“Death does not talk about death,” says Shibu Natesan. Death,
then definitely talks about life; each death subtly, if not violently, reminds
us of life, the preciousness of it and above all the need to love each other
for our time on the earth is limited though each of us is invested with the
potential to become immortal. Death, for Shibu is not the end of a living
organism but an inevitable transformation through which both the higher organisms
and the lower ones have to pass. From being, one moves to the zone of becoming.
We do not feel like seeing dead bodies because it reminds us of past and
physically it does not show the possibility of a future other than the purest
form of decaying, cell by cell, releasing all what has been once fragrance, now
a revolting stench. Dead bodies do not talk about death but our revulsion for
it. Death is neutral and impartial; the decay depends on degree though death
does not have any degree. A dead thing could remind one, of the futility of
life’s vanity as well. It is not the negation of life but a soulful call to
discard vanity. Humans like any other beings on the earth have the capacity for
apotheosis; they could become gods, provided they realise the god potential in
them. It is a journey, a practice and a penance.
(work by Shibu Natesan)
Shibu’s recent works are of transience; bodies die and the
death is not instantaneous. It is a process that progresses moment by moment
and he believes that if one could see death as a ‘living process’, then the
final revulsion for the dead bodies does not occur in the minds of human
beings. We do not know whether rats feel dejection when they witness a human
being lying dead, but as human beings we do feel revulsion at the sight of a
decaying rat’s body. This revulsion is caused by the reluctance of human beings
to accept dead as a living process. An unblemished skin is worshipped but when
the same skin is seen torn by rashes we turn our faces. As a painter Shibu has
accepted death as a living process, exactly the way Kumaranasan had accepted it
in his poems like ‘Veena Poovu’ and ‘Karuna’. Between Kumaranasan and Shibu
Natesan there lies a river of time which has the width of a century. But in his
own way, Shibu too has reached that exalted philosophical positioning of an
artist who ultimately sees death as a living process. Great artists have always
addressed death while the superficial ones have always celebrated life. The
great ones have always found out that death is a threshold to immortality and
to rejoice in death one needs that awareness of life being a preparation for a
grand death.
(work by Shibu Natesan)
Cemeteries and human skulls have evoked more sublime
thoughts than fear amongst the weaklings and shallow beings. Hamlet was looking
at a skull when he had faced with a dilemma and our own Raja Harischandra had
realized the deeper truths about life when he was working as a cemetery
attendant. Shibu is in a Hamletian phase in his career, not really in terms of
the ‘to be or not to be’ sort of dilemma, where deeper inquiries into the
transitory nature of life and it as slow progression to death take over the
mere celebrations of contemporaenity. Artists who are bracketed within the word
‘contemporary’ either celebrate or problematize whatever is contemporary. They
exclude the larger dimension of life and death by preferring life over death.
Art has been a way of pointing out socio-political problems through aesthetical
modes for many. It is not a bad thing to do, however, when we see most of the
activities in the society are meant to flag out as well as to tackle the
problems of various kinds, seeing art jumping into the same bandwagon makes it
almost redundant an activity for often it fails in creating larger repercussions
other than controversies or monetary celebrations. In one of my articles before
this, I had mentioned that art need not necessarily be carrying out a social
role or purpose other than being art which has the capacity to move people’s
mind causing fundamental changes in the life philosophy. I had also argued that
only by turning the artistic eyes towards simpler things around us could bring
about that ‘moving’ of minds.
(work by Shibu Natesan)
A political speech or an inspirational speech moves our minds.
