A work of art transforms the immediate world into a
suspended world. It is at once an erasure and displacement, often imparting the
possibility of renewal and retrieving. An artist achieves this rare alchemy
through making the familiar unfamiliar, nudging the apparent into a perception,
which is unique in framing and rendering. There the light emanating from a
forty watt bulb could turn into the golden sheen that engulfs the works of Bernini.
Any creative expression that could transport the viewer into a realm of future
is hailed for its ability to help conceive the inconceivable while a work of
art that takes the spectator to back to the delicate annals of history is often
held in awe and reverence for its sheer capacity to evoke the aggregate of
creativity in its perfection. In Tom Vattakkuzhy’s paintings one sees the
latter and experiences a sense of suspension (of belief) which need not
necessarily be done willingly. Yet, the experience is poetic and if I may use
the word spiritual then it is spiritual too.
(Work by Tom Vattakkuzhy)
Tom Vattakkuzhy posts his paintings regularly in the social
media and there he reaps hundreds of likes, mostly from the peer group that knows
what all are involved in the making of a work of art even if many of the ‘likers’
are not excellent in practicing what they understand, believe or preach. As I
said before, what makes Tom’s paintings attractive and often intriguing is
their ability to suspend the immediate world that is represented within the
painting as well as the one in which the paintings find themselves. The latter
world could be the studio of the artist or the social media/gallery where these
works are exhibited. Till recently Tom’s works used to get published in some
mainstream literary magazines as the illustrations of the printed literature.
In this sense, we could see Tom’s experience as an artist is doubly honed, one
by conjuring up painterly events for himself and two, by making painterly
responses to supplement and complement the given literature. Such honing of
skills has all the chances of making an artist slightly confused when he/she
changes the ‘location’ of their creativity. Some gifted artists, of late in
Kerala have become successful in virtually transporting their exhibition spaces
into the magazines by creating illustrations like the way they create their
paintings, without external/editorial interventions. The credit also goes to
the editors of those magazines who let the artists be what they are.
(work by Tom Vattakkuzhy)
In West Bengal, it has been still a living tradition of
inviting the artists to make special cover pages for the Diwali issues of major
literary magazines like ‘Desh’. Though, in Kerala, the magazines have not
established such traditions (even today no Onam special feature artists’ works
as cover page), magazine illustrations have had changed the general perspective
about art. There had been a huge lull in this practice since the advent of new millennium
(exactly with the closure of the Malayalam India Today) and the tendency of the
magazines was to assign certain artists to illustrate the literature and it
seemed that all of those artists had the brief to ‘re-create’ a certain feel of
lines, forms and expressions which the editors considered as successful
examples in a few mainstream magazines. On the other extreme, the magazines
went for highly sentimental naturalistic illustrations that satisfied the
expected and commonplace demand for aesthetical visual pleasure. Tom
Vattakkuzhy and C.Bhagyanathan came to magazine illustrations in late 2000s
which after almost one and half decade changed the illustration scene of Kerala
for good. In fact today once again many artists work freely as illustrators
though the compensation packages are minimal and sparse.
(work by Tom Vattakkuzhy)
Magazine illustrations, when it comes into the hands of a
gifted artist, operate quietly independently of the literature once freed from
the context. It creates another interesting scenario; once the illustrations
declare their independence outside context of literature, it becomes imperative
for the literature to make efforts to belong to those pictures. While the
illustrations of the stalwarts like M.V.Devan, Namboothiri and so on showed
their indebtedness to the literature those were based on, the illustrations of
Tom and the artists of his ilk stand independently, creating a new world for
themselves. This does not mean that these artists challenge the autonomy of
literature or supersede the demands of it. On the contrary an artist like Tom
has generated a creative mechanism and style that is autonomous even when it is
done for a piece of literature. Hence we get a scenario where two autonomous
entities are brought together and in the conjoining a strange familiarity is
created. I would call it an event of mutual catalysing where the components
remain unaltered while together they undergo a process of change. Tom, of late
has become a master of this process, by deliberations of his artistic
imaginations and executing skills.
(work by Tom Vattakkuzhy)
Tom is a bit like J.K.Rowling, the author of Harry Potter
series of magical novels. Rowling turns the familiar London into a magical
world; there are trains, stations, schools, colleges, students, hostels, vaults
and so on as in the contemporary world. But the moment they enter into the
narrative mode of Rowling, they transform into magical entities. There is
nothing in Tom’s painterly world that is strange and unfamiliar. But when we
see them within the emblematic narratives that Tom chooses to paint they look
ethereal, distanced and divined. Clad in a Renaissance hue, each mundane act of
life turns into Eucharistic. They look like the moments culled out from the
Bible or Tohra or any divine book of order, morality and punishment. Each
person and object in Tom’s paintings assumes Biblical connotations; perhaps
that is the only device that both the artist and the viewers have to see and
interpret. A sense of guilt and confession looms large in the paintings of Tom
and he finds almost impossible to dispel that pall of gloom by adding some
cheerful element in it. Each character, even in the intimate relationship with
the other, cannot escape the Biblical connotations. For example, his series ‘Lessons
of Life’, the mother and child never look like an ordinary mother and child;
they are painted with mythological and epic strokes.
