CHRIS FREMANTLE

Imaging the Forest at the British Museum

Dinabandhu Mahapatra’s Trees of Orissa.  A painting on silk representing all the trees of the region of Orissa.  Some are very much icons, others are more representational.  This work, made in the early 1980s, was as I understood it part of a response by a particular patron to the loss of traditional crafts.  It is a response to the 12th Century poem, the Gitagovinda, which tells the story of Krishna and Radha.  The forest is a place where the social rules are more relaxed and Krishna can carry on with his favourite female cowherds.