Saving Angelo da Fonseca

It validates his attempts to forge a hybrid art that was neither completely Western nor Indian.

This book is a magnificently wrought volume dedicated to the Goan artist Angelo da Fonseca that seeks to restore his work and ideas into the pantheon of modern Indian art. It begins with a foreword by Vivek Menezes, art critic and an ardent curator of Goan cultural heritage that may be in danger of slipping into the shifting sands of historical inevitability. Menezes also figures prominently in the “Notes” at the end along with a meticulously recorded attribution to all those scholars and observers who might add to the resurrection of Fonseca’s image.

Fonseca

By Delio Mendonca

Architecture Autonomous

Pages: 250

Price: Rs.2,700

The text is by Delio Mendonca, a Jesuit priest with impeccable credentials as a scholar and teacher. As we are given to understand in the brief summary at the back, Mendonca was born in Beira, Mozambique, and did his schooling there in Portuguese. In the late 1970s, he moved to Goa, described as his ancestral home, and began his vocation as a priest. Having obtained his academic spurs in the fields of history, Portuguese literature and culture in both Goa and Pune, he served as the Director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research in Goa (XCHR). He now teaches at the Pontifical Gregorian University at Rome.

It is, however, Mendonca’s tenure as Director of XCHR that sets him apart as far as Fonseca is concerned. For, as recorded in the chronology of Fonseca’s profile at the end, “The Xavier Centre of Historical Research (XCHR), a Jesuit institution located in Goa, was given custody of Fonseca’s legacy by the artist’s widow, Mrs. Ivy da Fonseca (d. 2015) on condition that the XCHR set up a permanent gallery for Fonseca, to study and promote his works” (page 230).

Epiphany, watercolour, 1962.

We might add that Vivek Menezes tells us in the foreword that Ivy da Fonseca was his first teacher when he began his schooling in Pune. Many years later, a fortuitous decision made by her led her to Menezes, who had by then settled in Goa. As described by Menezes, long after her husband had passed away, Ivy da Fonseca gathered her late husband’s collection of art from Pune where they had been housed at different locations and took them by road to Goa in 2006. This book is, therefore, to be regarded as the first step in the goal towards setting up a permanent gallery of Fonseca’s work in Goa.

A different Madonna

The cover portrait of the Fonseca painting, called “Madonna-1942”, gained a certain prominence when it was used to foreground “Aparanta: A conference of contemporary art in Goa” that took place in 2007. It shows a beautiful woman with a glowing bronzed complexion looking down with a demure expression under her heavily lidded eyes that are a feature of almost all Fonseca character types, a beautifully molded mouth and dimpled chin. She’s sheathed in a luminous white-ochre tinged veil, maybe intended as an Eastern version of the halo that would have signalled her status as a “Madonna” in the Western canon. Her black hair is modestly tucked into a bun at the neck and you can just make out the jasmine that she is wearing with a thin gold chain around her neck. In that, she seems more like a dancer than a typical “Madonna”.

Nativity, watercolour, 1954.

Looking at the cover, I was suddenly reminded of a name that floated out of the air: Reita Faria, the first Asian woman to win at a Miss World pageant in 1966. A quick trawl through the Net will show you that Reita Faria is still gorgeous as a grand-mother living in Dublin, Ireland, with her husband Dr. David Powell and their grandchildren. Those who might recall Reita Faria will also tell you that she came from a family of Goans living in Bombay as it was known then. Their ancestral village was Tivim in Goa. She was studying to be a doctor. She continued in her profession after she settled down in the United Kingdom after winning the crown, despite being offered a chance to become a film star. The story that has also been repeated was that she had to borrow her costumes for the pageant. In her case, a saree, heels to wear despite her height, and a swimming costume that had a brilliant motif of a sun with a burst of sun-rays at the side. She also had a dazzling smile and her hair piled into an elaborate mass of curled topiary.

Let us admit that there was no connection between Faria and Fonseca, who was born after the Fonseca painting of the “Madonna” in 1942. Except that they both studied at the Grant Medical College, Bombay, at different times. Fonseca decided that he was better suited to be an artist and joined the J.J. School of Arts in the city. He was to leave this also within a year, the curriculum apparently being too Eurocentric.

Reita Faria’s appearance as a beauty queen of that era is alien to the style of our current day aspirants to the title. It signals how conventions do change. Today’s beauty queens have their hair streaming across their shoulders; their costumes even in traditional wear are meant to dazzle the electronic gaze. It’s similar to the way that art is being framed today. You can take an online walk through museums anywhere in the world, not to mention actually crawl into a digitally enhanced projection of “Starry, Starry Nights” by Vincent Van Gogh. Saving Fonseca from the past is fraught with such issues.

