Some Portraits: An Exhibition in Photoink, Catch it if you Can!

(FN Souza by Richard Bartholomew, not in the show, for representational purpose only)

In India bad exhibitions often take place in mainstream venues and the good ones in remote and extremely guarded avenues. ‘Some Portraits’ is a good show being held at Photoink, a gallery remotely located, may be for an art critic like me who prefers to walk to the galleries. Tucked away inside the Green Avenue, opposite the upmarket Vasantkunj but with strangely downmarket roads with ample amount of traffic chaos thrown in for effect, finding out this gallery for a walker like me is a real task and the credit of taking me there goes to the google map. It is a pity that you have to look into the google map to find out a place which is within three kilometres where you live. But once inside, the gallery has a good array of portrait photographs which many an art enthusiast has seen published here and there or exhibited in other shows. However, seeing the moderately sized photographs done in pigment prints with the familiar protagonists in the grand drama of Indian art ‘living’ within the frames, exuding their livelier and youthful selves from close quarters within a fortified gallery is an experience in itself, as the otherwise intimidating surroundings eased by the friendly accosting of the gallery executive.

(GR Santosh by Pablo Bartholomew)

As the name implies it is a show of portraits taken by photography artists namely Pablo Bartholomew, Richard Bartholomew, Madan Mahatta, Sadanand Menon, Ram Rahman, Ketaki Sheth and Sooni Taraporevala. The subjects of these pictures are in the meditative best and the presence of the photographer seems to have not affected them at all. These pictures also give a very pivotal clue in understanding the portrait photographs which are not done with a ‘heavy purpose’ of documenting. There is no sense of intrusion and penetrative gaze in these photographs which itself is a visual forensic evidence for the non-intrusive nature of the photographer. He/she is a friend of the subject and the mutuality of ‘neglect’ that they share during the time of clicking also underlines the mutuality of their interest. The clicker and the clicked are bound by the moment of clicking, if I use the jargon of structural linguistics. Interestingly, the clicking which is a sort of signifying act desperately tries to fix the meaning of the clicked exactly the clicker has found during the time of clicking. While signifier and signified are conjoined in the sign which is, according to the structural linguists, in a flux, the clicked in a portrait remains a constant signifying both his/her past and future and the moment of clicking becomes an accidental decisive moment.

(Krishen Khanna by Richard Bartholomew)

Portrait photography is an interesting genre of photography art because the artist is always interested in the extraordinary nature of the portrayed. This extraordinariness could either come from the arresting features of the portrayed even if he/she is insignificant the larger narrative of events. Perhaps, when a portrait becomes a part, not independent in itself, of a narrative, the negligence of the portrayed subject transforms to become a central character in the future understanding of the narrative and in turn the subject of the portrait him/herself. That’s where a portrait photograph gains autonomy as separated from the verbal narrative surrounding it in the first place. Photographers are interested in people not only for their insignificance but also for their importance. Photography shares a common space with both short story and novel in this aspect that it shares with cinema, theatre and journalism as understood commonly. A short story or a novel pursues the lives of a few people almost blurring the other characters even if they are a part of the narrative frame and in the sequential takes, a photographer like a story writer or a novelist, makes it imperative to vivify the locales where the protagonists of these portraits are located. The time-space coordinate or unity that is mostly observed in novels and stories though is not maintained by portrait photographers, with their pursuance of a subject for a considerable time with disparate lags in between, almost unconsciously attempts the same time-space unity in the photographs taken in different times at different locations.

(Chandralekha by Sadanand Menon)

This unity is what we see in the portraits exhibited here in the Photoink gallery. Late Richard Bartholomew, a diehard art critic and photography artist leads the pack with his extremely truthful portraits of the artists like Manjit Bawa, M.F.Husain, J.Swaminathan, Nasreen Mohammedi and so on. Bartholomew Sr., has been a relentless critic of the art of his time with no malice intended even while pointing out the fault-lines of his own close artist pals. These photographs show how sensitive a man he was as not single picture portrays the artists in a trivial or frivolous moment. I believe frivolity of images without losing their aesthetical integrity is a forte of Bartholomew Jr, that’s Pablo Bartholomew. Though Pablo has developed a career of his own with hallmark subjects, documentary verve and experimental inclination, this present set of portraits shows that how greatly the father has influenced the son, which is not a bad thing at all. You could see the works of Pablo only with a smile on your lips as you tend to go back and forth comparing lights and forms portrayed in the works of Richard.

(Behram Contractor aka Busybee by Sooni Taraporevala)

As I mentioned before, portrait photography could also be called as ‘access’ photography. You can take photographs only of those people in their private domains with who you share a close relationship or friendship. The photographers featured here seem to have this access to the artists who have become the subjects of these pictures. The only exception that we see in the whole show is Ram Rahman whose photographs feature artists outside their private domains (though we have some examples from Sooni Taraporevala and Madan Mahatta). The access could be very personal when it comes to an existing artist-model relationship where the model becomes a thing of worship and adoration for the artist, which we see in the lone portrait of the late danseuse Chandralekha by her production collaborator and companion, Sadananda Menon. Though Menon has taken innumerable photographs of Chandralekha (the enlarged digital version of a few from the repertoire were exhibited in Delhi recently), we have only one portrait in the whole show here, which looked a bit forced inclusion though it does not go contrary to the concept of the show that casually calls itself, ‘Some Portraits’. Ketaki Seth and Sooni Taraporevala also make use of this access to a larger extent and are presented through a sort of genre photographs that include two communities, the artist community and the Parsi community which make interesting overlaps.  Madan Mahatta, who is less celebrated as a photography artist but a photography entrepreneur, is represented with his portrait of three architects in Delhi seen within their creative surroundings.

(Bhupen Khakkar by Ram Rahman)

‘Some Portraits’ is an interesting exhibition that reaffirms my belief in photographs as miniatures that demand private perusal from the close quarters. Perhaps, those artists who attempt huge prints of photographs for effect should think of making them moderate in size and in folio forms so that people could see them displayed either on walls or in albums. Any work of art that induces a sense of solitude in you is a good work of art for artistic contemplation starts where company ends and solitude begins. A photograph is a bench in the grave yard. Sit and watch, you feel very good. 

