In 2011-12, when K.G.Subramanyan decided to do a large mural
on the walls of the polygonal building in the Kalabhavana campus in
Santiniketan, a ‘little bit more permanent’ by nature than the previous ones
that he had done in the same campus, thanks to the pressure of many friends and
lovers of the institution, suddenly a group of traditionalists felt that the
move was blasphemous for the building that was about to get a KGS touch was the
illustrious ‘Mastermoshai’s Studio’. Master Moshai is none other than Nandlal
Bose (1882-1966) who used to use a few of the seven cubicles in this building
as his studio spaces. While preservation of a building touched by history was
the prime motto of the people who opposed KGS’ mural making, KGS and his
supporters felt that it was underlining a great lineage of art and aesthetic
philosophy that made Santiniketan a vibrant space, without altering the
architecture structurally. Despite the agitations and rumor mongering, the
mural was finished and that too when KGS had already touched 90 glorious years
of his life.
‘Moving hand writes and write on’ wrote Omar Khayyam in
Rubaiyat. That was how the exactly most of the poets felt when they wrote
poetry; it was a divine inspiration, we believe it or not. 19th
century literary critic Mathew Arnold while writing about William Wordsworth
said, ‘nature seems to take pen from the poet’s hand and write for him’. Almost
four centuries before Arnold, when Ezhuthacchan wrote his ‘Adhyatma Ramayana’,
he invoked the Goddess of Learning saying that she should create words in him
like waves in the sea. KGS painted, wrote, ideated, taught and did murals as if
he were just a medium of the divine inspirations and sources. And he, even at
this advanced age of 94, continues remain the divine medium of creativity.
Perhaps, KGS would not agree with it. But textual analysis of his works proves
that he knew about this that too from a critic like T.S.Eliot who wrote ‘Tradition
and Individual Talent’ and furthered the notions of Arnold and it is not
surprising a fact that KGS too has written books titled ‘Living Tradition’ and ‘Creative
Circuit’ definitely resonating a few of the ideas expressed by Arnold and later
carried on further by T.S.Eliot.
(KGS working on a Mural)
The Kalabhavana mural at Mastermoshai’s Studio was
successfully completed and when Prof.R.Sivakumar narrates the making of it, we
get to know the depth of the ideas that have gone into the making of such an ambitious
process. Read ‘Enchantment and Engagement- The Murals of K.G.Subramanyan’
written by R.Sivakumar and published by the Seagull Books, we get a chance to
travel through time and visit all those twelve monumental murals that KGS has
done over a period of fifty years. Yes, that in other words is called ‘half a
century’. When KGS came once again to Santiniketan to do this mural, he had
already finished nine of his documented murals in different parts of the
country and had even seen his Handloom board time textile murals coming up for
sales in some auction houses, with a lot of amusement. But the making of this
mural was a new experience for KGS. He chose the cow dung color for the
stoneware tiles because he wanted to continue the Mastermoshai’s views on
traditional aesthetical activities of people and the those of the academically
educated artists; in other words, the intrinsic link between craft and art. Hence
the color was evocative. As the technique was laborious, KGS limited himself to
abstract patterns which have the resonances of/from the traditional crafts of
India and elsewhere. First he drew them on the biscuit baked titles and then
sent for final firing. It took a whole year for KGS to finish the work.
Sivakumar turns poetic when he writes about this particular
mural. He captures the essence of the building with its new skin the way an
impressionist painter would do with his canvas and colors: ‘This mural is like
a landscape seen under a changing light rather than a work of art in a museum
seen under constant illuminations. To know it mindfully and feel it fully, it
has to be seen through the hours of the day and through the seasons, and
attention has to be paid to the perpetual changes, not to the perpetual
constancies.” (Page 29). KGS knew the effect of light and seasons on a mural
because he had already had three encounters with another building in the
Kalabhavana campus. In 1990, KGS came to Kalabhavana yet again and started
working his famous black and white mural. He just wanted to reflect the
surroundings (or the pace with which it was depleting) on the building so he
chose the first tier and drew a lot of birds, monkeys and trees. Maintaining
his post Expressionist style, which he has employed in his paintings, KGS
worked on this mural and left it there only to make a revisit in 1993 to finish
the second tier. While narrating the making of the present version Sivakumar
says how he was coaxed into ‘mending and repairing the mural’ as the layers
were coming off after a decade or so, instead of getting into that trap, KGS
decided to ‘rub off or erase’ the existing mural and do a new one altogether!
(Mastermoshai's studio after the making of Mural by KGS)
In 2004, when KGS did this ‘redoing’ of the black and white
mural, he had become more sensitive to the building and surroundings in a
different way. The sylvan play and the pastoral metaphors that had enthralled
the artist into the romanticism of the Santiniketan campus and even the
sub-conscious demand of the artist to see the place as he had seen it during
his student days, take a back seat in the third visit of the mural and in its
place KGS brings complicated mythological narrative, which is entirely of the
artist’s conjuration rather than the transportation of the existing ones onto a
different medium, along with some traces of the early pastoral metaphors. The
new mythology however is not completely out of the popular understanding. At the
outset itself Sivakumar contextualizes murals as an art form and writes: “Illustrations
and murals are firstly embellishments- they draw the viewers in, almost entice
them in and then work upon them, make them read the message and ponder over it,
and then through that perhaps connect with the physical and cultural world that
surround them” (Page 6). KGS, while making it, was thoroughly aware of this ‘linguistic,
communicational and aesthetic link’. Hence, we see a KGS creating a new
mythology while drawing up a lot from the already popular mythologies but
turning them around to his purpose in order ‘entice the viewer’ to weave a new
fabric of narratives along with the artist.
