A piece of art gallery

My phone was running on fumes and my camera battery had given up the ghost. It had been a long day of shooting by the time we reached the museum and art gallery of the Junagadh fort in Bikaner. I’d put the phone on flight mode, turned the screen to its dimmest to save batteries, and decided to be very selective about the photos I took here. In this jewel box of an art gallery, I had a hard time keeping my phone from going dead. The entrance was enchanting enough, with the long sight lines of museums, but with walls and doors which were themselves pieces of art.

Founded in the 15th century, the city of Bikaner was placed strategically in an oasis on the part of the southern silk route across the Thar desert. The wealth of the city soon made it a center of arts. The British Regency of the late 19th century squandered much of the state’s wealth, but it recouped and remained wealthy even in 1961 when the then-Maharajah, Karni Singh, established this museum in the grounds of the fort to showcase the arts of Bikaner. Even everyday things like straps for camels, made of camel hair, as in the photo above, were nicely decorated.

I spent a lot of time admiring the exhibits. They were filled with the flora and fauna of the region, like the barred button-quail (Turnix suscitator) that you see painted at the bottom of one of the glass bowls on display. But what I spent time photographing was the museum itself: the stunning paintings on the wall. It seemed that every wall was covered with elaborate paintings, mostly floral.

Even tiny window alcoves merited their own decoration. The sky filled with clouds, thunderbolts corscrewing between them wasn’t a common sight here, and it still isn’t. But why not paint them on the little piece of ceiling above every window? It would be a relief from the view of the arid exterior with its blinding desert light.

The floral paintings on the walls incorporated little urns or flower vases with desert scenes painted on them: camels, dunes, forts. I found that a very clever piece of art. The art within the art reflected reality, reminding viewers that the art they saw was not reality. Centuries of artistic tradition, and reflection on art, are encapsulated within these little pieces. Most art histories that I’ve read of Bikaner and its neighbours are more lists than any engagement with its traditions. I wish there were more interesting articles on the art history of these desert kingdoms.