Killing Image by Over-Display: A Case Story from Photosphere 2016

(Bandeep Singh's works displayed at the IHC as part of the Photosphere 2016)

What happens when some good photographic works and some clever digital works of art are put together in a haphazard display that spreads around the spacious and inviting courtyard of Delhi’s India Habitat Centre? Yes, you get Photosphere 2016. I am sure the organizers of this show including the artistic director who has given an unimaginative name like ‘Panchtatva’ to the project would not take my opening sentence with any amount of leniency, but I cannot help saying it. It was when the Delhi Photo Festival, a sort of photo biennale initiated by Prashant Panjiar and Dinesh Khanna came to the courtyard and plazas around it in the IHC, for the first time in Delhi perhaps people including the curators understood the possibilities of such outdoor display strategies and the photographs that had been otherwise given display spaces in the lobbies of the IHC’s moderate towers came out to welcome the viewers with their visual flair. Delhi Photo Festival did not last there for more than two editions and it slowly migrated to a much more open space at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) with its third edition in 2015. In the IHC, the DPF had adopted an exotic display technique; using most unconventional frames, structures and props to hold the pictures up and it had worked with the curatorial approaches.

Blind imitation of a brand could produce something similar but never the same. That is what is exactly happens with the Photosphere 2016 despite all those good photographs displayed there. The display frames are atrociously kitsch and the ambience creation a bit loud. Oscillating between a carnival space and a high serious museum plaza, the Photosphere as a whole looks a bit overdone like some bridal make up that has gone horribly wrong. Before I get into what attracted me best and what I think generally about photography as a creative medium, let me tell you how conceptual presentations and the overdoing of it could mar the aesthetic quality of a series of works of art. To know it first hand, you should look at the works of Shraddha Borawake who has presented lens based mixed media works in collaboration with a ceramic artist. The large laminated prints are propped on structures and are supported by too many ceramic pieces that, we should understand stand for earth, migration etc, etc. The more I look at it the more I feel the naivety of not only the works but also the whole display. Luckily, Bandeep Singh, one of the mentors and an acclaimed creative photographer who has maximized the possibilities of female body and earthen pot visually in his previous photographic works, this time have exhibited his works on Kolkata low life along the river front (a bit tired subject) on the plaza. The black and white prints have the modern classic quality as established by Raghubir Singh and Raghu Rai.

(Work by Sunil KR)

One of the best series that you could see here is done by Sunil KR, a Kochi based photographer, who under the mentoring of the noted archivist and photography artist Aditya Arya, has documented the dying ponds in different parts of Kerala. Ponds, local water bodies had been the hub of daily human activities in the villages once upon a time and today with the changes in social life they have been discarded. The choking of such ponds not only near the places of worship but also in the vicinity of the human habitats is a visual pointer of the changes in social life; from the community living to isolated living, in urban spaces and apartments, even in independent plots with well made houses where one gets running water either by the water department or from the overhead tanks. The ponds have been now claimed by now three forcers; land, weeds and anti-social elements. There are land-reclamations for the so called development and with these erstwhile ponds and agricultural fields are now turning into housing complexes. Most of the ponds are now filled with weeds and some of them left are the locations for antisocial activities. Sunil’s eyes not only see the degradation of these ponds but also he sees how they these same ponds had been segregated for the use of different castes and classes.

(work by Monica Tiwari)

What happens to the families that include women, children and old people, of those migrant labourers who are left behind to fend for themselves in the most inclement weathers and hostile environments? Monica Tiwari, a young photographer mentored by Bandeep Singh takes her camera to the Sunderbans in West Bengal, one of the wettest spaces on earth with full of marshy lands and rivers. The camera is sympathetic and the gendered subjectivity of the artistic is successful in registering the poignant moments in the lives of the children and women. One of the images that captures the attention of the viewer is that of a woman carrying her children in waist deep water to the school. The joy in her eyes not only in delivering the material care and shouldering the burden literally with utmost care but also in becoming the object/subject of interest of the photographer who is of her own gender, a woman is so palpable in the work. So strong is the apprehension and sort of hopelessness in the eyes of the woman who again stands breast deep in water and looking for some fish to catch. This project is a successful one but only thing that I felt while watching it was the unnecessary sonic effect that has been added to the place of exhibition. The nocturnal sounds of the invisible creatures that live in and around marshy lands do create a sense of eeriness but it kills the intense silence that would have helped watching those strong images.

One of the mentors and noted photography artist and designer, Parthiv Shah, has pitched in with a video-digital-photography project in which he speaks subtly of the environmental issues but adding a few flying polythene packets flying around like wanderers and intruders in restricted spaces. He uses the static images of the historical sites and digitally adds the plastic covers flying in. Each video that lasts for a minute each (together three of them) is an intelligent way of telling how pollutants fly into our historical memories/existence and interestingly caused by our own doings. It reminds us of one thing smartly that these polythene covers do not come into our frames voluntarily nor automatically. They are caused by us. Slightly disparate an installation on the floor of the same projection black cube propped up in the backyard of the IHC is eye catching because of the illumination given to it. Three tin chests/boxes used by the migrant labourers to carry their belongings are lit from inside to illuminate the surface so that we get a feeling of looking into a treasure chest but what we witness is a humble man’s insignificant belongings. Ashim Ghosh’s digital animation and interactive installations look interesting but aesthetically they remain as only interesting as the government projects presentations. May be that is a subtle way of replicating the government strategy by the artist to convey his own ideas but somehow I remained insulated to such an experiment.

 (when display strategies fail)

While witnessing this photographic project, what gnawing my mind was the utter inadequacy of the images to stand as images; the loss of autonomy of the photograph-ic/ed images. As seen both in the Delhi Photo Festival and the Photosphere 2016, photographic images stand with a lot of verbal and supportive paraphernalia, which in fact was not a necessity at the outset of the photographic advents in the late 19^th century. The photographic visual stood on their own supported by the albums general introductions or by the little anecdotes below the album pages. They also stood independently as large framed images on the walls of private rooms and museum galleries. With their migration into the pages of the printed magazines and newspapers, they added to the readerly value of the literature that accompanied it or in turn added to the visual value of the literature itself. Even if they were a part of the literature, photographs often had a certain amount of autonomy. Ironically, today all the efforts are to separate images from the texts and give them autonomy but unfortunately, each image or series needs a sort of verbal narrative in order to hold the various visual elements in the frame together. Is it because that everyone is an image maker today and each image that demands distinction needs an explanation in terms of verbal introduction and contextualisation. In that case, if we reverse the process of viewing, that means if we take the photographic works away from the walls, and bring them back to albums and other methods of display, can they stand alone? I remember the makeshift display in specially created furniture appendages by Dayanita Singh and the book format produced by many a photographer.

