It's art on a magazine cover

ARTWALK

from two weeks ago, declaring confidently, "India overheats". Forget what it said inside, for a moment. Look what it said on the outside.

Planning a magazine cover is not something that just happens. Teams slave over it, offer options and after various rejections, one idea takes life. So in all, it's not something that got cooked up mindlessly. With this in mind, look at the cover itself.

It's got a confused, dazed tiger about to learn his proud tail is on fire. Until he does, this flagpole tail is like an Olympic torch "" holding it ought to be a moment of pride. In the background, there is an exotic forest, palms and all. What does this remind you of?

Rousseau, of course! If you are familiar with French painter Henri Rousseau's works, the influence is unmistakable. The adopted naïve art style, a central figure foregrounded, and lush, unfamiliar forest richly detailed and imagined, at the back. If you know his painting of 102 years ago, "Woman walking in an exotic forest", you would see the thumbprint.

The great painter is celebrated most commonly as a naïve artist, one who painted in an "innocent, non-academic way". How does the choice of artist link with the choice of cover story? From a distance, India does seem like a country with a strong artisanal base, and one that would include the folk arts.

Using Rousseau as mentor for the cover rustles up that feeling in a single frame. The naïve aspect of Rousseau is not a visual one, but alludes to the writing about a country that hardly recognises, or hardly has the sophistication to recognise, the complex mess that is about to explode all over it.

And then, this stylisation also refers to "the other", ie, not the Western world, from where The Economist is published. Effortlessly, a smooth path is paved to exotica "" see the thick, shiny, dark, green foliage and the space-cadet of a giant cat, all lacking perspective as they stare out of the cover.

Interestingly, Rousseau himself painted a relatively bland work called "The Snake Charmer". Form and art history tango on this cover.

It's as if we're discussing the performance of an interloper into the old boys' club. And that's where biography blends with art history. Rousseau was ridiculed and admired at the same time. At a time when he resigned from his government job to take up art full time (1893 or so), there was little space in France for this kind of simplicity.

Art Nouveau had begun blossoming and Gauguin and Monet had just stunned the Western art world in the decade before. Styles and schools were popping up across Europe, frenetically experimenting. And then we have Rousseau, struggling and even getting recognised despite himself.

The argument of "India overheats" argues for reform in an unevenly growing country with contradictions that don't belong in the contemporary globalised world. At this level, it's hardly an exaggeration to suggest the cover may be a content preview for those who can unlock the code.

It's nearly impossible to say whether or not the cover was actually planned in this erudite manner.

If it wasn't, let's just say the art department missed the chance to take credit for such careful artistic construction. But if it was, and if one forgivingly overlooks the shades of condescension, it was one of the wittiest art teasers we've seen in a long time.