Against the establishment

It may be one reason why Vivek Menezes plunges into battle all guns firing at the various art establishments, particularly the critics. He generally labels them as incompetent, or worse. The Indian art movements attended by political diktats in the post-Independence era are not unlike the postage stamps of the time that depicted hydro-electric dams, dancers and the dear departed with suitable political clout. They were meant to further a nationalist agenda that left Fonseca behind. We are told repeatedly that he was embalmed by his own genius as a modernist focussing on Christian iconography who had become invisible to an indifferent public.

It was not that Fonseca was indifferent. As he is quoted in Chapter 4 of the book entitled “Land, Life and Times”, he writes: “I wanted to be a sisya of the best Indian artist in the twenties of this century. Accordingly, I went to Santiniketan and was a pupil of Abanindranath Tagore. I, therefore, belong to the Neo-Bengal School of painting which is a revival of the old famous Indian School of painting. Such were the youthful ideas of a budding artist, when I directed my steps to Bengal to study the art of painting” (Page 85).

The book includes Fonseca’s sketches of both Abanindranath Tagore and Rabindranath Tagore. They are perhaps the best examples of Fonseca’s Bengal period. It also provides details of how it led Fonseca into adapting his vision to what may be loosely termed a “nativist” perspective. Besides being exposed to Mughal art, with their approach to perspective, he was also exposed to Japanese watercolor techniques and to Japanese art as well. We are given to understand that it was not just the techniques, but the deeper philosophical implications that contributed to refining Fonseca’s inner eye as an artist.

Goa, the city

Mendonca is particularly adept at describing how a small Portuguese enclave grew into the city of Goa that was at the crossroads of trade in the Indian Ocean. Portuguese Goa imbibed all these cross currents to create a unique habitat of East and West that has been variously described as “Indian-baroque” or “Indo-Portuguese” or plain colonial. Whether in the architecture and interiors of their cathedrals and mansions, there evolved a style that was dictated by the Portuguese grandees and rendered in the tropical woods, rich materials and fibres of the subcontinent by the genius of the local artisans. It also led to the increased presence of missionary activity. Or, as Mendonca writes, “Goa had become the hub of Christendom in the East, a point of arrival from Europe and departure for Asia, to carry on the global missionary enterprise.”

At. Anne and Mary, watercolour, 1954.

It may explain Fonseca’s visionary ability to mediate his experience as an artist navigating his way between different traditions of artistic expression while being centered on his Christian faith. There are several references of Fonseca being a bridge between the more Westernised influences in Bombay and those of the Bengal School. We are also told how, after returning from Santiniketan, Fonseca settled down at Pune at the Christa Prema Seva Sangha “ashram” run by the Anglican Church from 1933-1950. That he worked steadily during these 17 years, producing the serene images based on the life of Christ and many versions of the Madonna is evidenced in the pages of the book.

The reasons behind why he was not a commercial success despite getting enough encouragement from the more discerning of the Westernised scholars is part of the conundrum that Menezes and Mendonca have tried to resolve. A refrain that is made through the text is that Fonseca’s oeuvre was not Christian enough for the Church of his time; but that it was too Christian to appeal to those outside the Church. Late in life, he also undertook a tour of different cities in Europe where his paintings were well received. Do we add that hybrid art such as his requires a hybrid audience?

“The Church has been the universal Maecenas of all arts, artists and styles: specimens of paintings and sculptures housed in museums all over the world are the best argument in favor of the universality of her patronage.” This quote by Fonseca appears as the lead-in to the chapter on “Indian Christian Art”. Mendonca’s observations as to when and why the Roman Church was so deeply involved in making its choices apply obviously only to Goa. It does not explain the absolute proliferation of images and themes that Indian artists have created, whether in a Kalamkari style, or as a mural, or in the modernist manner of an artist like Dhanapal in Chennai who could produce a superb sculptural image of Christ, or more famously in the case of M.F. Husain and his Mother Theresa series of prints, or the iconic Jamini Roys, not exactly Christian, or Hindu, or Buddhist, but uniquely a mother and child.

Towards the end of the chapter, Mendonca quotes Pope Francis: “The history of the Church does not have simply one cultural expression.” He adds: “All this validates Fonseca’s ideas.”

Angelo da Fonseca may finally have found his place on the shifting tides of time and temporal fame at least in this book.

Geeta Doctor is a Chennai-based writer, critic, and cultural commentator.

The Crux

• This book is a magnificently wrought volume dedicated to the Goan artist Angelo da Fonseca that seeks to restore his work and ideas into the pantheon of modern Indian art.
• Vivek Menezes, art critic and an ardent curator of Goan cultural heritage, has written a foreword.
• The text is by Delio Mendonca, a Jesuit priest with impeccable credentials as a scholar and teacher.
• This book is the first step in the goal towards setting up a permanent gallery of Fonseca’s work in Goa.