Dreamscapes

The book on Shuvaprasanna goes far beyond art for the coffee table, says Nirupama dutt

A Book about an artist is the most in thing these days. The past few years have seen quite a few brought out glossy and well bound. Well, a share of contemporary Indian art for the coffee table. But let some of them not just be condemned to decorate the coffee table as men and women (why just women dear T.S.Eliot?) come and go talking of Michaelangelo open some of these books what opens is a world far beyond pretty pictures and the trappings of a 21st century boudoir. One of these is a book on a Calcutta artist who belongs to the generation of the Seventies and it is called: SHUVAPRASANNA-Vision: Reality and Beyond. Published by Art Indus, it speaks to us of our times with a vision which has the power to look before and after. This essentially made so by the subject who makes the book.
The response to Shuvaprasanna's work is not always one of adulation. An invite to his recent show inh the Capital had an art critic moaning, ``Oh! Please, not more crows.'' Yet he remains one of the foremost painters of his generation being as old as the Independence of the country. To know why these crows one must got to the very beautiful and pointed foreword by Samik Bandyopadhyay to the book. He described Shuvaprasanna as a product of the Seventies as they were lived and experienced in Calcutta and goes on to say: ``What Shuvaprasanna gathers from the post-seventies wasteland is the sense of a crumbling space with an accumulation of signs of decay and exhaustion, and signs of a difficult life emerging out of a cityscape left in shambles.''

A little onto the making of Shuvaprasanna, who is often referred to as the artist with whom the Nobel Guenter Grass stays in Calcutta, was a child prodigy in times when child prodigies were not so common nor either their pushy parents as of today. In a rather simple and unpretentious account of his life and art, the author of the book, Chitropala Mukherjee, takes us to the beginnings. Born to a conservative professional Bhatpara family, he liked to sketch his father's patients when hardly four. This led to his painting portraits of politicians and ambassadors. The family was quite proud to have him photographed with President Rajendra Prasad, USSR president Voroshilov or the American ambassador to India in late Fifties. But when it came to take up art as a vocation, father frowned. Shuvaprasanna had his way and a patch-up was to come about later. He graduated from the Indian College of Art a d Draughtsman ship in 1969.
Chitropala writes thus of the times which shaped Shuvaprasanna: ``Pete Seeger strummed his guitar and sang,
Where have all the flowers gone? To rapt audiences in the Park Cireus Maidanin Caleutta, a popular site of political rallies. Allen Ginsberg was well settled in Calcutta smoking pot and writing poetry. There was energy commitment, fire and idealism. Politics was still respected and taken seriously. Poets, painters, writers, art critics and creative minds met in euphemistically named coffee houses (New York Soda Fountain!) and talked fast and furious over cups and cups of tea…''
When Shuvaprasanna started his Lament series in 1970/71, these were described as grim. As grim as Mrinal Sen's film Calcutta 71 was and Sen chose a canvas from these series for his film. From lament to the Crows and to his recent un-iconic icons, Shuvaprasanna has kept his individuality without allowing himself to be labeled. This journey of images through dream and reality has evolved in different ways and Bandyopadhyay says: ``He has retained what may be described as his mastery over the dreamscaping of the flotsam and jetsam of a sloppily developing and meandering city, its feverish culture, and its terrifying poverty; the dreamscape holding together the disparates and sharp contradictions in an uneasy tension, and raising super-ambient icons.

Paramjit Singh's Invented Landscapes

Nature’s strokes

The landscapes by the artist reaffirm his painterly prowess and a rare feel for the textures of nature, writes Nirupama Dutt

The colour of the earth is a yellow-gold. Auburn shadows fall on frail trees that elegantly sway with the breeze. Patches of dark green make the suggestion of a wild forest. The sky is filled with clouds and looks dark and promising. In this painting, titled Monsoon Light, Paramjit Singh, the master of stroke, captures a rare moment of a sunshine shower that probably would not last beyond half an hour. But that quaint twinkling when the clouds ad sunrays challenge one another to a game of hide and seek is captured beautifully in rapid brush strokes. It is landscape at it its purest form. No human presence intrudes but, of course, for the viewer who stands gasping at the spectacle of nature recreated by a fine and practiced brush.

Singh is famous for the magical quality of his landscapes. His works reaffirm his painterly prowess and the ease with which he is able to translate nature into oil on canvas. He is a landscape artist with a difference, for—but for his student days—he does not go to a spot and paint it at a given time. His landscapes are the result of a long communion with nature. He has absorbed nature deeply ad when he faces the empty canvas, the conscious and the subconscious combine in creating these ecstatic landscapes of the mind. Talking of his works, Singh says: ``These are invented landscapes no doubt but the feel of nature is real.’’