One cannot buy a book of photography, book on photography and a photographic album by an artist today because it is damn expensive. Why do they price the photography books so high? Is it because the print quality is so high and good papers are used in production? I believe it is an artificially created value addition: you make a highly sophisticated volume of photography book and price it as if it were a limited edition portfolio. If that is the case there is a predetermination from the publication houses that the common lot that read literature need not buy photography albums thus produced. This is against the very grain of printing technology/philosophy on which the photographic prints are based. I think that make photography an autonomous art, it should be given the album quality back; that means people should be able to buy albums for affordable prices so that they could look at them in leisure. How do we make a photography artist distinct and worth watching when everyone is taking photographs. That’s where the value additions come into play. They should be exhibited not like carnival kitsch but in normal terms and conditions where an image could be seen independently. And then the viewers should be able to buy the copies of the books in affordable prices. While the capitalist market takes the autonomy of images away by making the prints expensive, the same market makes neutralizing efforts by providing everyone with a camera. So we have special photography making by the photography artists and counter photography making by the unintentional artists who wield a smart phone. But so long as we call photography an art form, then it should be given the status of an art form independent of a large text and context.    

One Year of Hema and Chintan Upadhyay’s Life Elsewhere

(an enduring image: Chintan and Hema Upadhyay)

Last year this time she was alive. She would meet with her violent death a few hours later. Nobody can predict when death knocks on the door. Some of us walk into it. Perhaps, each day and each moment we are walking into it. Hema Upadhyay (1972-2015) was not expecting her death that day. She was there at the villain’s den, a fabricating unit in Mumbai, with her advocate, Harish Bhambani, a fatherly figure for her, and was planning to get some documents from Vidyadhar Rajbhar, the killer who has been absconding since then, to move against her estranged husband Chintan Upadhyay, who is currently in jail for the alleged conspiracy that led to the artist’s and her advocate’s tragic deaths. On 22^nd of this month, Chintan Updhyay completes one year in a jail in Thane, Maharashtra. As a friend of both Hema and Chintan, I miss them. People say, Chintan would bounce back and I hope he could after clearing all the doubts if not from the minds of the people, at least from his own conscience. However, Hema wouldn’t come back. But who knows she has already been reborn in another form, in another place, with another destiny completely oblivious of what she had undergone in her previous birth.

I am no judge of people. None is a judge of none. Hence, it is futile to think about the deeds that both Hema and Chintan had done during their lives together. A cursory look at their lives together is fascinating for many because any couple who have fallen in love with each other during their student days and have decided to live together thinking that they are made for each other must find their life and the apparent success that they reaped together and separately in the material world as well as in the Indian art scene have to do something with their own lives then and now. Hema was a Baroda girl, urbane, suave, outgoing, intelligent, good looking, English speaking and caring. Chintan was the quintessential village teenager (in their courting days in the college), uncouth, stranger to urban ways, non-English speaking and a sort of loner. The same old story, of all those young couples who fall in love when they are students. We do not hear an urbane boy falling in love with an unrefined girl in a college. If at all that happens, the setting should not be a college, instead a village where the boy reaches there as a city bred and English educated youngster in the role of a doctor or a saviour of some sort; a reformer in denim clothes.

(Hema Upadhyay)

After their education, both Hema and Chintan moved to Mumbai to find a foothold in the art scene. Hema was not that ‘pallu’ pulling and ‘roti’ making type of girl who would sit at home and let her man to toil all day to bring food to the family table. For some time, in the beginning, Chintan worked as a gallery assistant and Hema too might have done something to make their life worthwhile together. Much before Chintan could make it in the art scene, Hema, by becoming the ‘bahu’ of the Upadhyay family and changing her name from Hema Hirani to Hema Upadhyay, found her success in the art scene in 2000 (just within two years after they moved to Mumbai) as she was declared the Triennale Award Winner. Allegations of favouritism were thick in the air but the work that Hema had presented was impressive, perhaps for the Indian standards of art practice, and could show the possibilities of her pursuing an international art language and predictably she was picked up by the major galleries like Bodhi (now defunct) and later by Chemould Prescott Gallery in Mumbai.

Though comparisons between the growth rates of couple artists anywhere in the world would starkly reveal some sort of imbalance not only because of familial gender disparities that operate within the domestic front but also because of the patronage that one of the couple gets from the galleries. Take any artist couple in India, the balance always tilted; when the tilt is accepted or rather maintained for the perpetuation of the families that they have created together they remain as a couple. The case of Hema and Chintan was not different. While Hema’s break came through the Triennale and then via reputed galleries, Chintan got his break in the Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery in Mumbai in 2003 with his exhibition, ‘Commemorative Stamps’. What we see is a huge tussle between the artist-couple for social acceptance. Hema was a natural swimmer in the safe waters of the art market ocean while Chintan remained a ‘trouble kid’ constantly searching for not only aesthetic acceptance but also intellectual acceptance by the elite academic section of the art market.

(an image one does not want to remember)

Once again I draw a comparison between Hema and Chintan though I do not like any kind of comparisons between people because I deem them as unique and incomparable. Hema’s art had taken an international turn with the Triennale and the after going through a series of art projects, she could establish herself as a name to be reckoned with in the South East Asian art scene, through her easy (and troubled at a later stage) flirtations with environmental, feministic, hyper-real, existential issues. From her ‘Chandelier’ with match sticks to the site specific seed planting in Bangalore to the assemblage paintings to the last solo exhibition with rice grains, Hema maintained a steady pace almost guarding her personal troubles in the domestic front without it getting reflected in her works of art. During the boom days, like any other couple in the art scene both Hema and Chintan were living a life in suitcases, hotel rooms, airport transit lounges, residencies, party hopping, socializing and so on. Nature was being drained from their life together. It became an arrangement of convenience with two people sharing a surname out of wedlock and trying their best to keep it like that as is being done by several couples in the art scene.

