Style combination · Contrasts

Kalighat Pat × Kinngait Inuit Printmaking

Both isolate a stylised figure on pale paper with little else; Kalighat paints it with a loaded brush and a sweeping outline for a bazaar market, Kinngait cuts it in stone or daubs it through a stencil, so take Kalighat for a painted, satirical line and Kinngait for a still, printed silhouette.

From the research on Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking

Mix them and make something Kalighat Pat Kinngait Inuit Printmaking

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Kalighat Pat, their arrangement from Kalighat Pat, the finish from Kalighat Pat. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking

Type from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking
Colour from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Kalighat Pat: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Kalighat Pat: Isolated object
Single focal point
Surface from Kalighat Pat: Painterly brushwork
Carved line

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Kinngait Inuit Printmaking

Ours

Caveat, standing in for From the mid-1970s, the artist's pencil signature beneath the image, beside the title and an edition number such as 43/50; up to and sometimes including 1974 the artist's carved chop stood in for the signature (Dorset Fine Arts, Stonecut: Chops). Kenojuak's syllabic signature, ᑭᓄᐊᔪᐊ, on a colour trial proof of The Enchanted Owl was added later (First Arts)

Text · Kalighat Pat

The bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs. A single plaque-like figure stands on unpainted paper, drawn with one loaded, sweeping brushstroke that both outlines and shades it. Deities share the repertoire with satire of the Westernised babu, domestic scandal and street life.

Archivo; Kalighat Pat used Bengali captions cut into Battala woodblocks and Bengali letterpress text of Battala chapbooks and almanacs

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking, with a counter-accent from Kalighat Pat. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking

#f3efe3 ground · 36%
#1b1a17 ink · 14%
#b5352c accent · 18%
#e0a92e accent · 14%
#2c5a8c accent · 10%
#2f6a5a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe3;
  --ink: #1b1a17;
  --accent-1: #b5352c;
  --accent-2: #e0a92e;
  --accent-3: #2c5a8c;
  --accent-4: #2f6a5a;
  --font-display: "Caveat", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints: Many sheets depict Hindu deities that are still worshipped (Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, Krishna), and some were painted for Muslim patrons (Duldul, Imam Husain's horse), so do not distort, crop or place these figures in mocking or disposable contexts. The patua (chitrakar) families of Bengal still practise the art; commission or credit living painters rather than tracing museum images, and name the artist where known.

Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking: Kinngait printmaking is the living, collectively run art of an Inuit community, and its images belong to named Inuit artists and printmakers whose copyright the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative manages as their agent: license or commission work through the co-operative or Dorset Fine Arts rather than tracing a print. Borrow the system (a lone silhouette floating on open paper, one to three inks, stencil-graded colour, stone-cut edges), not a particular artist's owl, sun or hand. Do not invent Inuit spirit beings, shamans, the sea goddess or hunting rites as decoration; picture the subject the brief supplies. Never add a syllabic signature, artist's or printer's chops, the studio's mark, an edition number or the igloo authenticity symbol to generated work, and never present it as a Kinngait or Inuit print. Say 'Inuit', not 'Eskimo', except in historical names such as the co-operative's, and do not let Kinngait stand for all Inuit art: other communities, such as Qamani'tuaq (Baker Lake), have their own print studios and styles.

The two styles

1830–1930 · South Asia Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints The bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs. A single plaque-like figure stands on unpainted paper, drawn with one loaded, sweeping brushstroke that both outlines and shades it. Deities share the repertoire with satire of the Westernised babu, domestic scandal and street life.

A large stylized blue humpback whale angles upward to the right on a cream background, with cream throat stripes and spots and a gray tail. Red uppercase lettering at the top reads “RETURN.”

1957–present · North America Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking Prints from the Inuit co-operative studio at Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, with a catalogued collection every year since 1959. Inuit artists draw; Inuit printmakers cut the drawing in stone or a stencil and print it by hand in editions of thirty (1959) and then fifty. A single figure, most often a bird or animal, floats as a flat silhouette in one to three inks on unprinted paper, and stencil daubing grades the colour inside it. This is the classic idiom; lithographs and etchings followed from the 1970s, and Annie Pootoogook, Shuvinai Ashoona and others have drawn contemporary Inuit life.