The love for nature took root in his mind when he was a young boy. Singh, who grew up in a large joint family in Amritsar, in the 1940s, recalls: ``My father was a religious person. My childhood was enriched by the stories he would tell me. I remember when he told me stories from the life of Guru Nanak, I would imagine a landscape. This so because Nanak was a traveler and the anecdotes from his life included rivers, rocks, mountains and the sky. Also, as children, we were mostly outdoors as there were no televisions and computers to trap us at home.’’ Bathing at the tube-well in the fields as a young boy or cycling long distances as a student of Khalsa School, Amritsar, was among his main joys. This passion for outdoors continued when he joined the Delhi Polytechinc School of Arts in 1953. ``It was a beautiful un-crowded Delhi and we would cycle on the ridge or walk through the wilds which were later tamed into the Buddha Jayanti Gardens. The ruins and old monuments were another attraction,’’ says the painter.

The environment at the art school was very charged ad the faculty included famed artists like B.C. Sanyal, Biren De, Sailoz Mukherjee, Dhan Raj Bhagat and Jaya Appaswamy. His college-mates included Suraj Ghai, R K Dhawan, Eric Bowin and, of course, Arpita Singh, who was to become his muse and later his partner in life. ``It was the right guidance and the right climate which we found as students and this helped us to pick up the right nuances which were to bloom later. We were indeed well-bitten by the art bug,’’ says Singh, It is here that the world of art opened up before this Amritsar lad who was among the first crop of painters of Independent India. Like most artists of the time, he too was deeply influenced by the French Impressionists and in his case the influence went into shaping his early works.

Singh did figurative work and was acknowledged as a fine portrait painter in his early days. But when he set o to become a professional painter, it was nature that inspired him the most. ``Art has to become a part of you. And truly with me are the rivers, the fields, the rocks and the skies. I have never ceased to enjoy the mysteries and marvels of nature,’’ says the artist.

Primarily he is a colourist but in the early days, he painted some still life juxtaposed with elements of nature or rocks looming over the landscapes, Gradually, however, the sheer pleasure of colour and brush-work took over. Commenting on his work, fellow artist and a former colleague at Jamia Milia, A Ramachandran, says, ``It is natural that in the art arena of today’s cerebral circus, Singh’s paintings do not receive the attention they deserve because they are pure works of art. Rising above the thin dividing line between realism and abstraction, Singh transforms his picture-space into an animated painting-space with an abundance of brushstrokes which have become his signature.’’

Singh has been witness to the Capital’s art scene since the 1950s and he takes the changes in his stride. ``One does miss the good old days but then the interest in art has grown and the number of galleries and shows is phenomenal. In the early days, we ever missed a show and these days it is impossible to see everything!’’ he points out.

On his marriage to Arpita, one of the country’s leading painters, he says that it has been held together by art. ``We have appreciated each other’s work and even offered critical appraisal when required,’’ he says. Interestingly, a couple of years ago an art gallery invited couples to create one work. The painting by the Singhs showed a couple on a bench in a garden and an aeroplane flying across the sky. Singh says, ``The aeroplane, the couple and the bench were Arpita’s, I provided only the sky and the patch of green.’’ Well, the patch of green is certainly his forte and he knows how to make it work, by the lake, along the river, in the waves or in the monsoon light.

The Inimmitable Gogi Saroj Pal

Paint like a Woman

Gogi Saroj Pal creates a new visual vocabulary in her bold and sensitive portrayals, writes Nirupama Dutt

What do women like to paint? The instant association is that of a well brought-up young lady painting blooms and landscapes in the Victorian age. Closer home it is that of young ladies painting a deity on an earthen pot or a floral spray on fabric. Ancient Indian texts of the Eighth to the Twelfth Century have references of young women painting portraits of one another for matrimonial purposes; with the advent of photography came the Zenana Studios.

The Twentieth century saw the short but brilliant spell of Amrita Sher-Gil, who was schooled in art in Paris and is remembered for her paintings of people. After her death in 1941, came a long lull till there was an upsurge of women artists in the 1970s.

The path for the pioneers is never easy. ``Write like a man,’’ said Kamla Das, one of the pioneers of Indian poetry in English, and she stuck her tongue firmly in her cheek and wrote a poem on the theme. Gender stereotypes provoked Mahesh Dattani to pro to produce the play. Dance Like A Man.

In the field of visual arts, Gogi Saroj Pal made a virtue of not just painting like a woman but also painting women. ``I have never felt apologetic for making woman the main focus of my work. I am rather proud of being a woman and trying to unravel through my work what makes a woman, how much of a woman is conditioned and how much natural.’’

Refreshing indeed in a scenario where women painters feel afraid of being labeled as mere painters of women. It has been a long journey for Gogi, struggling not just to establish herself as an artist but also to achieve perfection of her own imagery.

In Gogi’s earlier works, one finds etchings of the sad-faced brooding feminine profile, the single woman nursing a child or a woman lying motionless, like in her series: The story and the story teller.