In the meanwhile, Chintan was looking for his honour. His works changed from their initial arrogant and erotic expressionism to somewhat suave market friendly populism; I could clearly see him moving from William De Cooning to Andy Warhol. The ‘Commemorative Stamps’ had established the shift. But Chintan was gunning for more. Hungry for fame and acceptance, Chintan subconsciously competed with Hema, his wife, and went on experimenting with his art language to find acceptance in the international art scene. In retrospect we could see Chintan was desperately showcasing his talents not only in his paintings which were lapped up by the market but also by portraying himself as a perpetual rebel. His full page advertisement in the Times of India newspaper as a pregnant man was one such effort to tell the ‘non-art’ world about his ‘pregnancy’, a metaphor that would establish his counter-womanhood vis-a-vis Hema Upadhyay, who was said to have refused a baby to Chintan. Also this advertisement said loud and clear to the world that he was about to ‘deliver’ the best. The initial success of the couple brought them together to do a collaborative work titled ‘Made in China’ (2004) in the Viart in Delhi. An impressive show however did not have the heat to fuse them together for future projects. They again separated their ways. Chintan had already forayed into performance art with his ‘Bar Bar Har Bar Kitni Bar’ in Baroda. He had created a rural art residency program, Sandarbh in 2006 and also had addressed crucial issues of female foeticide in his home state Rajasthan and legitimacy of piracy in the market of ideas.

(Hema Upadhyay)

Towards the end of the first decade of the new millennium the separation between Hema and Chitan had become a public with their divorce case and property feuds between them. The Mumbai tabloids always hungry for juicy and spicy stories in regular intervals published the micro details of their marital dispute as if the whole world was keen to know about it. In fact the constituency that was interested in their dispute was so small and was confined to Mumbai and scattered in small little gossip pockets elsewhere in the country. I am sure that these news items might have given them a sort of temporal high because only the rich and affluent got print space when they fought each other in the bedroom as well as in the court. In that sense, this couple too had reached that level of socio-economic affluence as their private life was out there for others weave yarns of their own. However, this high was not going to last. The ugly turn of events forced them to take drastic decisions that led Hema’s health going haywire adding a lot of weight, almost making her an unfamiliar person even within the art scene, and Chintan moving out of Mumbai that had brought him fame, name, richness, success and friends and settling down in Delhi.

What made this couple a wonderful one was their effort to keep their necks out of the troubled waters even when they confronted the worst things in life, obviously created all by themselves. Both Hema and Chintan worked hard and created works of art and exhibited all over the world. Chintan took a sabbatical and went abroad, doing itinerant projects in Mexico, Germany, Hungary and so on. He took a lot of pleasure in ideating visually and verbally through his facebook page as if nothing had gone wrong with his life. This was a commendable step from both of them. But none knew that things were degenerating from within. They were in fight even after living separately. He had to face another case for allegedly painting pornographic pictures on the walls of their Juhu house in order to disturb Hema. Things were losing their sanctified tragedy and were going to a sort of comedy. People, as always were interested in taking sides and slamming the other. Personally I was out of all these. I hardly visited Chintan in Delhi. He too had collected friends who could give him temporal highs. I was a misfit there. I met Hema in the Chemould in one of those days and I could not recognize her. She had put on a lot of weight and the dimpled smile had gone and in its space there was suspicious smirk that often women give to their estranged partners’ friends.

(Chintan Updhyay)

We are nobody to reverse the chain of events. The tragedy could have been averted. But the tragedy happens. That’s how the world works. I look at the pictures of both Hema and Chintan everyday as I have kept it right in front of me; the catalogue of their one and only show together, ‘Made in China’. Hema stands in the forefront. Chintan stands behind with his hands folded across his chest. The pair of glasses that he wears is normal and the shirt less flowery. He was yet to make a sartorial reinvention for himself. Hema too stands looking intently at the camera, smiling. She has a U cut white top which shows her collar bones and neck. Both of them look so simple and straight. They are there to welcome the world into their lives. Their eyes are not cunning. They have not yet learned the tricks of the world. Greed, avarice and ego have not changed their facial contours. Like Keats I too wish they remained the same forever , forever young and innocent. That’s only a wish. But the apparent reality is that Hema is no more and Chintan is in jail. Shall we learn something from this? Yes, we have a great lesson. Nothing matters for we do not exist. We are just a part of the universe, the immense and the indestructible. But we make ourselves so fragile.

Jaipur Incident: Easy to Call it Intolerance, but We Need a Different Approach

(Radha Benod Sharma after being attacked in Jaipur- source net)

Suddenly we all will now speak about intolerance. In the second consecutive year once again the miscreants have hit the Jaipur Art Summit, a low key art expo which has been taking place in the illustrious Pink City, Jaipur, Rajasthan, citing obscenity in one of the paintings displayed there. If last time it was a flying cow done by a young artist Siddharth Kararwal, this time it is Radha Benod Sharma, an Indian artist who has been living in London for the last eighteen years and trying to do all what he can to help a few struggling young artists in his home state as well as in West Bengal, not only by funding their art activities but also by promoting them in the shows presented by his own organization. The allegation against Benod Sharma, the artist raised by a woman activist from the hitherto unheard of Lal Sena is based on a work  where he has painted a half nude reclining woman at the lower left foreground of the painting.

As all of us have seen it in the news channels, the alleged obscenity in the painting slowly gives way to a generic allegation about the artist who in the process of saving his painting from the aggressive woman activist ‘violating’ the modesty of an ‘Indian’ woman by pushing her away with his elbow. This blurring of the boundaries of two different allegations, one, of the aesthetical obscenity and two, the modesty of a self righteous woman, is far more dangerous than the original content and context of the said vandalism. Here we see the unfortunate scene where the artist is forced to justify his art and act (of painting as well as pushing the woman) by brining the ancient Indian aesthetical history that includes Khajuraho sculptures. It is so sad to see an artist suddenly turns into a culprit and has to stand before the media to justify his painting as well as the painterly effort.