(The controversial illustration by Tom Vatttakkuzhy)
My observations gather momentum and weight when we recall
the incident where Tom’s illustration on a piece of literature was withdrawn
from the public after some church authorities registered their protest against
the said illustration. The story of Mata Hari was the theme of the play which
was published in Bhashaposhini, a major literary magazine with a considerable
history behind to back it. Tom’s illustration, which was published as a cover
page also, showed a nude Matahari sitting amongst group of nuns in a Eucharistic
moment. The illustration was an independent painting (in the sense I explained
earlier) and the artistic intervention was only in the ‘denuding’ of Mata Hari.
When the protest against the painting gained momentum, the magazine apologized
to the church and the believers (that’s how a magazine with a lot of history
does these days) and withdrew the magazine from the stands and re-issued with a
new cover page by another artist (which also met with protest from another
caste community on the same case of hurt sentiments). During all these
commotions, Tom maintained a stoic silence and he never explained his views on
the controversy. In hindsight, perhaps that was a good strategy that he adopted
which would make his and his family’s life smooth. Tom is no confrontationist
though a good conversationalist and a declared sceptic in approach.
(an illustration by Tom Vattakkuzhy)
I believe, Tom’s grounding is in religion; not in its
ritualistic and dogmatic side but in its aesthetic side. He more or less lives
in a time where Da Vinci and Michael Angelo could have easily lived. I am
talking about the period of Renaissance. Tom’s aesthetical approach is that of
a Renaissance artist and also that of the Dutch artists during the same period.
Apart from the said Renaissance masters, Tom adopts his thematic schemes from
the masters like Vermeer, Jan Van Eyk, Rembrandt and so on. Also in some of his
recent works like ‘Song of Dusk’, he relocates the American painter Edward
Hopper in his works as very subtle visual reference. Tom almost Malayalisises
Edward Hopper in the case of lights that he uses to illuminate his painterly
images. What we see in this painting is an eerie moment, which perhaps for a
rural Malayali is a normal daily moment. A group of boys (four of them) go for
an evening dip in a pond near their ‘home’. The steps leading to the pond show
that the home is a raised ground and it gives an indication that it is a hilly
region. The liminal light of the dusk almost gives an eerie feel to the
painting and we understand that the foreground of the painting and the boys
there are almost rendered in near darkness.
(Song of the Dusk by Tom Vattakkuzhy)
The more I look at it the more I see a moment of Baptism.
The boy in the water is like John the Baptist. The one who gets into the water
could be Peter. There is someone who has already done his ablutions and is drying
himself. He wears a red loin cloth. Another one who stands with his back to the
viewer is a witness. I am interpreting this taking Tom as the unalterable
author of this painting while assuming that he turns the mundane into divine;
the quotidian into painterly or literal. Seen in this context, the ‘home’ above
is no longer is a home but a church built on the rock of faith. One could
clearly make a comparison between the yellow light outside and the
sanctum/altar space drenched in a red; the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? Or is it
a nativity scene? The yellow sheen could evoke the light of the pen in Bethlehem.
The sanctum must be the delivery room in red. The sky is lit up. The three
kings are taking bath with one witness/angel to lead them to the place. They
are cleaning themselves up to receive the Son of God. Or am I just imagining
things. But that is where Tom wins as an artist. He could create a series of
ambiguities within the textual traditions available. At the same time he could
remain free of the clutches that would otherwise hold a religious artist within
the fold.
(an illustration by Tom Vattakkuzhy)
Finally, I would like to give a very different and normal interpretation
of this work, ‘Song of Dusk’. I would strip all the religious connotations and
the possible biblical hue away from the painting. It is just an evening scene.
In the rural belts in Kerlala these days one could see labourers from other states
(Anya samsthaana thozhilaalikal) who are called with a generic name ‘Bengalis’.
They do any kind of work starting from washing cars, working as home helps,
masons, carpenters, plywood factory works, restaurant workers, security guards
and you name it they are there to work. They call Kerala as Indian Gulf. You
wouldn’t believe that for their financial remittance there are evening branches
of banks and some banks even work on Sundays. The book stores and music and
film stores stock Bengali, Hindi, Assamese and Odiya books, films and music.
There are schools for the children of the migrant labourers. Some have even
passed the school final in Malayalam medium. And as icing to the cake, some act
in mainstream Malayalam movies!
(Song of the Dusk by Tom Vattakkuzhy)
Many of these ‘Bengali’ labourers who live and work in the
hilly regions (as farm and plantation workers) often rent out an old style
house that is lying abandoned for long, for dirt cheap rents and live together,
saving money on the rent front. This house in the painting seems to be one such
house where these labourers and farm hands live. Despite the lights you don’t feel
the ‘homeliness’ of a home in its depiction. It looks like an abandoned house
which has been occupied recently and is not fully functional. The absence of a
woman or women is palpable in its bareness and lost nature. The four men who
are bathing at the pond must be four labourers cleaning themselves up in the
cool water after a long and hard day’s work. The silence that is felt embracing
the painting shows the silence of these young men lost in thoughts about their
hearths back home in that killing twilight moment. The time looks so pivotal at
this moment; the twilight. They are neither here nor there. They are in
transit. The Malayali migrants have experienced it once in the Gulf countries.
All the migrants have felt the twilight moments as incisions done by surgical
blades in the soul. Tom too has gone through it and experienced it. This
painting perhaps is an autobiography of an ordinary Malayali camouflaged in the
stories of the Bengali labourers. Who knows for sure? That ambiguity is the
charm of a good work of art.
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