(Kanai Kunhiraman and wife Nalini)
Ask any random person in Kerala about the painter that he
knows. The answer would be invariably the expected one: Raja Ravi Varma. Upon
prodding further he may utter a couple of other names depending on his home town
in Kerala itself. Obviously, each village has its own poets, artists and mad men
whom people tend to remember wherever they are. Rearticulate the question and
replace the word painter with sculptor. Then the person may give a confused
look in the beginning and soon you will see the only answer possible, for
himself and for many, brightening up his face. The answer, again, is the expected
one: Kanai Kunhiraman. He seems to have left an indelible impression in the minds
of the people in Kerala with his monumental and impressive public sculptures. What
about his reputation beyond the borders of Kerala?
Those artists who belong to his generation and also those
who have spent some time with Kanai in his rare outing in other parts of the
country might know him as an artist. One of his works, a horse like sculpture
fashioned out of a moped scrap could be seen in the sculpture garden at the
National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. But it has lost itself among other
sculptures those are preserved at times and at other times seem abandoned. The reason could be their provinciality not
only of the aesthetics employed but also of the reputation of the names
attached to those sculptors. Those artists who have got their due in the
national art historical discourse find their pedestals within the royal halls
of the Jaipur House where the NGMA is located. The other sculptures are left to
weather under the open sky. Had Kanai Kunhiraman been recognized with some
important national award he would have been inside the gallery and there would
have been a retrospective by now.
(Raja Ravi Varma)
However, the criticism cannot be simply levelled at the
authorities alone. Partly the reason for Kanai’s scant reputation elsewhere
other than in Kerala (despite his initial fame as an internationally acclaimed and
promising young sculptor from South India in late 1960s) lies with his own
reluctance. Kanai somehow does not like to bask in the glory elsewhere. From
the very beginning he has been happy with the cultural environment in Kerala,
besides wading cleverly through the turbulent political waters of the state,
mostly keeping his neck out and not only surviving but also doing extremely
imposing sculptures in the public domain. His savvy nature in dealing with the
political big wigs of different denominations perhaps made him complacent which
he covers with his insistence on the natural environments that inspire his
sculptures which he thinks wouldn’t be available elsewhere in the country.
(Reg Butler)
An artist who had gone to Britain to study sculpture under
one of the famous artists and pedagogues, Reg Butler at the Slade School of Art
and also had intimate familiarity with the giants like Henry Moore and Barbara
Hepworth shouldn’t have thought that a place in some corner of the world would
be enough for an artist to do works and flourish. Perhaps, the same encounters
might have made him think that remaining in one place did all the difference
for both Moore and Hepworth had done most of their monumental public works in
Britain itself. Whatever may be the case, once Kanai was back from London, he
decided to stay in Kerala itself. He had gone for a very few sculptural
symposiums elsewhere in Indian in the beginning but the huge opening and
mileage that he had gained through his first monumental and path breaking sculpture,
Yakshi, in the newly built dam site in Malampuzha, Palaghat District in north
Kerala, in 1969, gave the sufficient impetus for his artistic self and ever
since he has been doing sculptures through the length and breadth of Kerala,
braving all the odds.
(Henry Moore)
Thinking of Kanai’s sojourn in public art so far (he is in
his early eighties and going strong still), one comes to know that it was not a
cake walk though no other sculptor could really make so much an impact as Kanai
did not only in Kerala’s landscape but also in the psyche of the people there.
Kanai rewrote the social and cultural mores of Kerala after waging a tough
ideological and aesthetical fight with the orthodox and hypocritical society.
It is a miraculous feat considering the number of works that he has done both
in the public and private domain during a time when not enough state of private
patronage was available in Kerala. However, there was an upward momentum among
the cultural activists and benevolent patrons through rare, at that time as all
of them were look for some indigenous expression in Kerala’s art against the
larger backdrop of the modern Indian art.
(Barbara Hepworth)
As mentioned before, Kanai is not really a name to reckon
with outside Kerala, a fact that so many diehard fans of Kanai love to dispute.
They would say that it is not Kanai problem but the others’ inability to
understand him. Sceptics would say that Kanai doesn’t have enough movable works
to show in the galleries as he has devoted his time and energy in creating
monumental public sculptures. Both may be true to an extent but the real
problem lies in the systemic apathy, fueled by the artist’s own reluctance and
complacency, in promoting Kanai beyond Kerala. Look for Kanai Kunhiraman in
Youtube. You will find more that twenty videos featuring the artist, his works
and his interviews, all in Malayalam. It is never an issue if someone chooses
to speak in his mother tongue. But today we have the facilities to develop
subtitles, using easy technologies. None seems to have bothered to do so.
Hence, Kanai remains confined in a language shell. It is true that a work of
art would speak for itself, and Kanai’s works do speak for themselves and at
times for the artist too.
A google search would definitely yield a few articles about
Kanai in English. Some academic journals also must be having studies written by
scholars, all in English. But while the former materials talk the same stories
told by the artist himself at various points (artists have the tendency to
repeat the same story about their lives and works to different journalists and
writers thinking that they all would make different stories about them but
unfortunately all of them would repeat the same words of the artists), the
latter are full of academic jargons and contortions that leave an interested
reader disappointed. What is the solution to save Kanai from this conundrum
that he himself also has partly contributed in building up? The solution is
simple; make more literature on his art in various languages other than in
Malayalam. As English is the link language for us in India, ideally that would
be the first vehicle to redeem the limited reputation of a legendary sculptor
like Kanai.
Kanai’s reluctance to participate in gallery based shows
with his sculptural miniatures or sculptures created for disseminating through
galleries is one of the reasons for his limited reputation elsewhere. He is
also a painter but in paintings he has a different aesthetics which he had
employed in some of his non-figurative sculptures and also a pictorial language
long abandoned by his contemporaries. He is all the more happy to show his
paintings but those who are impressed by his sculptures perhaps wouldn’t like
to have the paintings as they find them less moving and persuasive like his
sculptures. Kanai writes poems in Malayalam but they too are circulated within a
niche audience that perhaps don’t have anything to do with the major poetry
loving circles in Kerala. Caught between his ambition to be known also as a
painter and poet, and his perennial identity as a sculptor, Kanai’s reputation
needs to be salvaged as an artist who has been instrumental in changing the
artistic mindscape in Kerala along with a few other artists other than Raja
Ravi Varma.
(Kanai Kunhiraman)
I feel the need of Kanai’s story to be told to a larger
audience that still thinks him as a new finding. It is not necessary that the
greatness of an artist is understood during his life time. An artist’s worth is
always revealed through the layers of time and the endurance of the aesthetical
relevance of their works in the given societies, and their capacity to renew
themselves, ideate and makes intellectual negotiations with the changing public
perceptions. One may go up or down in reputation irrespective of the present
status. However, some stories have to be told so that they would become the
planks from which the others could dive deep into his creative life and know
more. This series is intended to do that. Welcome to the series.
-
JohnyML
Thanks for sharing... contextual..
ReplyDelete