(moral police in argument with the artist)

Today’s Indian Express reports that the woman who had not only raised the alarm but also acted upon it by taking law in her own hands is ‘missing’, that means as the heat had been turned upon her by the Rajasthan Police she went underground. The reports followed after today’s newspaper stories also say that no action has been taken against the culprits. Some of the news portals even gave the picture of the other vandalisms that had happened against Hussain’s paintings at the Gufa Gallery in Ahmadabad to illustrate the present issue in Jaipur with a definite aim to incite the feelings of the intellectual, aesthetic and the secular communities/people in the country. If we are not discerning, we would fail to see the truth. First of all we have to see that unlike Maharashtra and Gujarat where vandalisms against art had happened before, the Rajasthan administration led by the Chief Minister Vasudhararaje Sindhia reacted to the incidents immediately first by shunting out the Police men who roughed up the artists last year and then openly regretting on the unfortunate incident. This time too, Rajasthan Police instead of accusing the artist or the art summit, put the blame squarely on the woman and her outfit for taking law into her hands. This is a commendable thing that we should not fail to notice.

My heart goes out to Radha Benode Sharma who had to face this indignity and also to the organizers of the Jaipur Art Summit. Jaipur is a city besides its historical flamboyance and related touristic attractions of late has become a brand in its own by hosting the world famous Jaipur Literature Festival. A series of small scale art and culture festivals including the Cartist Art Festival and Residency and the painting of the metro stations in the city with the tribal art of India (done by tribal artists and local artists together) have attracted more art people to the city. The artists living in the city and the galleries operating from there also have to be lauded for their efforts to make the historical Pink City more contemporary than before. But at the same time, we should not create a negative feeling about the city because a couple unfortunate incidents happened there in the same venue and within the same context. A conspiracy angle is always possible and also it is easy to connect with the right wing fundamentalism within our country.

(Moral police force proudly displaying their game of the day)

However, I would say, it is easy, yes it is easy to connect this vandalism to the right wing fundamentalism in our country. But think again. If we see the whole thing as somebody’s conspiracy to gain local fame and political mileage, then we understand that it is a one off incident, not a norm. Yes, it had happened last year too. But that does not mean that there is a pattern always. If we think calmly, we can see that the miscreants could strike only at a weaker target. If the same lady had gone to the Jaipur Literature Festival after carefully reading one of the latest releases and created a ruckus there for the obscenity/a scene involving nudity in that particular piece of literature, she would have been immediately thrown into jail because an attack on a world famous program which has already become the prestige of the state would have been scarred the reputation of the state in turn reflecting upon the inability of the authorities to curb such stray incidents. Compared to this we all know the Jaipur Art Summit is a weaker target. But attacking even a weak target like this, they know would create ripples in the country. They were looking for a cheap mileage. The miscreants would not have touched the same painting had it been in the India Art Fair in Delhi, for it also is a cash rich and powerful platform patronized by the rich and affluent of the country.

I have to say that in the city of Jaipur, people who are involved in the art scene are aware of the lurking danger. In the beginning of this year, when I was curating the Cartist project in the city, the organizer insisted that a Hanuman carrying a the hill image painted by (with no nudity, no bad implication, nothing, a popular image of Hanuman) the Mumbai based Raj More should be removed because he thought the miscreants would attack the project as a whole. Though the artistic stubbornness won in the battle of nerves with the organizer, there was a palpable tension when the car on which the image was painted, was displayed in the city. I also faced the ire of the fundamentalist of the local kind in Pune in 2015, where the head of the Pune Biennale and myself as the project director of it were heckled and the painting done by Manil-Rohit of Delhi was taken to the Sivaji Nagar Police station. Unlike in Jaipur, we became the butt of ridicule not only by the miscreants but also by the Police force. Unfortunately, the Pune Biennale organizers did not display courage to go public about it and draw people’s attention. I consoled myself and the artists by saying that the organizers had to survive in their city to which I was an outsider.

(a foreigner trying to protect the work from the moral police woman)

If I had insisted it would have become a national issue. But I did not because I knew that it was a part of the ongoing intolerance. We have not been hearing such things for a long time now. The country’s attention has turned to nationalism and other issues including the demonetisation. The incident in Jaipur should be condemned. But if we make it a part of the intolerance debate, then unnecessarily we will be giving more mileage to the miscreants than to the real issue. There should be a total sensitization in the country towards art to which there should be measures taken up by the governments irrespective of their political agenda and ideological leanings. When we hear some random woman or man judging a work of art it sounds more obscene than the obscenity that they allege the work of art in question has. Hence, there should be a model code of conduct for the Police men and the party workers of all kinds where it should be categorically said that the judgement of a work of art is to be done by the qualified people. If someone oversteps this, they should be given exemplary punishment and I am sure Indian authorities are not that bad that they couldn’t see the absurdity of such vandalisms. Let us divert our attention towards that than celebrating this issue and asking the governments to be answerable to it. Just treat it as a law and order situation and be vocal about the value of aesthetics in public life. To do that the artists themselves have to go beyond their market values. They should become philosopher kings of their own worth. 

Meaning of Art and the Art of Gopikrishna: Beyond Meaning and the Works

(Life and Death of Sreedharan Gopikrishna, a painting by Gopikrishna)

How far could art make meaning and move the viewers towards those meanings? Is it possible in our times where the popular symbolisms have lost their intrinsic symbolic values and stand for what they signify and nothing more than that? Saussure must be proved wrong by now. He said, sign no longer signifies the signified and the act of signification could be flexible and be liable to open interpretation. This deconstructive linguistic approach was a great liberator though the ‘maya’ of things has been emphasized by the Indian philosophers many centuries before Saussure. Though Saussure and those who followed the post structural school of linguistics had helped liberate us from not only the domination of the textual meanings and authorial intentions but also from the socio-cultural and political texts that were mowing down those who had been in the lower rungs of the hierarchy. But today, deconstruction seems to be a failed project for the sign stands for only the sign and if anybody sees anything beyond it he/she is accused of over reading, limiting all the possibilities of inter-textualities and sub-textualities. Hence, McDonald sign is just McDonald sign and it does not reveal the subtext of homogenisation of taste via culinary colonialism via economic globalization.