But the effect of it is not expected to be long lasting provided if we are not
keeping the vibrations that we have received from those speeches in a separate box
in our minds. As we have the tendency to mix up everything in our minds and
make a mess out of our life and its philosophical clarity, we tend to go back
to our previous state of mind after listening to the political speech capable
of moving us. The slogan ‘azadi’ may linger on for a few days or weeks only to
fade away when newer slogans catch our attention. A tune that is pumped into
our consciousness by the electronic and new media, moves us for while until it
is replaced by another equally moving tune. All slogans are meant to die, so
are all the exhortations however aesthetical they may be. But certain things
remain and keep moving us to moments of sublimation that lead us to the
thresholds of apotheosis. Call it nostalgia or by any other name, certain
smells, certain sounds, certain pictures, certain faces, certain voices,
certain feelings, certain contexts, certain occasions, certain climates,
certain atmospheres, certain terrains, certain travels, certain shores, certain
forests, certain breezes, certain songs, certain albums, certain soils, certain
waters, certain smiles, certain tears, certain mumblings, certain whisperings,
certain prayers, certain memories, certain forgetting, certain follies, certain
sins, certain acts of piety, certain falling of feathers, certain birds,
certain thunders, certain lightning, certain tastes, certain touches and
certain what nots sublimate us as nothing else does. May be your child’s first
cry or your mother’s voice in the phone, simple.
(work by Shibu Natesan)
Try to capture these in your works. Let me tell you, if you
are not a good artist you will fail. Thousands of them have failed in depicting
these emotions. But similar emotions could be evoked via subconscious selection
of other objects and subjects. In monsoon, at night, under the white lamp, the
insects that he does not know living around him in small thickets, at the top
of the coconut trees, under the leaves in his lovingly tendered garden, come
one by one as if they were curious about the lonely painter in a white mansion
sitting alone in his white robes, completely lost in depicting his own self on
the papers. His nimble fingers move and the contours of his face appear on the
paper. From the ceiling, from behind the book shelf, from the ledge, from the
back of the chair, these creatures of insignificance keep looking at the artist
at work. They are many and in different varieties. Their eyes shine but not
visible in the blaring white light around which moths do their death dance to
the silent tunes of their limitless universe. Their antennas are up, their blue
shells and rainbow wings vibrate. Here is their last performance. They submit
their lives to a creator who is capable of leading them to immortality.
(work by Shibu Natesan)
Shibu finds them in the morning; at the book shelf, under
the table, near the half opened book, near the sketch book, near the palette.
They are just there, motionless, weightless and in a trance; he finds them
dead. How alive they look in their death. Shibu has been painting them
meticulously, the way a modern painter would do to his female nude model. The
insects are captured in their ultimate perfection; they are like machine parts,
bullets and some of them even look like mummies from Egypt. Shibu paints their
death and their life after death. In his sketchbooks they have started a new journey
into immortality. Their apotheosis has happened. Through the depiction Shibu
has also transcended his own mortality; he finds no difference between him and
a bug. It is not a Kafkesque transformation. There is no existential dilemma
here. Here is a wiling entry into the bugdom and their immortal heavens. Shibu
finds no difference between what he does and the bugs do. They have been
looking at him and he has been looking at them, in their different
incarnations. (When I first saw them I suggested that the title ‘The
Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’, the famous title of
Damien Hirst’s pickled shark, more suitable to these humble drawings than that
ambitious work of Hirst).
(work by Shibu Natesan)
“These are not dead bugs, they are transformed bugs,” says
Shibu. I could see the drawings and the artistic intention and decision behind
it. Each time Shibu paints a dead bug he sees it from one perspective. Then he
touches it, turns it, sees it, observes it and sketches it from different
angles. “In death they model for me or rather their death compels me to paint
them; in their death they have become more powerful than they were alive. Now
they could move an artist,” says Shibu. When an artist moves his mind beyond
the physical purposes of his artistic production, he just does not need an end
of/to his works. Great poets have reached that sensibility of seeing a flowery
branch, a blade of grass, an ant and all alike. Great artists too have reached
that level. North European Renaissance artists have painted bugs and creatures,
the humblest beings on earth with great attention and detail. They were not
making scientific classification or doing anatomical studies. It was a state of
being to be one with the greater and larger truth of universe; one life and one
love. Shibu is in that path. Hence he paints what he sees through the window of
his study room. Same scene, painted in different times, in different lights. Neo-impressionism,
you tend to ask. “No,” says Shibu, “Pleasure of seeing,” he concludes. Yes,
exactly the way bugs look at us from wherever they are- with no purpose but for
pure pleasure. Who said bugs don’t have the pleasure of seeing?
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