Essay By Shilpi Chandra

Rinal Parikh: New Interpretations of Indian Folk Painting Traditions

Rinal Parikh takes the traditional folk art styles of India and makes them thrillingly contemporary with the flora, fauna, and stories that make up American life. Parikh mostly works between three styles of Indian folk painting: Madhubani, Kalamkari, and Warli. Her colorful, intricately painted works on paper combine the Madhubani and Kalamkari styles with her astute ability to minutely observe and capture in paint the beauty of her natural environment. The Warli style is replicated in the energetic black and white canvases which can be read as narratives of family life or reflections on nature. All of Parikh’s paintings display an engagement with contemporary life as well as past traditions.

Warli painting describes a monochromatic painting tradition that uses a rudimentary graphic vocabulary of circles, triangles, and squares. This distinctive style of painting has been continuously practiced for several centuries by the rural peoples of south western India and probably had its beginning in prehistoric cave art. Warli paintings usually have a clear-cut narrative that meanders across the surface of the painting but there is no sense of linear or aerial perspective which creates a very flat picture plane. It is mostly done by village women on the mud walls of rural houses to mark life events. In traditional Warli painting, celebratory scenes of music and dancing vie with everyday scenes of daily life and the abundant flora and fauna native to the region. In contrast to the secular nature of Warli painting, the Kalamkari and Madhubani painting styles developed to express the stories of Indian mythology. Kalamkari is traditionally done on cloth and hung on temple walls. The color palette may be restricted to just three or four colors with black used for all the outlines and a bright red or pink for the positive spaces enclosed by the lines. Madhubanis are boldly drawn, energetic paintings mainly done on walls by women. It has a long-standing role in marriage ceremonies and its decorative patterns and vibrant colors are rich in traditional iconography relating to a fruitful union. While aesthetically different, all three folk styles rely on highly stylized figures, distinctive colors, and exuberantly decorative patterns for their appeal.

Parikh uses all three styles adroitly but makes them her own through imagery that is grounded in her own particular American environment and in her skill at capturing the essence of her animal subjects or in the case of her Warli paintings, a particular moment in time. The three Madhubani and Kalamkari-inspired paintings in the exhibition, Singing Duet, Pink, and Koi are undoubtedly colorful in keeping with folk traditions but Parikh imparts to her surfaces a skill with color gradations and the use of fine lines that render her subjects much more realistic than their folk counterparts. While Parikh’s flowers and leaves may be stylized and uniformly repeated, her animal subjects are remarkably life-like. Similarly, in Parikh’s Warli paintings, such as Soaring and Summer Fun, she retains Warli’s characteristic design vocabulary of circles and triangles but uses it in unique ways to give a sense of joy and movement to her canvases. Her compositions have a joie de vivre that alludes to a real-life narrative that is distinctly personal. Parikh's Warli canvases such as those of Home, April Showers, and Sunrise are richly textured with sand and straw that hint at delineations of depth and space unlike anything seen in traditional folk painting. These artworks are the expressions of an artist who reinterprets the visual vocabulary of folk art with a fine-brushed expertise in line and color that adds layers of emotion and narrative to the compositions.

While the influence of the folk styles of India is clearly articulated by the artist, there is another art historical movement that grounds Parikh's work in a uniquely American sensibility. I find in Parikh's work more than a passing resemblance to not just the imagery but also the ethos of the Pattern & Decoration (P&D) movement in American Art of the 1970s and 1980s. P&D's call for a more pluralistic art historical canon, an anti-hierarchical system of art making where decorative and applied arts command the same respect as sculpture and painting, and an embrace of “feminine” art techniques all resonate with Parikh’s art practice. Formally, Parikh’s use of colorful decorative patterns has many similarities to the work of Joyce Kozloff and others from the 1970s. But beyond that, it is her transformation of a folk vocabulary, which is historically associated with applied arts and crafts, ornament and decoration, and mostly done by anonymous women, into a fine art. One that challenges traditional Western notions of high and low art. Parikh does it effortlessly as a celebration of nature and the life-affirming spirit in art.

Bibliography

Adamson, Glenn. “Pattern Recognition.” Art in America, September 2019, pp. 40-47.

Dubey-Pathak, Meenakshi. "Rock art of the Bhimbetka period in India."  Adoranten 2014, Tanums Hällristningsmuseum Underslös, 2014, pp. 5-22.

Nirala, Narendra Narayan Sinha. “Madhubani: A Contemporary History (1971-2011).” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 71, 2010, pp. 1243–50.

Sethi, Ritu. “Catalysing Craft: Women Who Shaped the Way.” India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3/4, 2012, pp. 168–85.

Swartz, Anne. “The Pattern and Decoration Zeitgeist,” Hyperallergic, June 13, 2018. Hyperallergic.com.

Zirnis, Peter. “One Hundred and More Stories in Madhubani, ” Ethnic Arts Foundation, March 26th, 2017. ethnicartsfoundation.com/author/pzirnis

About Shilpi Chandra

Shilpi Chandra is an art historian and curator with a focus on contemporary art of South Asia and its diaspora. She has an MA in Contemporary Art from SUNY-Purchase College, an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Swarthmore College. She regularly curates exhibitions and teaches in the New York area.