Take any sign and the monolithic signified implied by it, the possible sub texts are subtle and if at all there, they are used for defining social hierarchies than creating resistive fronts, with the signs and signifieds together creating a chain of relationships, which Guy Debord called as the society of spectacles. We are right in the middle of a spectacle. From birth to death, from marriage to film release, from elected presidents to demonetisation, everything is presented and understood as a spectacle so that even the most painful event in the world could be seen passively as a spectacle, like muted display of fireworks. The latest incident that one could be reminded of is the accidental shooting of a dancing girl on the stage by a drunken reveller in a marriage party. She is seen dancing on the stage and after a few minutes we see her crumbling down into a heap that sprouts red hot blood. A homicide made into a spectacle!

(Gopikrishna, artist)

However, when it comes to art, suddenly people want to know more about the hidden meaning more out of habit than their real intention. Most of the spectators of art think that a work of art is a set of hidden meanings, as in the case of church art during the pre-Renaissance and Renaissance period both in the south and north Europe. In fact, the post Renaissance art history or rather the very discipline of art history was developed based on this esoteric aspect of the works of art, as something that hides a lot of meanings and secrets. With this habit and practice today anything that an artist presents has to have a hidden meaning, which in turn renders the work of art a symbol/sign destined to be decoded, first to understand the artistic intention and next the hidden meanings of it. Reading of hidden meanings also could be taken for the viewers’ intention to see what they want to see in it and it is absolutely a valid way of looking at it. After all, the meaning of a work of art lies with the meaning of looking. You see what you are looking for. When you fail to find it you move away from the work of art. While people take the symbolism of the world in general for the given and the associated values subconsciously, somehow, they actively demand other meanings from a work of art, and ironically, they all want the artists to tell them those meanings that they want to hear. From attributing social responsibility to political commitment, from aesthetical complexity to art historical erudition, from textual meanings to sub-textual interpretations, they want to hold the artist responsible. How is it possible?

I am not talking about those artists who work with a sense of meaning making, with social and political commitments and project based thinking etc. I am talking about those artists who make art because they cannot do anything else in the world. They are born to make art. Most of the time, I think that the real artists and really creative people are those beings who are born to this earth with a sort of curse and destiny. They are people with wings but without its physical manifestations on their shoulders. They are constantly high and in a flight. But the people who move around on the earth willingly submitting to the gravity of the earth do not understand the pleasure of such flights. So they want the artists to make them understand the pleasure of flight which is impossible. As the poet says, to experience that love, either the star should come down to the tip of this grass blade or the grass blade should grow to the galaxies so that it could touch the star. Both are impossible in the physical plane. Love could be mutually remunerated and reciprocated only when it is allowed to grow mystically. Then the star and grass blade could meet. When the viewers grow mystical qualities then only they could understand the qualities of a work of art, the meaning of it and the artist him/herself. Real artists or creative people are like Hijras or eunuchs. They are caught in a different body which is capable enough to dance but unable to interpret the meaning of that dance. They can only say that let us also live here on the earth.

(The Worm Inspector by Gopikrishna)

Gopikrishna is one such artist who tells the world please let me live (jeevikkaan vidu). An artist who silently walks on the earth without hurting anybody either by his life or by his work, however finds that people want meanings out of his works and they read what they want and that becomes point of attack for him. There are stark nude figures in Gopikrishna’s works; those are all his own nudes. The characters that appear in his works as if they were a personal mythology or legend or even a private folklore (which impossible apparently but is possible when that folklore is shared by the folks within his own mental realm) are involved in various activities as ‘seen’ by the artist and most of them are starkly naked. Gopikrishna remembers how he was questioned by several of his viewers and even some reputed curators in India asking him why there were so many male nudes. The artist told them at that time that why this question was never asked to those male artists who always paint female nudes? How is that the female nude is an acceptable norm of art and its accepted history, especially when it is painted by the male artists? Gopikrishna says that when a man paints his own nude or a woman paints her own nude then the society suddenly become morally rigid. According me it is the society’s (that means, the people’s) perennial fear to face themselves and see their own nudes out their own display.

Seeing a nude of a female done by a male artist is palatable for the male audience because her body has been objectified or reduced to a sexual object, which the patriarchal norms have accepted. Ironically, conditioned by these values, even women do not take much of an offence when they see female nudes in art. But a woman painting her own nude is always seen with suspicion. Either she is taken for being morally loose or a destroyer of the social norms; both should be kept away from the mainstream thinking. I am sure that is why many of the Indian woman artists still resist painting their own nudes or the nudes of the other women. However, when it comes to a male painting his own nude, suddenly, there is a total discomfiture among the viewers because they think that this male nudity should be transcended into symbolic appearances as in several phallic structures within the pictorial frame or even the male body itself should be seen as an active sexual body which does not need symbolic means to express. Hence, denuding the male body by a male artist could be seen as an act of not only self aggression but also an aggression towards the society which the polite societies would reject or would look at with some sort of disgust and disbelief, that’s what exactly happened with the works of Gopikrishna.

(Swamy Vaidyar Padam by Gopikrishna)

The male nudes in the works of Gopikrishna are not simply conjured up by the artist in order to shock the society. According to him, human beings are primordial creatures no different from any other beings on the earth. But human beings thanks to their wilful adoption of greed and avarice made clothes, grabbed power and subjugated many. While living in the midst of these systematic societies that accept grabbing, looting and disadvantaging all the other creatures including the nature, Gopikrishna sees the visions of the primordial beings who are interested in the lives of worms and small creatures. Here, the artist is not talking about dispossession and migration to cultures that are strange, instead he talking about a returning to the roots of our own causes; that lies in the primary beings of the earth including the worms. A sensitive human being could see what Gopikrishna is trying to speak to himself through a painting titled ‘the Worm Inspector’. Though the word inspector is something that makes a direct linkage to the society that we live in where everything is inspected closely by the authorities, what we see here in this painting is the curiosity of the people who look at the amazing world of the worms that we often forget to see or even avoid to look at.

