1.

0 Lukisan Tamadun India

Seni India Kesenian India bermula dari Dinasti Maurya, tahun 132 s.m. Berasaskan kepada keagamaan dan pemujaan. Bidang Kesenian India Seni Arca Merupakan kesenian tertua di india dan berkait rapat dengan patung-patung keagamaan. Dibuat daripada batu marmar, kerana ia lebih tahan dari tanah liat. Zaman kegemilangan seni arca India pada zaman Guptas. Sekitar 40 tahun lalu, lukisan 'maniture' telah menjadi popular di India dan Barat iaitu dikalangan pengumpul lukisan dan artis. Ini berdasarkan mutu dan hasil kerja yang bagus dimana adunan warna yang menarik selain dari aspek kepelbagaian gaya dan tema yang unik. Sebahagian kecil pakar seni lukisan 'maniture' ini telah menjadi ikutan dan telah berjaya menghasilkan lakaran yang bermutu. Antara penggiat seni India yang terkenal sekitar awal 1900 iaitu Coomaraswamy yang menghasilkan seni monograf diantara tahun 1910 hingga 1912 yang diharapkan dapat memberi pendedahan tentang nilai keindahan seni. Pada awal 1950, lukisan maniture ini semakin tenggelam kerana tiada penggiat seni yang berminat untuk meneruskannya.

Lewat 1950-an, dua orang pakar seni iaitu Ramgopal Vijaiwargiya dari Jaipur dan P.R Kapoor dari Delhi berjaya menjumpai ribuan lakaran dan ada diantaranya

dihasilkan dengan kualiti yang amat mengkagumkan. Vijaiwargiya telah membeli hasil seni daripada Rajasthan di Kotah dan Jaipur. Manakala, Kapoor berjaya mengembalikan semula karya seni yang dikumpul kepada waris pelukis di Guler, Sangra dan Basohli. Hasil seni yang dimiliki oleh Vijaimargiya dan Kapoor juga merupakan antara karya yang dihasilkan oleh orang-orang Chamba di Himachal Pradesh. Ianya telah dipamerkankan pada 1976 oleh Stuart Cary Weich di Asia House Galeri di New York. Pameran ini telah mendapat sambutan yang amat menggalakkan. Lukisan atau lakaran dapat menggambarkan keperibadian pelukis dan boleh menterjemahkan apa yang terdapat didalam minda dan imaginasi pelukis. Lukisan India tidak menggambarkan emosi pelukis melalui lukisan wajah atau muka, tetapi ia amat menitik beratkan postur dan gesture subjek tersebut. 2.0 Penggunaan alat dan bahan Penggunaan pensel dan krayon tidak diketahui dikalangan pelukis di India. Kebayakkan mereka menggunakan pen mata pena untuk melukis namun dikalangan masyarakat lama, mereka lebih selesa menggunakan pen yang diperbuat daripada buluh. Seperti pelukis cina dan Jepun, pelukis India juga pakar dalam menggunakan berus. Berus-berus ini diperbuat daripada bulu ekor tupai. Pelukis India juga kerapkali mengaplikasikan penggunaan arang batu dalam hasil seni mereka. Ada juga yang menggunakan warna merah terangbagi memulakan lakaran idea. Lakaran ini dimulakan dengan lapisan warna yang nipis menggunakan arang batu sebagai asas, sebelum diikuti dengan lakaran penuh dengan menggunakan berus berdakwat hitam. Lakaran dihasilkan dengan menggunakan sehelai kertas dan adakalanya menggunakan 3 helai kertas yang dicantumkan bersama dan diperkemaskan dengan warna putih dan dikilatkan dengan agat/akik iaitu sejenis batu keras dengan tompok berwarna. Biasanya, pelukis ini akan menggunakan kertas lukisan pada dua-dua belah muka surat.

3.0 Motif dan subjek lukisan

The artist rarely drew directly from nature, for he was trained to work in a highly conceptual manner; the human figures, animals, birds, trees, motifs or any other elements of a composition were readily drawn from memory. The artist observed and retained in his memory, the salient features, characteristics and moods of both animate and inanimate subjects and he could, when the need arose, draw from this internalized accumulation. Fluctuations certainly occurred in the style and themes of drawings; these depended on the region and period in which the artist was working, as well as the atelier he received his training from. But irrespective of whether he served Hindu, Muslim or British patrons, he strove genuinely to maintain his ancestral legacy of sensitivity and acute observation. As in most countries, the artist did not usually belong to the upper classes. Like the work of masons and other artisans in India, the creations of painters are also, almost always, nameless.

