painting that appealed to me, both intellectually and emotionally at once was that of gaushala under mayhem caused by stormy rains. Here we see Bhagwan Shri Swaminarayan shouldering a heavy girder of the roof to protect the cows. Here I feel all of Vasudeo Kamath's abilities were put to the most rigorous of tests that can be applied to a realistic painter. And I would like to congratulate him for the distinction he has acquired.