Kipling wrote that "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" but the Asian Art Museum has done an excellent job of bridging that particular gap with their current exhibit, "Maharaja: The Splendor of India's Royal Courts. "
"Maharaja reveals the extraordinary culture of India's kings. It showcases different aspects of royal life through rich and varied objects from India and the West," said Jay Xu, Director of the Asian Art Museum. "With lavish artistry and exquisite craftsmanship, each object in the exhibition tells a story within a broader historical context of royal life and ideals, patronage, alliances, and court culture."
Curated by the museum’s Qamar Adamjee, “Maharaja” spreads over three large galleries on the main floor.
The show glitters with more dazzling jewelry than the crown jewels at the Tower of London. Take the Patiala necklace, designed (or rather re-set) for the Maharaja of Patiala between 1925 and 1928 by Cartier. The largest commission ever filled by the Parisian jewellers, it consists of five strands of huge diamonds, with the light yellow 234.61 caret De Beers diamond as its central pendant.
There isn't an object in the show - from an emerald ring as big as a brick to a turban ornament in the shape of a feather festooned with saphires and rubies to a game board that isn't embellished, inlaid with gems and gold, looped with saphires and diamonds or outlined with pearls. Even the court costumes are woven with gold thread and trimmed in gold and silver embroidery.
This is the India that was supposed to exist only in myth and fable but it was, for a time, all too real. Maharajas, meaning "great kings", lived by a code called rajadharma, meaning "the way in which a king should comport himself to be righteous". All citizens were expected to live by the code of dharma, or duty, but the maharaja was expected to set the tone.
Rare paintings in watercolors and gold give detailed representations of royal rule and present vivid portraits of individual rulers. An early 18th-century painting of Amar Singh II of Mewar portrays the ruler as an ideal king—haloed, bejeweled, and displaying the symbols of kingship.
The ruler was was king, godly (or even semi-divine if the kingdom was Hindu) statesman, the central figure in the endless court processions and celebrations of religion, whether Islam or Hindu. He was a patron of the arts and crafts, commissioning of every sort of fine object.
Don't let the dazzle distract you from the a history lesson that is an integral part of the exhibit. Maharaja follows two thematic arcs: the religious and secular duties of India's rulers, who hailed from separate and competing fiefdoms; and the worlds of the maharajas themselves as they evolved from autonomous leaders to "native princes" under British control after the Sepoy Mutiny in 1858. It's fascinating to see the stubbly face of a British officer and British blue uniforms pop up in a painting of an Indian crowd. As the procession of paintings show, the East India Company and later, the British Crown increasingly dominate the action.
That the power that the native rulers held became increasingly illusory, while the power of the British Crown increased, is an important part of the story told in this exhibition. Nevertheless, even at the height of the raj, the British directly controlled only three-fifths of India. Two-fifths of south Asia's vast landmass always remained under the control of its indigenous princely rulers, split up between nearly 600 states - and, until the advent of British rule - often at war with each other.
Until 1947 and independence, the maharajas’ immense wealth was undiminished. One of the excellent photographs shows Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner – a thoughtful politician and a brave soldier who became the first Indian general in the British army – performing the ancient tula daan ceremony in 1937. In this, the ruler distributed to the poor his own body-weight in gold: we see the maharaja (not a small man) sitting cross-legged on one side of a giant balance, the other side piled with ingots.
The final gallery shows the increasing rate of change by a display of objects that would make a puritan weep with desire. Victorian bric-à-brac is replaced with sleek Art Deco pieces, a writing desk made in France or a modernist dressing table ordered from Berlin, a overstuffed red plush armchair, photographs of the jazz-loving Maharaja and Maharani of Indore posing for Man Ray in 1930. The images of the stately, regal and dignified rulers of an earlier era are replaced by the tuxedo clad Maharaja of Indore, languid and louche, looking like an ad for a Western magazine.
In 1971, under Indira Gandhi, the maharajas became commoners and were made to pay large taxes on their lands. Politics, commerce and hotels are what the 100 or so surviving maharajas have turned to.
The razzle-dazzle show at the Asian should leave the viewer with some serious questions. What is the role of religion in maintaining social order, how can a ruler justify living in such extreme luxury while the majority of his or her subjects live in abject poverty? The viewer will also come away with a great appreciation for the complexities of Indian history, then, as now a country of great contrasts and a culture that stretches back thousands of years.
The exhibition is on view from October 21, 2011 through April 8, 2012, at the Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin Street, San Francisco.
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