Colonial Calcutta’s Gods, politics and pop art inspire a Boston museum

Swadeshi nationalism, Bengali devotion and tobacco form an improbable triad. 

Yet I encounter all 3 connected a chilly Boston morning, on a poster that would almost certainly be deemed anti-national by today’s hypersensitive standards. 

The Bengalis of the aboriginal 20th Century certainly knew however to capture an audience. 

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this vivid poster of Kali is surrounded by carnage and delicately rendered text successful humor red. Along the sides, it praises the Goddess arsenic a protector, urging devotees to worship her representation for courage. Below, there is an advertisement for Kali cigarettes, proudly declared to beryllium ‘pure Swadeshi.’ (And, in the misplaced optimism emblematic of the period, also “trusted, reliable and harmless to smoke”.)

At the precise bottom, a printers note lists the maker: Calcutta Art Studio, 185 Bowbazar Street.

This is wherever curator Laura Weinstein comes in. “We enactment this unneurotic to marque radical deliberation astir wherever fashionable creation from astir the satellite comes from. And however it is connected to literature, street theatre and section creation forms,” she says, arsenic she walks america through bright historic prints, all lined up for the museum’s latest exhibition, Divine Color: Hindu prints from Modern Bengal.

It brings together about 40 of these uncommon prints, painstakingly collected from each implicit the world over astir 15 years. Once overlooked by superior creation collectors, museums present worth these prints. Despite being wide produced, they required sizeable skill. Also, alternatively than being passive art, they were created to beryllium accessible, to beryllium hung successful homes and puja rooms, shaping past and people’s lives.

Today, they are getting the depository show they deserve. And portion this amusement is the first of its benignant successful the US, focussing connected works by Bengali artists from 19th-Century Calcutta (now Kolkata), it is apt to spark involvement successful a full caller question of collectors.

Divine Colour includes paintings, sculpture, and textiles from the museum’s South Asian postulation arsenic good arsenic prime loans, totalling about 100 objects.

Laura, who is the Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art for the museum, says “We are considered to person 1 of the champion collections of Asian creation successful the world”. The depository started collecting Indian art in 1917, acknowledgment to Ananda Coomaraswamy, who was a Sri Lankan-British creation historian. “He was successful Sri Lanka successful the aboriginal 1900s, wherever helium collected bronzes. He came present with his collection, and worked with the depository for the past 3 decades of his life,” Laura adds.

Her involvement successful Indian creation was fuelled by growing up successful New Jersey, “where we person the largest Indian diaspora in America”. Inspired by her Indian classmates and friends, she spent a semester in Jaipur, past travelled to Varanasi.

Explaining the value of Divine Color, Laura gives america a people connected lithography, which was invented successful the late 18th Century and reached India on with the Europeans who utilized it for maps, lists and census data. “By the 1850s, Bengali artists started utilizing lithography presses to make books for their ain use. Then came the portraits of governmental figures. When the Kalighat artists learnt the skill, they realised there was a immense marketplace for pictures of Hindu gods. It was a faster and cheaper process than painting. They started creating pilgrimage souvenirs. It besides became a mode to pass governmental satire.”

Calcutta Art Studio, established in 1878, was the astir celebrated of these Indian printing presses and it created iconic, wide produced lithographs of Hindu deities. As she holds up the Kali poster, Laura explains however their “Krishna Kali” prints were influenced by European realism. Now sought aft collectors’ items, they were printed successful ink, and then hand-painted.

Although they are getting progressively pugnacious to find, Laura says, “A batch of these posters survive in Bangalore. A lot in Shekavati, Rajasthan, wherever they were utilized by Marvari families.” The museum’s postulation started successful 2011, sourced from creation dealers and American yoga studios (which often bought them for display). She adds, “Today we person 75 prints, but successful the past 15 years, Indian collectors person besides got funny successful print. So we probably will not adhd anymore.”

Intrigued by the Kali poster, I spell connected a hunt for Calcutta Art Studio online, and find retired that it inactive exists. Still on Bowbazar road. Still printing. Still revelling in its past glory. Only now, it boasts “packaging materials, offset instrumentality spare parts and proposal connected property layout from its “stupendously experienced team.”

It is awesome — and wholly successful quality — that the institution continues to future-proof itself successful Kolkata. It is conscionable arsenic fitting that, successful Boston, its past is being safeguarded and celebrated with a caller audience.

Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal is connected presumption until May 31, 2026, astatine the Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery astatine the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Entry is included with general admission.