Human beings are self centred. I am sure that a bit of selfishness is important for those people who still hold on to the self. Selfish people are tolerable people so long as they grab only what they want. The moment they gather more than they need they become human beings! This gathering is based on ego and also the ego is boosted by the gathering abilities. To increase the abilities to gather, one has to use either intellectual power or physical power. Once you exert physical or intellectual power you start to have a hierarchic society. Ego, the big word that remains invisible in every human being. It manifests in clothes, in hairstyles, in cars, houses, properties and so on. Here is a painting by Gopikrishna, interestingly titled ‘Swamy Vaidyar Padam’. It is an old village barbershop seen. There people like stags are waiting for to be groomed and pruned. The Vaidyar, the barber, is detached yet he has this bliss of rendering people free of their wools/hairs and egos. The people here are happy because they have come to shed it; it shows a willingness to enter into a space that would render you egoless. Vaidyar like god keeps doing his work. And look at the one who goes out with all his hairs shed. How happy he is! The egoless state of being. He has an umbrella in his hand and I am sure he is going to leave that too sooner than later.

(Madonna and Christ by Gopikrishna)

Christian themes come again and again to Gopikrishna may be because they are symbolically rich and he need not interpret it for all those who are familiar with the theological themes which is considered to be universal. However, I do not think that Gopikrishna paints Christian themes because he is hugely drawn towards its philosophy. But what apparently make him turn again and again to the Christian symbolism is the sufferings of Christ. Whether the sacrifice of Jesus Christ has helped in establishing a tolerant and loving society without ego and hierarchies is a disputable fact. But what I like about Gopikrishna’s adherence at times to the Christian themes is his liking for the human suffering for further sublimation. Here we have two works by Gopikrishna; one is titled ‘Madonna and Christ’ and the other one is ‘Planting Christ’. Nowhere in the world one could see the Christian themes painted with such freshness and empathy because Gopikrishna does not see himself different from the son of god who chose cross to throne. In Madonna and Child, Gopikrishna reverses the order of caring into the order of crucifying. One could interpret it in hundred different ways; but I would like to stick to this image and its clarity. Maximum I would say, before anybody could crucify Christ and it should be done by his mother, not once, everyday. Gopikrishna paints his autobiography perhaps, because the Christ is he himself. In ‘Planting Christ’, we do not see Jesus Christ being descended from the cross but we see a dispassionate primordial man (the surrogate of the artist) cutting Jesus into several pieces and planting him hoping that one day there would be many Christs in the world. The scene is gory and unpalatable; but truth is always unpalatable.

(Planting Christ/The Gardener by Gopikrishna)

Those people who take the world and its symbolism easily and ask the artists to explain what they have been doing is given the right kind of answer by Gopikrishna in his painting titled ‘Life and Death of Sreedharan Gopikrishna’. Is there any mission that an artist could take up in this life? Is there any social commitment for the artists above than others? Is there any special message an artist could convey to the world through his works? I do not think none of the above is possible because the human beings in the world are led by their own beliefs. They are not going to change their ways either by seeing a work of art or looking at the life of an artist. What they could maximum do is to look at the work of art and if they are receptive enough they could undergo a sea change. I see the chances of such changes rare and far in between. Hence, there is no question of asking the same to Gopikrishna and asking him to explain himself. He cannot be, like many other artists whom I know, anything than this. Eventually an artist like him is sitting on the hourglass as the times runs by. The kaal (time and death in Indian philosophy) is there in the form of a serpent, remind the physical death of the artist. But he need not panic. What is he? He is just a few colours and a brush, and like a Mughal Emperor, he could be seated at the top of the world, doing nothing but paint because he is just a few colours and a brush. If anybody in the world thinks that they are more than what they are, then all of them should look at this painting. Gopikrishna, like a hijra tells the world, I am like this and in my stark nudity, I am just a few colours and a brush. I do not have any other existence. Let me live the life that I want. The beauty of Gopikrishna’s paintings is this; they do not lead you to anywhere. It leads you to yourself. Art does not have too many inner meanings other than the pleasure of the artist who makes it and the pleasure of the one who sees it. Meaning lies in the beholder’s mind. When the mind is ready open the meanings the meanings come out. When the mind is shut the painting remains as it is. When the mind is done away with the painting too disappears; why painting alone, the painter, the world and the one who writes it too. Bliss. 

Mother of all Politics and Daughter of an erstwhile Actress: Jayalalithaa, Amma

(Jayalalithaa 1948-2016)

On 4^th November, eminent painter, Shibu Natesan and myself were in Tanjavur, one of the richest districts in Tamil Nadu and we were staying that the Tamil Nadu Tourism Guest House situated a couple of kilometres from the famous Brihadeeswara Temple, visiting it was our purpose of being there. The guest house premises suddenly came to a flurry of activities, as an unexpected high tide at a sea shore, and we could see hoards of politicians clad in white and the hall mark towels around their shoulders were busying around and huddling up in each corner to discuss something. I noticed the flags tied to the cars in which they came; the black and red flags with the picture of MGR right in the middle (or is it that of Periyar?). The scene resembled a scene from a typical Tamil movie which has ample amount of political feuds portrayed to add effect to the heroic retribution towards the end of the narrative. Tamil Nadu cannot survive without its melodramatic politics and its manipulative leaders.

 We looked at each other and we knew the gravity of the situation. The activities pointed towards one thing: Puratchi Talaivar Amma, Jayalalithaa’s post-life political scenario in Tamil Nadu. O.Panneerselvam, the party General Secretary had already been appointed as the caretaker of the government with Jayalalithaa’s name still remaining as the Chief Minister of the state. When we were there she had been in the Apollo Hospitals in Chennai for more than a month. We thought of pushing ourselves out of Tamil Nadu for the fear of getting trapped in the mayhem and all hell that would break loose in the streets of Tamil Nadu, god forbid, had it all those activities been indicating the demise of Jayalalithaa. Tamilians are famous for their unbridled expression of grief at the death of their political leaders; they could immolate themselves, vandalise the streets, shops, business establishment, vehicles and cry aloud. Unlike in many other parts of the world, street vandalism is not a sporadic outbreak of lawlessness in Tamil Nadu; violence post-dead of their beloved leaders is a way of expressing their grief because in Tamil Nadu both politics and films are emotional entities, not two separate social phenomenon to be left to the people involved.

