East Meets West

Essay 47. EAST MEETS WEST

The first line of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Ballad of East and West" goes like this: "Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet...". Well, that could be true, in other human endeavors perhaps - but not in art. An early example of the apparent blending of East and West in art was the surge in popularity of "Japonisme" among Western artists, mostly French, during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Japonisme was the term used to describe a style in art that was markedly influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The Post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh was one of those much influenced by Japonisme as shown by the linearity and graphic quality of his paintings, his adoption of Japanese composition devices like asymmetry, and his employment in the latter part of his short career of an intense full-color palette. 

The outward flow of influence was reversed in the succeeding years when Asian artists who've gone to the West returned with new insights into how a painting ought to look. Others who have not studied abroad, and only saw western paintings as reproductions, were similarly inspired by them. 

Nepal-based painter ROSHAN PRADHAN was one of those. Pradhan combines in his art the centuries-long western tradition of realistic modelling of the human form with snippets of the equally centuries-long traditional Nepalese Newar art. The Newars are the indigenous inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. A remarkable people, their artists and craftsmen were responsible for the creation of an art and architecture that (although considered as distinctly Nepalese) have exerted strong influence on the art of Tibet and China. In the field of painting, the Newars have their "praubha" to show, which is basically religious art that portrays stylized images of deities that populate the Buddhist and Hindu celestial spheres.

Pradhan borrowed motifs from those praubhas and integrated them with his realistically painted human forms. Pradhan's paintings are overtly surreal. I say that because his naked male subjects are depicted as coalescing, floating, and kowtowing on a tiled floor that seem to fly in the air, like a magic carpet.

One work that has as its focal figure a blue being that appears to be a Hindu deity has all the distinguishing elements of Surrealism - and perhaps of science fiction too. This painting shows a naked male figure ubiquitous in many of his works and a robot-like creature seemingly emanating from the centrally-placed blue deity. This work must be Pradhan's own version of the creation myth and human evolution, where the creator blue deity is presented as the originator of humans that will in time transform into androids.

Another of his paintings, the one showing aman kowtowing on the floor, with images appropriated from some praubha of a man sitting in a lotus position and a stylized tiger weighing down on the man's back, could be interpreted as tradition forcing the man not to dissociate himself completely from his Newar cultural roots.

Pradhan is a freelance artist.  He received  his Master's Degree in Fine Arts from Lalit Kala Campus. A practicing artist for 25 years now, Pradhan had began exhibiting in 1998. He had two solo exhibitions so far, first at the Nepal Art Council Gallery, and second, at the Sakano Ueno Bijutsukan Art Gallery in Hokkaido, Japan. He had also joined group art exhibits in India, Bangladesh, Thailand, China, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, and Italy. A recipient of several national and international awards, Pradhan now serves as Director of the Pagoda Institute of Fine Arts. He is the founder of Pagoda Group Nepalese Contemporary Artists Guild, and a member of the International Island Country Arts Group-Turkey.