Forests and Art for Environment friendly

About forest as art

1. FORESTS AND ART Name: Ms. Swastika Issar Affiliation : IARC

2. “Nature has given man his form, but through art man has given new forms to nature; art is, in other words, nature having passed through man.” - Albert Elsen

3. “Nature has long supplied art with subject matter, metaphors for states of being and irrefutable canons of proportion.” - Linda Weintraub

4. Forests are omniscient. Nothing is untouched by them. They have been a source of inspiration for creative exploration ever since man came into being.

5. Forests And Indian Art In its vitality, harmony and purity of form traditional art in India has been intrinsically linked to nature in general and forests in particular.

6. Folk and Tribal Art Folk and tribal art in India takes on different manifestations through varied medium such as pottery, painting, metalwork, paper-art, weaving and designing of objects such as jewellery and toys. Most of traditional folk paintings of India are executed on scrolls/ hand made papers. In case of scrolls, each painting frame is stitched or joined to form a long narrative. The colours used are largely made of vegetable dyes but in some instances contemporary colours are now used for their vibrancy. The application of paint is water based, mixed with natural gum.

7. Varied forms from different regions of India: Gond paintings Worli paintings Madhubani paintings Rajasthan folk miniatures and folios Saura paintings

8. Gond Art Gond paintings are extremely popular among most tribes in Madhya Pradesh. The Gonds , the largest Adivasi Community in India are of Dravidian origin and can be traced to the pre-Aryan era. The word Gond comes from  Kond , which means green mountains in the dravidian idiom. The Gond called themselves  Koi  or  Koiture , but others called them Gond since they lived in the green mountains.

9. The Koitures or Gonds are organically connected with nature. Their pantheon represents all the aspects of nature. Badadev , the greatest of all gods, is represented by the saja tree.  Thakur Dev  is associated with the pakri tree. Gond art, songs, dance forms, myths and legends, folk tales, customs and rituals reflect a close bond with nature and are all inter-related.

10. Warli Paintings, Maharashtra Warli  art is one of the ancient art forms that originated in Maharashtra. The  Warli s or  Varli s are an Indian indigenous peoples, who live mostly in Dahanu and Talasari  talukas of the northern Thane district, parts of Nashik and Dhule districts of Maharashtra, Valsad District of Gujarat, and the union territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

11. Their extremely rudimentary wall paintings use a very basic graphic vocabulary: a circle, a triangle and a square. The circle and triangle come from their observation of nature, the circle representing the sun and the moon, the triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees. The Warli culture portrays one of the best examples of man - environment interaction. Their indigenous practices are proof of how the tribals , though illiterate, had the mechanism to preserve the environment.

12. Madhubani Art Madhubani painting  or  Mithila painting  is a style of Indian painting, practiced in the Mithila region of Bihar state. Madhubani paintings mostly depict nature and Hindu religious motifs, and the themes generally revolve around Hindu deities. Natural objects like the sun, the moon, and religious plants like tulsi are also widely painted, along with scenes from the royal court and social events like weddings. Generally no space is left empty; the gaps are filled by paintings of flowers, animals, birds, and even geometric designs. 

13. Suara Paintings The Sauras are among the oldest tribes of India, going back to the times of the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics.  They decorate the walls of their homes with paintings on religious and ceremonial themes and adorn them with motifs of flowers, birds, trees and numerous geometrical shapes and designs. This art-form is mostly found in the Rayagada , Gajapati and Koraput districts of Orissa.

14.  Seated on horses or elephants, men are seen going on wars to protect the natural rhythm of life back home. At the base of the painting, we see men around a tree, signifying the close connection between man and nature.

15. Green is the color of the earth’s bounty and this Saura painting done only in various shades of green frames the Tree-of-Life viewed through a window bordered with a traditional tribal design.  Below the tree is another motif commonly used by the tribal artists.  Frolicking among the large palm-like leaves of the tree are playful monkeys.  At the ground level, snakes slither in the grass while a dog warms himself by a fire.  A row of monkeys hop around on the outskirts of this scene. 

16. Royal Paintings of Rajasthan In a recent exhibition at the British Museum titled ‘Garden and Cosmos’, a select collection of painting from the Royal courts of Jodhpur were displayed. Influence of the forest can be seen in many of the images. They feature many plants and animals from the Indian subcontinent, displaying a varied range of wildlife found in specific climatic zones of South Asia.

17. Star plants include the areca palm which produces betel-nut, lotus, coconut palm, holy basil, Himalayan blue poppy and mango.

18. Death of Vali ; Rama and Lakshmana wait out of the monsoon Jodhpur, c. 1775 © Mehrangarh Museum Trust From the Ramayana. This painting depicts prince Rama and his brother Lakshmana

19. Rama’s army crosses the ocean to Lanka Jodhpur, c. 1775 © Mehrangarh Museum Trust From the Ramayana. This painting depicts prince Rama, his brother Lakshmana the armies of bears and monkeys, and the demon Ravana in his fortress.