Indian painters of all periods and schools first made a drawing and then filled in the colours in order to make a painting. However, the painters of the Mughal, Deccani, Rajasthani and the Punjab Hill (Pahari) schools, between the 16th and the 19th centuries, were particularly fond of drawing for its own sake. Portraits of rulers, chiefs and common folk, portrayals of elephants, horses, lions, other animals and birds, depictions of processions, baffle and court scenes, illustrations to mythological, romantic and literary narratives, compositions based on the Ragamala (series of musical modes), the Barahmasa (twelve months) and erotic themes were drawn and used for preparing either individual paintings or a series of paintings for patrons. They also prepared designs for decorative art objects. For maturing his own work, the artist constantly made a number of rapid sketches, being studies of people, animals and objects. He drew with almost devotional intent, for he was deeply in love with all manifestations of life and nature. Some drawings were made only for the sheer pleasure of the artist.

4.0 Lukisan Mughal Mughal artists, commissioned to paint specific events and portraits, needed to constantly invent new compositions and to set down immediate observations for future reference. While the Mughal pointers endeavored to develop the means to record accurately what they perceived around them, the painters in the Deccan, on the contrary, made conscious efforts at refining the expressive beauty of line and colour. Drawings by artists of the Mughal and Deccani schools, and works made under their influence by Bikaner and Jaipur artists, show astonishing accuracy of detail, meticulousness and technical finesse.

The attributes of pointers from the Rajasthani schools are their subtlety, boldness and economy. Through line, and only sometimes with colour, the artists express extraordinary nuances of feeling. Particularly, the Kotah and Bundi artists, from at least the late seventeenth century onwards, used drawings with greater abandon than most of their other Rajasthani colleagues. They have been found in sizeable numbers, are freer, more playful and preciser observations of the forms they drew. These Kotoh-Bundi artists used broad and decisive brush strokes.

Sometimes, instead of executing a planned sketch, they simply doodled; even their random scrawls on small pieces of paper show their delight in working the variants of form and movement in an abstracted idiom of their own. Even late into the nineteenth century, an element of exuberant creativity survives in the work of the Kotah-Bundi artists. From the seventeenth century onwards, these artists began to work in unusually large formats, for they were commissioned to execute wall paintings on palaces and shrines.

Kotah artists wondered freely, sketching all aspects of life, and made penetrating and dashing sketches. Sometimes they accompanied their patrons on their hunts and several such sketches, made on the spot, survive. Perhaps the great portrayals of hunting scenes, and lions and elephants locked in combat, where the animals are often more important than the patrons themselves, are a result of these excursions. From the modest Devgarh thikana of Mewar come comparatively fluid, yet extremely , sensitive drawings by two stylistically distinct painters, Bagata and Chokha who were active during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

5.0 Lukisan Pahari Pahari drawings, done between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, are comparatively calmer,

refined, finely drawn and lyrical. These drawings are among the most graceful and appealing in Indian painting. Work of the artist families of Guler and Chamba, chiefly from the eighteenth century, is remarkable and displays all the best qualifies of Pahari painting, While the style of these two schools is derived from the late Mughal paintings, the mood is not; they are gentle, spontaneous and more lyrical. The work from Guler, and its offshoot Kangra, leans towards tender idealization. There are Pahari

examples where the artists intention was to caricature an assembly of people. such as the saints and musicians he saw in his region. Such examples, though rare, are invariably based on shrewd but sympathetic observation. From the nineteenth century, we have Indian drawings of the 'Company School', painted for the British residents in India and other visiting Western patrons. Most of them are fully painted sketches rather than drawings in their own right. Also deserving mention, are the drawings on the palm leaf manuscripts of Orissa, which exist in fairly large numbers. These were drawn by incising lines with a pointed stylus, rubbing black pigment into the incisions, and sometimes painting in areas. Although their quality is superb, in intent they are as finished as any painting.

6.0 Lukisan Rajpur Rajput painting, a style of Indian painting, evolved and flourished during the 18th century in the royal courts of Rajputana, India, flowing from the style of Mughal painting, itself derived from the Persian miniature. Each Rajput kingdom evolved a distinct style, but with certain common features. Rajput paintings depict a number of themes, events of epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Krishnas life, beautiful landscapes, and humans. Miniatures in manuscripts or single sheets to be kept in albums were the preferred medium of Rajput painting, but many paintings were done on the walls of palaces, inner chambers of the forts, havelis, particularly, the havelis of Shekhawati, the forts and palaces built by Shekhawat Rajputs. The colours extracted from certain minerals, plant sources, conch shells, and were even derived by processing precious stones. Gold and silver were used. The preparation of desired colours was a lengthy process, sometimes taking weeks. Brushes used were very fine.