VISUAL POLITICS OF MASCULINITY: A FEMINIST SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF MALE REPRESENTATION IN RAJA RAVI VARMA’S PAINTINGS

Abstract [English]

Raja Ravi Varma plays a significant role in Indian art and cultural ethos to this day. His artworks are considered revolutionary in popularising Indian mythology and the diverse cultural traditions through paintings and calendar art. Among Varma’s diverse paintings, his depiction of women gained the most popularity and later evolved into the idealised gender prototype across India. An examination of existing scholarship shows that gender analyses of Varma’s paintings have largely focused on female characters, while studies of masculine representation in visual art remain underexplored. Therefore, this study initiates an exploratory analysis of select male-centric portrayals, such as Rajput Soldier (1901), Reading Newspaper (1904), The Student (1904), and Swordsman (N.d), to examine Varma’s conception of masculinity and to trace the reasons for the elusiveness of male portraits in comparison to his depictions of women. Through the integration of Barthes’ visual semiotics and Pollock's concepts of ‘vision’, ‘voice’ and ‘power’, this qualitative and interpretive study argues that Varma’s paintings of men are not accidental but a deliberate construction to reflect the patriarchal gender hierarchy that was prevalent during the period. These paintings position women within an aestheticised and alluring framework, while men are rendered in realistic settings, demonstrating the objectification of women and the naturalisation of men’s social presence. The relative absence of male-centric paintings, in contrast to female-oriented paintings, further indicates the privilege given to men to maintain privacy and explains why the male-centric paintings are limited and underexplored in academia.