Stephen Inglis : A Date with a Dream
The circulation of ideas and ideals in mid-twentieth century South India was fuelled in part by a vigorous popular visual culture, much of the history of which is still unrecorded. Popular prints are one way that the intersections and innovations in devotion, fashion and politics can be traced and the links with the rest of India and the world illustrated.
This paper introduces a luscious collection of calendar prints of Tamil movie stars from the 1950’s and 60’s. This was the last phase of what some have called the “Golden Age” of Tamil cinema, featuring the actress as a symbol of purity. It was also the last phase of the widespread printing of hand painted portraits of real celebrities. The paper introduces a few of the stars, the leading artists and the forms in which the imagery was distributed and consumed.
The illustration is from a print of a painting of Jayalalitha (the current opposition leader) as a girl so young they had to make her up to look older, painted by S. Ravi of Sivakasi.
Biographical Statement:
Dr. Stephen Inglis, is Senior Curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC). As an anthropologist, curator and lecturer, Dr. Inglis has specialized in South Asian artists and their communities and in Canadian folk art and craft traditions. As Chief of the Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies in the early 1990s, he built the CMC’s outstanding national fine craft collection. From 1998 until 2007, he was Director-General, Research and Collections. He has developed field collections in several museums, including the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Inglis is an Adjunct Professor of Art History at Carleton University, and has extensive teaching and publishing experience in the fields of anthropology, folklore and art history. He has chaired conferences and lectured around the world on crafts, South Asian culture, and museology. Since 1974, Dr. Inglis has been associated with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, which promotes academic and cultural exchange between India and Canada. As a fellow, board member, committee chair and executive member, he has championed the cause of mutual understanding and exchange between institutions in Canada and India. He has also collaborated on cultural exchange projects with China and Russia.
Dr. Inglis holds a B.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. in Museology and Indian Art from Calcutta University in India, where he studied Indian art and architecture, folk arts and crafts, and ethnography of tribal societies. He also received a Certificate in Tamil Language and South Indian Culture from Madurai-Kamaraj University in Madurai, India.
