Rickshaw art: Peoples’ art

Sheikh Arif Bulbon :
The rickshaw began as a 2-wheeled passenger cart, called a pulled rickshaw generally pulled by one man with one or two passengers. The first known use of the term was in 1887 in Japan.
There are three types of rickshaw known as pulled rickshaw, cycle rickshaw and electric rickshaw.
Cycle rickshaw is very popular in Bangladesh. It is known as three-wheeled passenger cart, which is powered by paddling. It carries one or two passenger and sometime on hire basis.
After banning pulled rickshaw the cycle rickshaw has becoming popular transport in South Asia. Cycle rickshaw is the most popular transport in all over Bangladesh including capital city. Dhaka is a known as rickshaw city. Around 80,000 rickshaws are moving in Dhaka in every day. It looks very beautiful for beautiful painting and colourful paper rapped around the body. It is also called people’s art.
A rickshaw looks very beautiful when it is painted around the full body. So the painting is very creative task for a rickshaw maker.
The painter paint on back of tin sheet and frame of the body. There are two types of painting in rickshaw one is body painting and another is key-visual, which is painted in tin sheet.
The painted tin sheet represents the painter’s choice and designing skill. First the artist make a design object of a rickshaw paint it into the full rickshaw with combination of body and key-visual.
The painting subject could be natural, film poster or religious. There are so many rickshaw artists in Bangladesh. The artist choice and test could be different in different area.
Though enamel painting is popular for rickshaw paints but now a day there are so many designers paint by computerised painting machine and the rickshaw production getting low for government restriction. But still the enamel painting is so much popular in Bangladesh. The rickshaw artists also paint in movie poster and wall matte poster.
While go back to the history of the rickshaw art in Bangladesh we can see that the three-wheeled rickshaws have been around since the 1940s. Initially, they were undecorated, but starting in the late 1940s, the faces of movie stars began appearing as decorative motifs on shields at the back of the rickshaws along with a variety of floral paintings.
The unique trend of rickshaw art started from Rajshahi and Dhaka in Bangladesh and took its own style in each district. For instance, Chittagong being a more pious city then Dhaka mostly had floral or scenery in the rickshaws where as Comilla has plain rickshaws with beautiful dark blue or green hood on which is sewn an appliqué of a minaret or floral design enshrining the word Allah.
The art on moving wheels were done using very bold, bright and raw colours, like fluorescent green, dark red and so on. The blaze of colours also helps to make them long lasting.
Noted author Joanna Kirkpatrick defines the rickshaw art by this way, “I consider it peoples’ art. It is not necessary to force it into a unitary category as it combines folkloric, movie, political and commercial imagery and techniques. It serves the expression of heart’s desires of the man in the street for women, power, wealth, as well as for religious devotion. Rickshaw art also serves prestige and economic functions for the people who make, use and enjoy it.”
Rickshaw art also reflect the economic globalisation process, which is occurring all over the world today, for instance those rickshaws with Osama Bin Laden’s pictures.
Rickshaw art covers whole rickshaw decoration, from painted backboards and rear side panels to cutouts appliquéd on to hoods and brass vases replete with plastic or paper flowers.
The painted rectangular metal board at the backside, between the two wheels, leaves a trail of passion that the Rickshaw artist puts in his creations.
This living pop art culture of Bangladesh is done by illiterate rickshaw artists. They learn their techniques by living with Ustad (master) from boyhood. They do not have copyrights, even most of case do not mentioned name in art also. But in the back of rickshaw generally having mark of maker with bold steel pin, for example – Fazlu Mistri.
Unfortunately nowadays the rickshaw art and artist are in ‘struggle of existence.’ The third and fourth generations artists are not interested to this art, do not feel pride because of low income of dollar two to three a day and recognition. n