What happens when two completely different visual and cultural worlds; the soft, dreamy, flower-laden world of the Indian miniature painting and the sensual, colourful, flickering world of the Mediterranean dreamscape meet and merge? The result, as seen through my eyes, can be seen in this article. Making collages, both in the paper and digital form, is a big hobby and passion of mine because it is playful and sooths the desires of my imagination. In the collage the impossible easily becomes possible right before your eyes. In this series of digital collages my intention is to create a bridge between two aesthetic worlds which I adore so much; the world of Indian miniature art, mainly the art of the Kangra paintings and the lush, dreamy Mediterranean world that Shelley wrote about and many late nineteenth and early twentieth century painters painted again and again.
Fig.1 Krishna Sees Radha Naked on the Beach at Sunset
Fig.2 Seagull Steals Gopi's Clothes
Fig.2a
Dreamy Pointilist Cypress
The collages presented here offer an answer that feels less like historical fusion and more like the discovery of a hidden continuity. The figures of lovers seen in these collages, drawn from the miniatures belonging mainly to Kangra, Mughal and Rajput traditions, and long associated with courtly devotion, are suddenly seen inhabiting the Mediterranean dreamscape, making love ‘under Ionian blue weather’, to quote the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, embracing beneath the dark boughs of the moody and dreamy Pointilist cypress, or lounging on rocky coastlines painted by Henri-Edmond Cross, Paul Signac and Theo van Rysselberghe. The result is neither pastiche nor nostalgia; it is a new romantic geography in which intimacy travels freely across times, cultures and aesthetic language.
Fig.3 Making Love Under the Sky of Gold
Fig.3a
Fig.4 Kama Sutra on a Pebble Shore
Fig.4a
Mediterranean Dreamscape
The Mediterranean world has a big place in my heart. I refer to it as the ‘Mediterranean Dreamscape’ because it is a place of dreams for me, my Arcadia, a place of eternal summers and eternal joy, a place where all wishes are fulfilled and where salty air and sea breeze cure all sadness. And I know this from first hand because I spend my summers at the seaside in my country Croatia. In some of the collages I have used my own photographs instead of paintings, as seen in Fig.4.
Fig.5 Swimming Away from the Sunset and the Jellyfish
Fig.5a
Fig.6 Kama Sutra in the Cypresses.
Fig.6a
Emotional Architecture
Indian miniature painting has always been concerned with the emotional architecture of love. Whether illustrating courtly romance or the sacred longing of Radha and Krishna, these works transform intimacy into a symbolic language: gestures are precise, glances carry narrative weight, and the natural world, trees, peacocks, moonlight, participates as witness. Desire in miniature painting is rarely chaotic; it is composed, contemplative and almost ceremonial. Love is not simply an event but a condition of existence, something that is unfolding slowly within gardens, pavilions and twilight landscapes.
Fig.7 Passion in a Groovy Landscape
Fig.7a
In the much longer Premium edition of the article you can learn more about the sensuality in the European Mediterranean painting, how these collages create a striking visual tension, how the Mediterranean setting introduces another layer of meaning, the purpose of the recurring symbolic witnesses (like peacocks, seagulls, a crab...etc), the most powerful conceptual contribution of these collages, and MUCH more...!!
Click HERE for the erotic Kangra watercolors of Krishna and Radha
What do you think about these erotic collages fusing the Mediterranean dreamscape and Indian Kangra paintings? Leave your reaction in the comment box below...!!
