Ask me to define ‘calligraphy,’ I would say it is the art of
eternity or rather the art that captures eternity in a visual form. ‘Calligraphy’
means ‘beautiful writing’; a thing of beauty is a joy forever, says John Keats
the British poet. ‘Forever’ has got a special meaning to this poetic utterance
which could be easily connected to the art of calligraphy. In Malayalam, a
letter, an alphabetic notation, is called ‘Aksharam’ which means something that
endures. ‘Ksharam’ indicates the mortality of anything. The one that refuses to
die and decay is Aksharam, the letter. Once written, it is etched forever in
the memory of the human beings. Written words have got more impact and
credibility than the spoken word. It was a transference of credibility from the
spoken to written for the former had been the initial way of communication
amongst the human beings. When the letters were found out, they were not really
letters but stamps that ‘stamped’ a meaning through a pictorial intonation.
That’s why noted calligrapher Narayana Bhattathiri says that as a calligrapher
he does not write a ‘picture’ but visualize a sound, an action embedded in that
sound. And Bhattathiri’s works have proved him right.
(work by Bhattathiri)
There is a perennial itch for the writer who attempts an
article on Bhattathiri to qualify him as ‘Malayali’ calligrapher. Then the
question surges forward: Is calligraphy, the art form limited by its linguistic
base? The answer is negative. The linguistic base of calligraphy, Bhattathiri
could easily say, is just a starting point. Once the word or words are written
beautifully, they lose their connotative values and assume visual values. That’s
why we could enjoy Arabic or Persian or Urdu or Chinese calligraphy. Had we
been reading what was written in them, we wouldn’t have reached anywhere. It is
as futile as looking for a definite meaning in abstract paintings or patterns.
True that abstract paintings and patters could contain certain esoteric values
then so is the case with calligraphy. According to Bhattathiri, calligraphy could
evoke something beyond its visual quality; it could take the viewer to a
different rhythm, a different feel and a different journey though it is purely virtual
and mostly undefinable. The sheer abstraction is what makes Bhattathiri going
with his passion; an artist who does not attempt other visual expression and
found a niche in the world of visual art through pure calligraphy.
Bhattathiri gets up at three o clock early in the morning. And
definitely there is a question, when does he go to bed? At 9.30 or 10.00 at
night says Bhattathiri and the lazy ones could feel some relief. Bhattathiri’s
early sojourn into the waking day is not for anything else but to draw a couple
of calligraphy and post in his facebook page. It has become a ritual, a
beautiful ritual which cannot be set aside for the sake of some good early
morning dreams (which might come true if you persist to see them, they say). And
what does Bhattathiri write? He likes poems. As creative person who spent his
formative years in the Fine Arts College in early 1980s, Bhattathiri got acquainted
with the modernist poets and the anarchic creative personalities who often were
expressing themselves either through poems or through films. Theatre movement,
political struggles and visual arts were also the pick of the days. Bhattathiri
got hooked to poems and films and when he started doing calligraphy poems came
to him like water to fishes. He seems to have a special liking for the poems of
Balachandran Chullikkadu, a poet who had influenced many a youth through his
poems loaded with existential angst and sense of alienation and the dejection
for the failed revolutions. In most of his works we could see him doing
Chullikkadu’s lines into calligraphic expressions.
With a special fascination for writing something beautifully
in note books, black boards and stray pieces of papers, Bhattathiri started his
unchartered creative journey and it was the Fine Arts College in Trivandrum
that helped him anchor himself in the art of calligraphy. It may be partially
true because he did learn a few techniques to do abstract art because that was
what strongly recommended by the teachers of the college in those days for they
had hailed from the illustrious Madras School of Art where the doyen of the so
called Neo-Tantric Art Movement had perfected his modern art through a genre or
a series of paintings called ‘Words and Symbols’ in which he had predominantly
used palm leaf scripts and old scriptures done elsewhere. Panicker too was not intending
to make sense out of the words though he liked the pictorial value of letters
that could turn into intentional as well as unintentional symbols that could
make a narrative sense of for many a viewer/reader. Bhattathiri excelled in
such paintings and he was still writing as a personal labor of love and then it
happened.