20.   Sage Markandeya’s Ashram and the Milky Ocean.   Attributed to the ' Durga Master'. Jodhpur, c. 1780–90. Copyright © Mehrangarh Museum Trust.

21. Krishna frolics with the gopis ( cowherder girls), surrounded by lush green forests Jodhpur, c. 1765 © Mehrangarh Museum Trust

22. Monkeys and Bears in the Kishkindha Forest, from the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas , circa 1775.

23. Buddhist Art The inherent connection between man and nature is amply manifested in this Buddhist wheel of life, where animals such as the boar, the snake and the eagle are used to symbolize various human traits.

24. Salabhanjika Salabhanjika  refers to the sculpture of a woman, displaying stylized feminine features, standing near a tree and grasping a branch. The name of these figures comes from the  Sanskrit   śālabañjika  meaning 'breaking a branch of a  sala tree'.

25. The salabhanjika concept stems from ancient symbolism linking a chaste maiden with the sala tree or the asoka tree through the ritual called  dohada , or the fertilisation of plants through contact with a young woman.

26. Ancient Literature Multiple references to forests are seen in our ancient literature, ranging from the ‘ vana vatika upwana ’ in Mahabharata to the forest of exile in Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas as well as in the Vedas and Puranic thought.

27. Kalpavriksha Kalpavriksha is a mythological, wish-fulfilling divine tree that is a common trope in Sanskrit literature from the earliest sources onwards. Along with the  kamadhenu , or 'wish-giving cow', the  kalpavriksha  originated during the  Samudra manthan  or "churning of the ocean of milk", and the King of the gods, Indra returned with it to his paradise. While there is no attested Sanskrit source conclusively identifying this mythological tree with any real, known tree  kalpavriksha  can figuratively refer to a source of bounty.

28. Panchatantra The  Panchatantra is an ancient Indian collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma.  This inter-woven series of colourful fables, many of which involve animals exhibiting animal stereotypes, was accompanied by pictorial representations in the form of paintings and illustrations.

29. The evil jackal Damanaka meets the innocent bull Sañjīvaka . Indian painting, 1610.

30. An illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon.

31. Nature is an artist. Forests are its greatest, most diverse piece of art. A work where everything is in balance, every detail has been taken care of…

32. Did you know that we lose 6 million hectares of the world’s rainforests every year? An area the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds…

33. United Nations has announced 2011 the  International Year of Forests . We have to rethink ways of sustainable forest management, locally and globally.

34. Together, let us pledge to protect this everlasting source of inspiration: the FOREST

35. References Arts of the Earth India http://artsoftheearthindia.com/exb.html Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts http://www.ignca.nic.in/tribal_art_intro_gonds_mp.htm Life Possitive Blog (Images Slide 10) http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/Rituals/Where_art_imitates_life82009.asp India Handicraft Store (Images Slides 11 & 12) http://www.indiahandicraftstore.com/paintings/gond-tribal-painting/ Online Collective Resource http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhubani_art http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salabhanjika http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Wheel_of_Life (Image Slide 34) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalpavriksha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchatantra (Images Slides 41 and 42)

36. Flickr Photo Sharing (Image Slide 15) http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandiyan/153440892/ IndianArt .In (Image Slide 16) http://www.indianart.in/category/warli-art Indian- Art.Net http://www.indian-art.net/indian-art/warli-art-paintings-of-india.html Madhubani.Com http://www.madhubani.com/mithila.asp (Image Slide 19) http://www.madhubani.com/display.asp?prodid=161&catcode=52&subcatcode=26&level=subcatcode (Images Slide 20) Connect.In.Com (Images Slide 21) http://connect.in.com/bihar-madhubani/images-madhubani-painting1-3-645482284759.html MadhubaniArts . (Image Slide 22) http://www.madhubaniarts.co.uk/ Tolerance blog (Image Slide 23) http://www.tolerance.ca/Article.aspx?ID=76507&L=en Mathu - Art Blogspot (Image and description Slide 25) http://mathu-art-adventure.blogspot.com/2008/09/saura-painting-orissa.html

37. The British Museum (Images Slides 29, 30 and 32) http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/2929_G&C_TeacherResource2.pdf Huntington Resources (Image Slide 36) http://huntington.wmc.ohio-state.edu/public/index.cfm?fuseaction=showThisDetail&ObjectID=2153 UbranYogaDen Blog (Image Slide 39) http://urbanyogaden.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/my-hearts-desire/ Hind Global Products (Image and description Slide 26) http://www.hindglobal.in/product/saura-tree-of-life---tribal-art-painting/2037.aspx Studio International (Image Slide 31) http://www.studio-international.co.uk/studio-images/Jodhpur/AN00515773_001_b.asp The Blind Swimmer Blog (Image Slide 33) http://theblindswimmer.com/page/11/