Miniatures: Appearances invisible to Sight

H.A.Anil Kumar

Looking at miniatures, today, is an act similar to the process of looking at old photographs. In both the cases, we do no more doubt their artistic validity, for, we grasp them from an altogether different premise, from an understanding that they belong to antiquity. Time, past and lost, frames both of them. We perceive them, both of them, as different kind of ‘windows’ to peep into certain aristocratically, economically and/or religiously privileged past. Both photography-ofthe- past and miniatures, first of all, were lavish and reserved to the privileged class and not the mass, in their actual avatar. Hence, the moment we agree to ‘watch’ both, we accept that they are now re-positioned into a premise, which they were initially not meant to and perhaps were also unwilling to be a part of—the democratic premise. Some argue that they ‘are’ the past, miniatures at first and then the photographs.

What we know about the visuality of the past is what is given to us through both of them, one after the other. Orhan Pamuk’s novel ‘My Name is Red’ provides a vivid description of the politics inherent in the world of miniature in the 15th century Istanbul, in the backdrop of crime, murder, aristocratic fear and the commitment of painterly workshops. Yet, the ‘imagery’ that the novel projects in our mind might be in the style of miniatures— it is like the illustrated figure on the cover page of a book vaguely indicating that the figure is that of the author. Miniatures were the primary source of authenticated appearance of the world before photography (in black and white) took over them! It is similar to imagining all Americans to be like those heroic characters in Hollywood films! Now, those artists who have agreed to adopt miniature-formats into contemporary avatars seem to authenticate this, time and again— that they are the only authentic and authoritative windows to the past. The artworks of the masters of Bengal school successfully occupied this dual position of ‘imagining’ the past as well as ‘authenticating’ it.