A call from the then famous Kala Kaumudi weekly, a place for
creative people led by the illustrious editor S.Jayachandran Nair, came for
Bhattathiri. The weekly was a meeting point of all the stalwarts in Kerala’s
creative field and the comparatively young lot of them were showing the signs
of going beyond the normative journalism and had been adequately fueled by the
editor himself. Getting a chance to be between the two covers of Kala Kaumudi
for any good or bad reason was a thing of pride. There was a famous column for
literary criticism titled ‘Sahity Varafalam’ (means ‘Weekly Horoscope of
Literature) written by a much revered and feared literary critic,
Prof.M.Krishnan Nair. He minced no words in shattering the morale of the
writers if they were not up to him mark, a parameter set by himself by reading
and commenting the world class literature. Writers waited even for his
condemnatory comments and that was a way to be featured in Kala Kaumudi!
The call was to start doing some calligraphy titles for the
literary pieces that came for publishing in the Kala Kaumudi weekly.
Bhattathiri grabbed the chance and started working on the titles and graphics
only to learn that it was easier said than done. The incentive was getting
featured as a creative team member in the famous magazine but the negative side
was the deadlines and the last moment arrivals of the literary works.
Bhattathiri confesses that the titles that had taken to the heights of fame and
adulation in fact were written in short notice even without knowing the content
of the piece. The title was given and he had to make out the sense of the
writing through that single title. And most of the times his intuition worked! And
it did vibe well with the imagination of the readers as well as the writers.
Bhattathiri, along with Namboothiri in the department of illustration became
two Titans to be tipped into the pages of history. Sooner than later more
opportunities came for Bhattathiri from the lucrative field of movies. But
Bhattathiri did not choose the invitations randomly; he kept his class and
statndard apart and high. So he worked with the doyens of art house movies and
could make certain titles remembered forever for the sheer sense of
calligraphy.
Bhattathiri gets a lot of invitations to exhibit in group
shows but he is reluctant to be a part of all kinds of shows. In 1992, one of
his friends and a researcher on cartoons, Sundar helped him to put up his
calligraphy works, the works that were already famous and etched in the minds
of the people as magazine titles, and it got a good traction among the art
loving public. Bhattathiri remembers how school children telling him about
certain letters in Malayalam made complete sense to them when they saw them in
calligraphy than in normal writing. Also they suggested that some of the
letters could have been left half way so that they could imagine the rest. His
facebook posts have not earned him domestic friends but also friends from
overseas who have helped him to travel and show abroad. In South Korea,
Bhattathiri’s works have a permanent space in a calligraphy museum. Besides, in
China his calligraphic works have been made permanent through transferring them
on granite slab; a rare recognition after none other than the handwriting of
Rabindranath Tagore that also has found its way there.
A workaholic and introvert (a deadly combination commonly
seen in many a creative person) Bhattathiri is ready to shed that demeanor if
he is invited for giving calligraphy workshops. He says that he could see new
ways of writing among the new people that could inspire him to do different
works. A calligrapher is expected to create his own ‘font’ especially in the days
of digital writing. Bhattathiri says that he is averse to make his own
calligraphy because as a language Malayalam has more intricate letter types
than English, though he has helped in styling certain Malayalam fonts. He also
points out the fact that whenever calligraphy is taught it is always in
English, especially in the fine arts colleges. In schools there is hardly any
initiative to teach calligraphy. Malayalam calligraphy is as beautiful as the
Arabic or Persian or Chinese Calligraphy, yes, when it is seen done by
Bhattathiri, who has recently exhibited his series on the cult novel, ‘the
Legend of Khasakk’ (Khasakkinte Ithihasam) by late O.V.Vijayan on the occasion
of the it’s fiftieth anniversary. There may be many calligraphers in Kerala but
Bhattathiri is the pioneer in the field and someone who has earned it a
respectable position amongst other creative activities.
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JohnyML
Great... Great.. thanks for sharing
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