The viewer is struck by a delicate sensitivity even when the conviction is firm. But it is the growth of her work and the rare spontaneity that she achieves in a brilliant iconography of women which give her a place as one of the most remarkable woman painters in the country today.

While still in school, Gogi, who comes from a family of revolutionaries and her father, was arrested for making a bomb, made up her mind to be an artist. How come she did not opt to be a writer given the literary environment at home? ``I was always a great individualist and wanted to do things my own way. I preferred being the first artist in the family,’’ says Gogi. One only has to see Gogi’s paintings to understand the determination of this rather frail, young girl.

``I always had in me persistence. I would do things my way even if it meant enduring hardships,’’ she says. And so she did in her long years studying art and then practicing it, staying in the midst of the crowd and clutter of the walled city of Delhi or working in the Lalit Kala Akademi studios at Garhi. Gogi was among the first to do installations in Delhi. ``Now installations are much in vogue. But the words was not known in the early 1980s and we called the work assemblage’’ Gogi recalls.

This assemblage paved the way for Swayamvaram. This widely-travelled installation earned her a place in Oxford History of Modern Art along with masters like Raja Ravi Varma ad Rabindranath Tagore as well as the celebrated London-based artist Anish Kapoor.

Deep study, research and meditation and also a questioning mind, which gave a hard time to her art teachers, pay a role in the selection of her themes. Take, for instance her series, Aag ka Dariya, inspired by the Jigar Moradabadi couplet: ``Yeh Ishq Nahin Aasan bas Itna Samajh Leeje; Ik Aag Ka Dariya Hai Aur Doob Ke Jaana Hai. (Love is not easy; it’s like an ocean of fire and one has to drown in it.)’’ She shows a woman crossing a turbulent river with a little girl in her arms on a paper boat.

This journey is a contrast to the journey I which Vasudev saves baby boy Krishna whereas the baby girl Rajni is killed. ``This was my way of saying that women have to bear the responsibility of saving their daughters and the paper boat symbolizes childhood and dreams,’’ explains Gogi.

Inspired by the miniature painting of Bride’s Toilet, in one of her series, Gogi makes her Nayika use products like Ganga soap or Kesh Nikhar oil, having a dig at the market forces that promote stereotypes. ``The market decides what a woman must use, eat or even how she should look like. It was in reaction to the Barbie Doll that I made the Big-B dolls of Painted canvas,’’ says Gogi.

The Big B dolls have been a hit. Her latest series of painting have the woman embroidering Phulkari motifs o her body. These motifs are scattered in the backdrop too. All this is done with an accomplished flourish. The woman Gogi paints is rooted and yet has wings. Not a mean achievement this.

Painter Sohan Qadri

On form and the formless

Nirupama Dutt

From Chachoki village on the outskirts of Phagwara to Copenhagen was the long journey for artist Sohan Qadri, a person who refused to he dated whether in aesthetics or metaphysics. Journeying through the world of dots, lines, colour and form, his search was for the beyond. This was the theme of hislecture given at CRRID in Chandigarh on Tuesday evening.

A Qadri lecture is quite an event and so was this one titled `Aesthetics and Metaphysics'. For one Qadri invites a motely crowd of artists, writers, scholars, spiritualists and eccentrics. His old Doaba friends were there and so were younger artists. It began with a rather poor showing of a Jalandhar Doordarshan telefilm on him. But a film made very coherently by Harjit Singh brought forth a Qadri not obscure but alive and throbbing as he painted or spoke about his creative process or roamed by fields of sunflowers in his colourful kurtas. And Qadri himself was communicable in Punjabi.

To do him credit in his presentation, he was lucid and brief beginning with the primeval hunger of the human species and the invention of the sharp-edged exe going on to the sexual needs, then the yearning for self-expression and finally the ultimate in creativity which transcends into the metaphysical experience.

The question session which followed had more spiritualists rather than artists active in asking questions and sharing their own ethereal experiences making the whole affair an exercise in sky-walking. One of the more earthly persons tried to come back to the topic of the lecture which was the relationship of aesthetics to metaphysics. But that was not to be and he was scolded for being materialistic by the listeners Naturally, what is `Anand' when the ultimate goal is `Parmanand'?

The lecture over, the presidential remarks came from the poet and bureaucrat, Manmohan Singh, who said that he had got the invitation late or he would have written and brought along a poem on Qadri. He compensated with a two-liner, ``Qadri's life is a dance of dots. He is the darling of tiny tots''. One does not know about the tiny tots but the elders could not resist him and artist Balvinder caricatured him through the lecture with his receding hairline, fuzzy hair and the witch doctor look

Qadri's trip to the country this time was to attend the sexology conference in Delhi. ``The doctors were there to talk of their experiences with guinea pigs but I was there as a guinea pig.'' He promises to reveal it all in the next meeting. Until then it is metaphysically yours.