Collaborative colours

Different strokes

Ten years ago, Rajasthani miniature artist Rakesh Vijayvargiya (aka R Vijay; born 1970/ Udaipur) met expatriate fine-art photographer Waswo X Waswo (born Richard Waswo, nicknamed Chacha) through a mutual friend and traditional photo hand-colourist, Rajesh Soni.

“Before meeting Chacha, I did all different kinds of miniature painting, including Mewar-style images, love scenes, different kinds of men and women, and black and white sketches on handmade paper,” recalls Rakesh in an interview with art historian Annapurna Garimella, whose book The Artful Life of R. Vijay (Serindia Contemporary/ 232 pages) was recently released in Bengaluru.

“After meeting Waswo saab, I was given an opportunity to do new things in these paintings; using fresh colours, new hybrids and building novel compositions. After meeting him, my thinking about art expanded in a way; I have opportunity and am able to exhibit the potential of my art in paintings. If I had not met him, perhaps I would have remained a painter and not progressed into becoming an artist.” 

Waswo (born 1953 / Wisconsin, USA) is delighted at the way the partnership has matured over the years. A resident of Udaipur since 2006, he is known for his wide travels that have resulted in publications such as India Poems: The Photographs and Men of Rajasthan; his photographic works have been exhibited in important galleries in several cities.

Personal stories

When he started collaborating on miniature paintings, Waswo made it clear that the ideas and concepts would be his and that Rakesh would do the painting. “I explained to him I wanted to tell a personal story that I could not tell through my own photography. I told him of some of the problems I faced as a foreigner in a foreign land, and that his miniatures would be the story of this.”

The first painting to formally come out of the collaboration was The Danger of Photography (2006), which featured, among others, a blue water body with frolicking crocodiles, the shining Lake Palace, a passing ship, tall trees and colourful sunset in the backdrop. Adding drama to this rather picturesque scene were two male protagonists: a foreigner in white suit and wide-brimmed hat, standing with his camera set on a tripod, and a starkly-naked Indian male facing him.

Waswo recalls the vast cultural divides that existed at the start of the collaboration. “I had experienced Udaipur as a sexual place. My partner Thomas and I had found a lot of sexual encounters there, and it was well-known that many of the street boys or lapkas played the gigolo with both male and female tourists. Even Udaipur’s landscape, with its low rounded mountains and flowing lakes, held sensuality. So, in The Danger of Photography, I wanted to depict myself photographing a naked Indian male in the natural landscape, but with the Lake Palace in the background. I was worried that Rakesh would not want to paint a nude male figure. I knew that he was a family man and lived far outside the tourist ghetto. But to my surprise, he didn’t seem to have much of a problem with it.”

From that painting on, Waswo saw Rakesh as a collaborator. The miniaturist not only grasped what Waswo was trying to express, but accepted it quite quickly. “I think he is exceptionally empathetic and sensitive,” says Waswo. “He has that rare ability to see through another’s eyes.”

Despite mutual regard and understanding, there were occasions when clashes and even horrible fights became part of the collaborative process. “The initial troubles centered mostly around two things. The first was perspective. Coming from the Western tradition, perspective comes to me naturally. For Rakesh, it seems a completely alien idea. The second thing was his idea of the male form. I would say, ‘I want a sexy young boy in this corner’, and he would give me a very feminine-looking prepubescent, taking the word boy literally. But it’s reached a point that we pretty much understand each other now. In ways, I’m happy he’s never over-sexualised the men, as that would be destructive to the feel of the pieces.”

Waswo likens the collaboration to the work of being in a rock band. “Meaning, we do sometimes fight. And egos will clash during the creation process. But in the end, music is made.”

Over the years, the partnership has produced a flurry of richly-coloured, meticulously-detailed and intriguingly-structured images in the traditional style, but with a contemporary twist. Initially the design was broadly vertical, which later expanded to a panoramic format. The first of their major exhibitions happened at Kashi Art Gallery and Palette Art Gallery in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

The book

Garimella’s book offers a detailed account of the association between Waswo and Rakesh; it also tries to locate their work in the larger context of Rajasthani miniature painting. Her interviews with them reveal key aspects of the collaboration, and bring to light both the personal and creative sides of their stories. The heart of the book, however, lies in the large repertoire of their paintings that reveal the striking and equally quixotic nature of the collaboration.

In several images one perceives a sense of disquiet, despondency and overwhelming irony in what are essentially Waswo’s confessional tales. Some paintings also depict explicit scenes of homoerotic lovemaking. Particularly interesting is the series of homages developed by the artists, in which works of Ravi Varma, Amrita Sher-Gil, Manjit Bawa and others are ingeniously re-envisioned by the duo.

“This book seeks to initiate a more thoughtful engagement with artists like R Vijay and to collaborations such as his with Waswo,” writes Garimella, while seeking to expand the current scholarship and theorising of the revival of miniature painting as a contemporary art practice.