The second my family and I emerged from the Mumbai airport at 1 a.m., we were enveloped by the subcontinent. A rush of people formed a group immediately outside the baggage claim. There were calls to relatives and aggressive offers to drive Westerners to their hotels. The sky looked lavender in the glow of the dim lamps that attempted to light the dirt-paved parking lot. Silhouettes of palm trees were oddly clear against the night sky. We were in India, and we knew it.
The exotic chaos and crowds that surrounded the airport were not unique. In every bit of India I saw—from Maharashtra (south) to Rajasthan (northwest)—the people, noises, smells, and colors were always bright and buzzing. There were oases amid the vivid confusion—expensive apartments 12 stories above Mumbai or poolside restaurants at hotels where most of the guests were American or Australian. But in these places I felt profoundly separate, as if I were temporarily torn from the cloth of the country, and the fabric of India would draw me back in sooner rather than later.
It is this pull of Indian society that makes Indian art radically different from Western art. Anything on the subcontinent that is protected from the general hustle and bustle—like an artwork in a quiet gallery—seems eerily and artificially silent, as if its other and more vibrant half is waiting and beckoning outside in the street.
In the West, we mostly experience art at museums where guards keep crowds of visitors a safe distance from masterpieces that are clearly delineated by gilded frames and hung on unrealistically clean white walls. In many ways, the profundity of an interaction with Western art is enhanced by how different it feels from our everyday, pedestrian lives.
The Mona Lisa is hung on its own wall behind six inches of bullet-proof glass in a palatial museum protected by a security force that has its very own I.M. Pei pyramid. We already know the Mona Lisa is famous, but the physical distance between the painting and the viewer is further confirmation both of the importance of the painting itself and of the viewer’s experience.
Indian museums have incredible collections of things you rarely see outside of Asia—bronze statues of Hindu gods, miniature Mughal paintings (15th- to 17th-century manuscript illustrations), and elaborate marble inlay work. But distance from the outside world seems to denigrate, rather than enhance, experiences with Indian art. When Indian pieces—most of which were once functional—are enclosed in glass display cases, you ache to see them returned to the fold of Indian society, to see just how brightly they shone when immersed in the beautiful melee that is the subcontinent.
A literal example of this is a navy blue robe embroidered with real gold thread that one of the Maharajas of Rajasthan wore for Diwali—the Indian New Year and Festival of Lights. The gold detailing reflected the lights that filled (and still fill) the city during the festival. As a result, the robe, woven with gleaming flecks on a dark blue background, looks as if it were made of the starry night sky. Of course, the return of antique and hugely valuable objects like the robe to their original context is impossible. There is, however, some Indian art that remains firmly in context.
Elephanta Island is in the middle of Mumbai Harbor. At the top of a hill in the center of the island is a series of caves that were used as Hindu temples from the ninth to 13th centuries. Their walls are covered in elaborate carvings of hundreds of gods, but the caves’ most striking attribute is not their age or detail, but the journey to them—their context.
After an hour-long boat ride, you walk more than a mile along the coast of the island and up the hill. The route is lined with vendors selling crafts, women in turquoise saris carrying baskets of food on their heads, and monkeys who steal bags of Doritos out of unsuspecting visitors’ hands. After navigating this busy path, you come to the caves. They are dark and cool and quiet. Moving from the commotion of the road to the calm of the caves brings the damaged carvings to life. You not only understand the extraordinary workmanship, but also what an extraordinary role they played in creating a holy place—an oasis in the chaotic Indian world that is not a $400-a-night hotel suite.
As I walked down the hill from the caves, I wondered if Western masterpieces would be illuminated like the Elephanta carvings if they were placed in their original context. Would Mona Lisa’s smile change if she were taken out from behind her bullet-proof glass and put back in the parlor of a French palace, where she began her life in the 16th century? We’ll probably never know. But, as questions of progressive curatorial practice continue to occupy museum officials, the fact that 1,000-year-old temples are, to Western eyes, a daring departure, is worth thinking about.