KGS in his interviews with Sivakumar and other has said how
he is impressed by his own making because the black and white combination which
responds to the surroundings like a monolith having a different autonomy than
the other building around it, changing the vehemence of presence according to
the changing light. It is something when there is sunlight, something else
there is rain and absolutely transforms into an ethereal thing on the moonlit
nights. KGS however is not a fanatic who would vouch only for the black and
white. His sand casting mural with three goddesses, turtle, fish and crocodile in
Santiniketan stands apart in this case. Done in 1988, this mural is
experimental and narrative at the same time. He not only takes the mythological
narratives into one frame of reference but also incorporates geographical and
topographical evolution of the place into the extended narrative of this mural.
This is done in three frames, which perhaps is an interesting spatial technique
for the artist. In most of the murals KGS uses polyptychs (multiple frames) to
set up the narrative and Sivakumar says that this is not purely directional in function
but is an attempt to provide multiple entries into the murals. In his latest
murals like ‘Conflict to Conviviality’ (2010) and ‘War of Relics’ (2012-13) he
uses multiple frames to create a larger narrative.
(The book cover of Enchantment and Engagement by R.Sivakumar)
More than convenience, argues Sivakumar, the choice of
multiple frames is meant as a ‘structural device’ to generate multiple meanings.
He writes: “Most triptychs and polyptychs offer more than one reading; they
have always been structural devices to generate multiple readings, and often
for paired presentations of contrasting alternatives. Subramanyan uses the
triptych here as a compositional device to present a complex situation rather
than to signal a single reading of the scene. So it can also be read from right
to left to suggest that the world has moved tragically from conviviality to
conflict, or a little more hopefully , it suggest that the die is yet to be
cast and it is for us to choose.” (Page 36=37). And the latest murals, as
Sivakumar observes, draws the final points of a full circle where even if these
two murals are done in canvas, KGS treats them like a mural on an actual wall
whereas he had done his first mural in 1955 for the Jyoti Limited in Gujarat
and he had treated it as a large scale painting rather than a mural.
KGS operated from the modernist frame work. For him creating
a personal repertoire of linguistic elements was one of the prime motives than
making them absolutely ‘communicative’. But at the same time he knew that
without communication the art would perhaps remain a very private activity. KGS
was not really for a purposeful communication with a message as done by his
teacher Nandalal Bose. Sivakumar observes that KGS was more attracted towards
Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ram Kinkar Baij who pursued their individuality
with some strange sort of divine inspiration and automatically their art served
certain social and aesthetic purposes without forcing it on the people. When
KGS worked with Benode Behari Mukherjee while he was making the Medieval Saints
mural in Hindi Bhavan in Santiniketan, he did not know what would be the
purpose of this mural. But what he liked was Mukherjee’s wish to see things the
way the Renaissance masters would have preferred to see the buildings around them.
It was a great learning experience for KGS though he got only a chance to do a
pair of Horse riders in the whole mural. Looking at it, Mukherjee told him, ‘Your
Horsemen are too fleshy’. Sending his images for weight loosing was then easier
for a young KGS because the admonition came in a Zen way.
KGS knew the trappings of this traffic and the lack of it. As
a person initiated very early into the mundane ritualistic symbolism that
brought an exclusive community into the same thread of communication and also
as a young man who happened to witness the western religious symbolism in the
abundance of churches and the socio-political symbolism of both the Gandhian
and the Communist movements, KGS could discern between the Utopian symbolism
that took birth within the studios and the vibrant metaphors and symbols that
people lived both in their mundane and cultural memories. The artist just
needed to poke them in order to facilitate communication. That was what he did
when he created his ‘King of the Dark Chamber’ mural for the Rabindralaya in
Lucknow as a part of the Birth Centenary of Rabindranath Tagore. Sivakumar
explains how KGS brought not only multiple narrative and entry points to the
mural but also how he incorporated two version of the same drama written by
Tagore, its oral base and its theatre production variant in which he had a part
as a set and costume designer. The cultural sharing of the story make this
mural interesting though it is one mural that KGS had done before the building
was finished!
(KGS preparing for sand casting one of his early murals)
As a modernist and as an artist who sought linkages between
craft traditions and art, KGS never got into the exploitative mode with which
he could have absorbed the talents of many rural crafts people into the scheme
of his own works. That does not mean that KGS kept them away from his works.
While using their expertise and knowledge in the making of several of his mural
where he extensively used sandcasting and terracotta, he never let them to
transfer their metaphorical repertoire into his mural formats. So the question
is whether KGS was using them just as technical assistants or was he using
their support as crafts people? The answer is perhaps both but it was not just
about using and throwing or making them stand behind the curtains as many of
the artists do these days. KGS was bold enough to seek their support (Gyarsilal
from Rajasthan who was an expert in Jaipur Fresco was his constant technical support
for over three decades) and at the same time not letting them make a kichri out
of his works. KGS believed making art with his hands, exactly the way his
masters did and in this he found both tradition and individual talent merging
into one.
No comments:
Post a Comment