Art and feminine iconography: locating the aesthetic/profane body in the Bharat Mata paintings

Abstract

ABSTRACT Indian art engages with the cartographic representation of the motherland and utilizes feminine iconography as an integral tool for interpreting socio-cultural changes at micro/macro level of the nation. Bharat Mata's anthropomorphic image as a 'living mother' can be traced as the idealized, asexual, pure figure of the past which attempts in recognizing the secular-national terrain where she can claim her own 'geo-body'. With nudity emerging as a hyper-visible metonym for obscene sexuality in the popular imagination, it turns out to be a set of jumbled 'attitudes' and 'rationalizations' Positing the painting against this backdrop of aestheticism/obscenity, this paper attempts to foreground how the female body inscribed with the symbolic value of both ‘mater' (mother) and ‘materia' (matter) related to nation-building has engendered ‘naked' figure of a woman ‘clothed' in art to transgress from the aesthetic framework into parameters of obscenity thereby nullifying artistic subjectivity and creativity. The paper draws attention towards how certain feminine depictions representing the spiritual and motherly attributes are idolized and the depiction of the physical or sensual, if not actively censored continue to be regulated from the public eye by certain institutions operating as discreet forms of ‘censorship’ on female nudity.