Rajasthan's mythical Phad paintings on display at art show

Brightly coloured minuscule characters from Rajasthani folk tales painted across long scrolls is one of the most striking aspects of traditional art of 'Phad' painting.
While the age-old tradition of the nomadic tribes called Bhopas carrying these scrolls with images of local deities and narrating their heroic tells through songs is all but forgotten, a new art show here seeks to revive the art form.
"Phad: Mythical Heritage of Bhilwara", underway at Bikaner House here, features 50 Phad paintings, including two rare originals created nearly six decades ago by illustrious Phad artist Padma Shri Shree Lal Joshi.
The rest have been painted by the scions of the Joshi family - Kalyan and Gopal Joshi - over the last two years.

"This tradition dates back to over seven hundred years ago when Bhopa along with his wife known as Bhopi in local dialect, would captivate the villagers with singing and dance performances in the villages of Bhilwara," Pragati Agarwal, curator of the show, said.
Traditionally, the Bhopa couple would enact the mythological stories painted on the scrolls while playing different instruments.

"The art is known not only for its vibrant colours, but also the fact that it is accompanied by an oral tradition of rendering the gatha (folklore).
"India is a land of amazing folk art but somehow it has taken a backseat. By collaborating with folk artists we are trying to make it much more relevant in modern times," says Agarwal.

Painted in horizontal scrolls with natural colours, the Phads exhibited in the show, portray scenes from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and several episodes from Krishna's raas leela among other mythological tales.
"There was a time when the secrets of Phad painting were confined to the Joshi family. However, when Shree Lal Joshi felt that the art form was slowly dwindling away, he felt the need to establish Joshi Kala Kunj in 1960, now known as 'Chitrashala'," says Agarwal.
Joshi is said to have taken upon himself the task of revitalising this art, both at national and international level.
His sons, Kalyan Joshi and Gopal Joshi have carried forward this legacy and have taken on them the mantle of making this art more relevant in today's times by introducing new themes and techniques.

Starting with a hand woven cloth being soaked overnight to painting the entire narratives with deities wearing traditional attire and headgear, creating a Phad is considered an act of devotion, according to Kalyan Joshi.
"We commence our work with a prayer. Hand woven cloth is soaked overnight so that the threads get thicker. It is then starched, burnished for a smooth and shiny surface and then the Phad painter draws the entire narrative spanning the life of the deity and his divine deeds on this canvas," Joshi said.
The bright colours used to fill in the sketches are "painstakingly extracted from natural sources- stones, flowers, and herbs".

In the paintings that are displayed at the show, every available inch of the canvas is crowded with figures with a flat construction of the pictorial space.
While the figures are harmoniously distributed all over the area, the scale of figure depends on the social status of the characters and the roles they play in the story.
The figures in the paintings do not face the audience; rather, they face each other. The characters have 'orange' for limbs or torso of figures, yellow for ornaments and general clothing, 'green' for trees and vegetation, 'brown' for architectural structures, 'red' for royal clothing and flags and 'blue' for water and curtains.

The show will come to an end on October 8.