An exquisite exhibition titled Batik Sutra: Tagore, Travels and Textiles (November 11-25) that enlightened and delighted even the knowledgeable viewer has just ended at the Rabindranath Tagore Centre of the ICCR. Organized by Sutra, a not-for-profit society registered in Calcutta, it highlighted the poet’s travels to distant shores and, as the title makes clear, the great interest that he took in local crafts. The focus is entirely on the art of batik as practised in Java in Indonesia, which Rabindranath had visited with the artist and teacher, Surendranath Kar, and in Santiniketan, where the poet introduced the craft as part of the curriculum of Kala Bhavana. The storyline of the exhibition was derived from Supriya Roy’s book, Letters from Java: Rabindranath Tagore’s Tour of South East Asia, and it was curated and mounted by Bessie Cecil of Chennai, who also wrote the text of the informative catalogue.

The theme is the cross-fertilization of cultures and Tagore’s interactions with peoples of distant lands and how they inspired and enriched him. The exhibition traced the journey of batik from the Coromandel coast, from where painted textiles were shipped to the Malay Archipelago and were traded for spices long before the arrival of European trading companies. According to the catalogue, batik predates written records in Java but scholars believe that the resist process originated in India.

Tagore ‘discovered’ batik during his visit to Java, Bali, Indo-China and Malay in 1927 and he was so impressed by the beautiful textiles he received as gifts and the sight of women batiking for a good part of the day that he asked Surendranath Kar to learn the art, and thus batik became a part of the Santiniketan tradition.

The exhibition introduces us to Walter Spies, a Russian-born German primitive painter, who drew the Western eye to this esoteric art form. He acted as Tagore’s guide as well.

Those of us who associate batik with cracks, the vein-like patterns that cover a good part of a piece of textile, will realize that in Java this random effect is considered a technical flaw and therefore avoided. The pieces that were on exhibition are rarities and were gathered from well-known collections in India, such as Textiles & Art of the People of India, better known as Tapi, Bijoya Ray, Weavers Studio Resource Centre, and that of Amrita Mukherjee, who had organized this Sutra exhibition and the attendant seminars and workshops. The most important pieces belonged to the gallery of the German collector, Rudolf G. Smend, who is an international authority on this fine art, and was himself present at the show. What made the exhibition even more interesting was the display of some pretty marionettes dressed in batik costumes and the tools and source materials of natural dyes used for batik both in Java and Santiniketan. While in Santiniketan a paintbrush is used to apply melted wax, in Java a small copper tool, known as canting, is employed. It has a fine spout and accounts for the richness of Javanese batik that often has the dazzling and sumptuous effect of heavily embroidered jamawar shawls. Of the exhibits, the most striking examples dated back to the early 20th century. The designs were geometric in inspiration and strictly followed the dictates of tradition that allowed no freedom of expression. A ‘dodot’ made by sewing two lengths of batik with a large black rectangle dominating the centre had the solemn grandeur of a Gaitonde painting.

The designs incorporated many other motifs drawn from the world of flora and fauna, the wings of the Garuda, ‘patchwork’ symbolizing the Sufi holy man, the ‘Ciptoning’ or wise man derived from shadow puppetry, and even European fairy tales. Hindu and Muslim cultures coexist in Indonesia, but the depiction of human figures is a taboo in this predominantly Islamic country. According to an article in Smend’s wonderful book, Batik: 75 selected masterpieces, written by Maria Wronska-Friend, “The only referral to human beings occurs through the medium of the wayang figures — shadow theatre puppets.”

Batik designs were believed to be endowed with magical powers and they were rank- and occasion-specific, certain patterns being reserved for the royal court. Batik textiles may have represented ‘high’ culture in Indonesia but they were produced mostly for clothing and came as skirts, breast-cloths (combining both silk and cotton), sashes, baby carriers and headscarves that did not need tailoring.

Besides the written word and the explanatory labels, the photographs that accompanied the exhibits made the show even more fascinating.