(K.P.Valsaraj)
Artist K P Valsaraj is no more. Is it an obituary that
I am going to write? Do I know him enough to write about his life or art, let
alone his personality? I had met him once, spent a few days in a camp and had talked
about art. Is it enough to write about an artist? I look at the social media
thinking that I get some more information than that I know. Most of the
artists, at least from Kerala, have condoled his passing. Everyone underlined
his mild nature and silence that he maintained in a crowd. People remember him
as a good person, devoid of blemishes. Goodness is a shroud, a public image
that we all are destined to cover ourselves with, especially when we are dead.
If I am not going to write about Valsaraj, what am I
going to ramble around? I would like to write about death. But I realize that
death is a subject that cannot be contained in a small essay like this. Many
have written about death so brilliantly that one feels like dying for the sake
of experiencing that exquisite feeling imparted through the words. I understand
that I am not qualified to write about death because I have not experienced
death. However, I can write about someone’s death in the social media.
Valsaraj was active in social media. They say, one’s
character could be assessed by the books that he reads or keep. Today, in the
age of social media, one’s personality assessment could be done by the messages
that he posts or the information that he shares. While there are people who masquerade
themselves as different people with high level of IQ and EQ through their
carefully curated social media posts. There are others who expose themselves of
their vileness through careless and mindless words. Valsaraj was not one among
them. He posted what he liked deeply. Rarely he posted his own photos or his
works. He shared mostly information and opinion that he thought socially
relevant therefore closer to his heart. There was no posturing of an
intellectual.
Some people are liked by others not because they are
great in their field of activities but because of their public image as calm and
composed person. They call it ‘a sorted personality.’ Dealing with a sorted
personality online and offline is an easy affair. There wouldn’t be subtexts
and innuendos or covert messages. Valsaraj came across as a straight person.
His posts didn’t make much in the market of ‘like economy’. But death tells us
that he had actually gained a lot of respect while living. There are people
like that in the social media whom we miss if they do not post anything for a
couple of days. Getting into that category is a really difficult thing. There
other people who are simply tolerated because they are in our friends list. We
may not like them or their posts. Their outbursts of self-righteousness may be
nauseating for us, still we simply tolerate them.
Artists die. Their families and friends mourn for some
days. Then they are healed of his/her absence. Time heals them. They come back
to their lives. Even when the families forget their diseased kin some other
people elsewhere remember them once in a while. Not because the social media
throw up memories but because they have left some deep impressions. When it
comes to the case of Valsaraj most of them, including myself said the same
thing; they had met him once in a camp or in some cultural program. The
mourners seem to have lost the chance of talking to him because all of them
said the same thing; they saw his tall and deep personality from a distance. A
silence enveloped him always so they kept themselves away from him.
Isn’t it a miracle that a person whose life is an
enigma to the rest of the world barring his family and close friends, liked by
many in the same way; simply because they have not talked to him? Many haven’t even
seen his works closely. Was he a celebrity, a reticent one? Not at all. He was
a person who perhaps preferred to live a life far away from the maddening crowd
of artists. He had a past and he too was arrogant when he was young and a radical,
so said one of the posts. He was devoted to the ideology that he subscribed to
in those days. He was a part of the Radical Painters and Sculptors Association
otherwise known as the Radical Group (which some JNU professors finally called
the ‘Kerala Radicals’). The Radicals were against the retrogressive aesthetics
prevalent in 1980s. But the facts show us that they were not radical enough.
They were against the money making artists. The art boom of 1980s (a temporary
phenomenon that hadn’t impacted the art scene of India as a whole) brought
forth the then middle aged and old artists like the Bombay Progressives. Everyone
wanted a Husain or a Souza in their homes. That was the decade when Ravi Varma
got it from both the sides. He was equally criticized by the retrogressive
aestheticians as well as the radicals. Finally, Ravi Varma made all the money,
so were the Progressives. The Radicals committed symbolic suicide followed by a
real one.
Valsaraj was against Expressionism, I should say because
the artists accused of retrogression were painting in the Expressionistic style.
So he time travelled to reach the period of Impressionism and Fauvism, an offshoot
of Expressionism while his colleagues were working with various forms of
Expressionism. So it was a contradictory and funny situation. Valsaraj however
extricated himself and settled in the area that he had chosen. He did not
change. When I saw him painting in 2018, I was astonished. He still painted in
a derivative impressionistic and expressionistic style. Can I accuse him of being
stubborn or Peter Pan-ish? No, I cannot. There are artists who works in a
certain way even after known that the style of their choice was old and no more
in fashion. Still someone pursues it, there must be an artistic stubbornness.
Who is going to write about artists when they are gone?
People who knew them definitely will jot down words of emotion. But will there be
someone to assess and appreciate his works, beyond an obituary? It boils down
to the need for artists make their own legacies, legends and folktales so that they
are widely circulated in social media or in friends’ circles. Isn’t it terrible
that an artist passes off with no evidence than his works, but no stories, no
legends and no folktales? When you are writing someone else’s obituary, in fact
you are writing your own obituary because your writing adds to your legend and
folktales. Hey, this man used to write good obit pieces. And here today he is
gone so let’s talk about the obituaries that he has written till date.
JohnyML
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