Linking continents : The Tribune India

Join Whatsapp Channel

’Art & Soul

Linking continents

Dr Alice Boner’s legacy of work on India, in the form of paintings and sculptures or books that she wrote, continues to much elicit respect

Linking continents

Alice Boner in Zurich with young Ravi Shankar; Alice Boner drawing, in Ellora



B.N.Goswamy

Benares, 27.02.1936, house on the Ganges. The stars array and harmony constitutes itself gradually….This house is a strangely soothing and exciting matter. In it, I feel withdrawn into myself, into my house, my home. It is so familiar, so welcoming, so warm. It encloses me with love and opens the world for me. It spreads the blossoming earth out in front of me, the colourful life, and surrounds me with the simple peace of a monastery. I feel fulfilled, happy, settled, and supported, like on a gentle stream                                                                                                                      
— From the diary of Alice Boner

  
I met Alice Boner virtually for the first time, I think, in the same house that she describes so lovingly in this passage, at the Assi Ghat, on the bank of the Ganges. This house she had first identified and then acquired as long ago as 1936, and it remained home to her for more than half a century. She had struck root there: this is where she worked, which means wrote, sketched, painted, sculpted, met with some of the highest and the most gifted of the land. It had a narrow winding flight of steps, much as houses of old used to have, but indomitable spirit that she was, she climbed those every day that she was there. And then she would get up on the roof from where she could gaze calmly at “Mother Ganges”, as she used to call the great river.
What had taken me to her, this iconic ‘foreigner’, a native of Switzerland completely at home in India, was my wish to see her collection of Indian paintings that I had heard about. Those were early days: I was researching and knew very few private collectors. Courteous as always, she received me. Quickly, with a mixture of delight and patience, she began to discuss the works she took out to share with me, being especially interested in a large group of painted sketches of the Ragamala — a series based on and visualising classical ragas and raginis — which bore inscriptions in the local Pahari script, Takri, which I had access to. The inscriptions were, in general, very brief — they were in the nature of captions in fact — and were not hard for me to read. Before I began, however, she asked me to stop for she needed to get her notebook. Meticulously, then, she began to take notes, stopping every now and then to ask me to repeat or spell the words she did not get the first time. Curiosity, sheer intellectual curiosity, was what drove her, I could sense.
I do not think I saw Alice Boner again till much later when she had returned to her own land, Switzerland. Age had caught up with her and she needed tending of the kind she was used to, and needed being close to her sister, Georgette, another remarkable woman, greatly interested in the world of theatre, and filled with affection for India, who lived in Zurich, at times in Davos. Since I was a regular visitor to that land, I had occasion to see Alice — “Dr Boner” is how she was addressed by us — there from time to time. The body had gone frail, but the mind was as sharp, as keen, as ever, one could notice. And any mention of India brought an instant sparkle to her eyes.
Much has been written about Alice Boner and she is remembered here fondly. A Foundation named after her has been active for years; her collection of Indian paintings and drawings which was taken back to Switzerland with full sarkari approval is now housed in the Museum Rietberg, together with an enormous archive consisting of the photographs she took in India and the diaries she kept; an annual lecture in her memory is organised by the Jnana-Pravah in Varanasi; a number of her own works are in the Bharat Kala Bhawan in the BHU. An exhibition centred upon her life and work was held recently in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum in Mumbai, accompanied by a meticulously written volume. She is not forgotten.
 There are a great many who think of her on account of her contribution to art historical studies; others continue to speak of her because of her long and fruitful association with Uday Shankar, the dancer who brought ‘Hindu dance’ to the attention of Europe in his days, and was the elder brother of the great sitarist, Ravi Shankar; still others recall the ease with which she mixed with some of the most distinguished men and women who took interest in or inhabited the world of art of her days: musicians, actors, photographers, artists, ranging from Rabindranath Tagore and Ananda Coomaraswamy to Jakob Burckhardt, Stella Kramrisch, Alain Danielou, Raymond Burnier, Zohra Sehgal, and Shanta Rao. The notes she kept, the diaries she wrote, the sustained correspondence she carried on with colleague and co-artistes, reveal a world rich in ideas, brimming with aesthetic delight and intellectual adventure. It is a full life that this free spirit led and a legacy of work, whether in the form of paintings and sculptures or learned books, that continues to elicit respect. What strikes one each time that one goes over her life is the joy she took in discovery: whether of Indian dance, or of the spirit that underlay the art of India. Consider, for instance, her entry in a diary which contains a description of the elated moment of discovering the principles of composition that underlay Indian sacredsculpture. The year was 1941. She was in Ellora, as always observing and drawing, when that moment came.
“In order to approach the images (in those caves)”, she wrote, “I started to draw them …. I started analysing them in their geometrical scheme and to build up the diagrams in terms of lines of energy. From such an analysis, all of a sudden, a revealing light broke forth. …I was really touching the hidden meaning …My joy and exultation knew no bounds. … I saw everything in a new light. And where previously I had only seen the magnificent composition, the powerful movement… all these more or less aesthetic considerations gave way to a symbolic, underlying conception to which they were only humble accessories. I understood that they were perhaps only tangible, grosser means of explaining transcendental truth to the vulgar, but that they also contained the esoteric expression for aspects of the Supreme Being, which only the initiate could understood.”
Introducing us as they do to the work that led to her lasting contribution to Indian art history — her book called The Principles of Composition in Hindu Sculpture — these are the words of a seeker, a true discoverer of “India, my India”.

Top News

Arvind Kejriwal to be produced before Delhi court today as 6-day ED custody ends

Excise policy case: Delhi court extends ED custody of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal till April 1

In his submissions, Kejriwal said, ‘I am named by 4 witnesse...

Delhi High Court dismisses PIL to remove Arvind Kejriwal from CM post after arrest

Delhi High Court dismisses PIL to remove Arvind Kejriwal from CM post after arrest

The bench refuses to comment on merits of the issue, saying ...

‘Unwarranted, unacceptable’: India on US remarks on Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest

‘Unwarranted, unacceptable’: India on US remarks on Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest

MEA spokesperson says India is proud of its independent and ...

Bullying Congress culture, no wonder being rejected: PM Modi, backs senior lawyers who flagged attempts to undermine public trust in judiciary

Bullying Congress culture, no wonder being rejected: PM Modi

Backs senior lawyers who flagged attempts to undermine publi...

Gujarat court sentences former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years in jail in 1996 drug case

Gujarat court sentences former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt to 20 years in jail in 1996 drug case

Bhatt, who was sacked from the force in 2015, is already beh...


Cities

View All