FINE LINES: Madhukar Rambhau Vadu puts the final touches to another Warli masterpiece. Nandini RamnathÃ?It is a deceptively simple art, with its childlike figures, animals, birds and images of song and dance liberally dotting the canvas. It's an art form that's inextricably linked to its soil and surroundings. And if there's anything that the Warli art exhibition, currently on at the Y B Chavan Centre, reveals is that a new voice has emerged in tribal art. This voice dances around the tarpa (a traditional Warli flute instrument), sings the song of women working in the fields, runs alongside children to their municipal school, and revels in the sheer routine of life. Like Madhukar Rambhau Vadu, whose works are on display, says, "What we see daily, we capture those images."Warli motifs are elemental, basic and gleaned from the ambience of the painter. If the wheel's an extension of the foot, art for the Warli is an extension of his immediate surroundings. A Warli paints with red mud, rice paste, charcoal paste and water. The only synthetic element in this natural mosaic is a Fevicol bottle! These ingredients are mixed with the gum, and then with a finely sharpened bamboo stick, the artist begins etching tiny stick-like figures on the canvas, generally a rough canvas cloth.Surprisingly, this immensely vibrant art form remained within the tribe itself, which stays at the outskirts of Thane, and was confined to recording marriage ceremonies and rituals. It is only recently that the artists have begun to step out and market their art commercially. Like Kusum Samu Kharpade, who has been capturing her ambience since she was 12, and manages to juggle field work, a baby, and painting simultaenously.Brother Maxim, who works with the Warlis on developmental projects and has helped organise this exhibition, found it bewildering that they didn't take their art seriously enough. They had other worries on their minds: as an agricultural tribe, they were delivered to the dictates of the rains, they had to walk miles to reach the nearest clinic, and suffered from severe water and electricity problems. Maxim found their art as the perfect vehicle to consolidate their fragile sense of self and their identity as a tribe. "I saw the art as their language, as the perfect vehicle to reach out to others," he says.And a money spinner too. While their existence so far allowed them the enviable pleasure of art for its own sake, today the sale of their paintings is a viable source of income. If the crowds at the exhibition are any indication, Warli art is gaining popularity and jostling for space along with the Madhubanis and Tanjore paintings. Also, this community art is getting an individual touch, with customers asking for paintings by particular artists. Nowadays, the paintings sell from Rs 45 to Rs 4.500 for bigger pieces.The question is whether this intimate art form, almost like a page out of a Warli's diary, will start delivering to unavoidable market diktats. Like Madhukar regretfully says, "After our paintings have become commercial, we also have to use poster paints, as customers want the paintings to `last'." Brother Maxim feels this art will not sell out. "We are not just selling a painting, but the idea behind it," he says. Yet, the art has not developed a strong political voice. Not yet, that is. The tribe is under threat from unfriendly developmental policies and disappearing forest cover. Yet, the song of the Warli continues to be captured in a few brush strokes again and again, poster paint and lack of resources notwithstanding.The exhibiiton is on till July 28, 1997, at the Chavan Art Gallery, Y B Chavan Centre, Mantralaya