(Jayalalithaa)

What makes Tamil Nadu politics so special is the corporeal involvement of people with both politics and cinema. The relationship is visceral, guttural and sanguine, showing its inability to transcend itself to the higher planes of diplomacy and aesthetics. MGR’s death had caused in earlier in 1987. That was when Jayalalithaa was pushed down from the vehicle carrying her beloved leader’s dead body and it was then she made a silent vow to herself that she was going to be the next queen and king maker at times in the state as well as national politics. Perhaps, Jayalalithaa might have forgotten everything the day she was admitted to the hospital; languishing between consciousness, delirium, dream and the visions of the other world, if she had asked for anything must have been her own deliverance from the world and the machines that were going into her innards through various bodily openings. The dead and the dying are less concerned with the lives of the people who are living; living is confusion and death is clarity and Jayalalithaa had almost reached that clarity a couple of months back and I am sure she never wanted to return to confusion.

During those five days that we had spent in Tamil Nadu, visiting the exquisite temples from the medieval period, I noticed how the iconography of Jayalalithaa had changed over a period of time. When I was travelling in Tamil Nadu fifteen years back, in all the posters and hoardings she was shown with a gown which covered from upper torso to the waist level, giving her a sort of asexual appearance. There had been speculations about her upper body, which once had disturbed many a young man out of his sleep. The erstwhile tinsel town sexy heroine no longer wanted her to be seen a sex siren who could dance her way into the lives of men. Despite all her efforts, Jayalalitha had exactly done the same in the case of her mentor and boy friend, M.G.Ramachandran, the reigning superstar of Tollywood in 1950, 60s and 70s. Jayalalithaa through teenager arrogance challenged the macho of MGR (which was already sagging at different levels while his political fortune was on the rise) and he had no other way that accepting her as his muse and girl friend, ruffling many feathers but with his superstardom and political influence MGR could keep all rumours under check.

(Jayalalithaa in one of her movies)

This time, Jayalalitha, acquitted by the court of all cases pertaining to the accumulation of disproportionate wealth, was safely back on the throne and even had made a circular that would make everyone both in the State Assembly and elsewhere address her only as ‘Amma’, not by name. A conscious construction of this Amma image however had its journey through rough roads. The flex hoardings and the political posters all over Tamil Nadu now showed a Jayalalitha, without her special mantle (of course she had taken it off a few years back) and a highly touched up and younger looking Jayalalithaa had taken the central position. The full body length pictures were carefully avoided, instead the bust form was projected. The typical raising of her right hand or the typical folding of her palms in salutation to the people had been removed. It was just a photograph exuding a benevolent authority. What surprised me were the fairness of the face and the redness of the lips. In some of the photographs, a few strands of white hairs were shown along the hairline across her forehead and in some other photographs the white hairs were completely removed. She was shown mostly in a blue sari, with some prints on it, but clearly giving a message of her shedding the image of someone hoarding thousands of silk saris. Her jewellery looked sparse. The most important thing in those posters was the presence of the loosening skins just below her chin, especially on the right side of her face. Jayalalithaa whose dimples, plump cheeks and double chin, defining her hagiographic appeal in the contemporary posters, had preferred to show her natural ageing but surprisingly showing a healthy face and smile. The transformation of herself into a new age Mother seemed complete in those posters.

When a biography hits the stands, one could be sure either the subject of the book has become so important in some field that people are now curious to know about the person or his or her fame has reached to the pinnacle that he/she should be honoured by a biography or his/her death is imminent. A cursory browse at the airport bookstalls perhaps would reveal what the country reading or rather what the publishers want the country to read. Chancing upon a biography of Jayalalithaa’s biography written by author and journalist, Vaasanthi in Bangalore airport a couple of months back suddenly made me curious and I knew something was going to happen to Jayalalithaa. When I picked up the book, Amma was already in the hospital. When a famous personality is hospitalised, the research wings of the media go into a hysteric mode; they dig up all what has been archived and make inferences. And the packages of television programs, condoling the death or the pages of the newspapers extolling the life of the dead are already made and kept. Jayalalithaa gave enough time for the press to prepare her life for publication. Even the timing of her death or the announcement of it is well timed- 11.30 pm. Newspapers could fill all their editions with the story of her death. Television channels get enough time to line up their spots on the next morning. Today is Jayalalithaa’s day.

(Jayalalithaa with MGR in one of the movies)

Two lives are intricately connected yet with no obvious connections; the lives of Jayalalithaa and the film diva Rekha. Two reluctant nubile virgins coming to the big bad world of films due to many pressures including those of their mothers and their financial conditions- that is the story of both Jayalalithaa and Rekha. Jayalalithaa’s father Jayaraman died when she was hardly five years old. Her mother Veda whose stunning beauty had attracted many film producers eventually decided to put grease paint on her face and assume a new name, Sandhya. Perhaps, only the oldies know who Sandhya was and how her acting was like. But everyone knows how Jayalalitha acted. She was not a supreme beauty the way Rekha is but she could sway the minds because she was mostly paired with her mentor MGR and with most of the leading actors of the time. Many heroines who came along with Jayalalithaa faded away as their youthful looks diminished. But Jayalalithaa reinvented herself by the time she was forty years old. She had become the undisputed leader of a political party, AIDMK and the chief minister of one of the big states in India, Tamil Nadu. For three decades she remained in the political mainstream though it was mired by allegations and even a term in jail. She was even accused of breaking a family, having a secret son, maintaining a lesbian relationship with her close friend Sasikala, brutally punishing the dissenters and ironically subjugating each male member of the political establishment especially in a state where the patriarchal values projected by all heroes (Thalaivas of different kinds) and relived the same in the public and private spheres shamelessly by the Tamil males. But Jayalalithaa could bring dignity to the Tamil women. Call them Amma, that is the only way that you could address a Tamil woman who is a stranger to you. Commendable it is in India.

                       

Rekha is the daughter of Gemini Ganesan, a contemporary to MGR and Sivaji Ganesan, the doyens of Tamil film industry. Rekha’s mother too was an actress but Gemini Ganesan did not want to break his own family or acknowledge his daughter despite her future success in the mainstream Bollywood. Rekha’s mother was determined but Rekha, like Jayalalitha was reluctant to join the film industry. But once she was in there was no looking back. She challenged the patriarchal establishment of Bollywood industry by throwing spoke to the wheels of a few established families including those of Vindo Mehra and Amitabh Bacchan, and earning a bad name in the industry as a vamp and home breaker. But the transformation of the ugly duckling, the dark southie girl was phenomenal. She broke all the taboos and evolved as one of the perennial beauties in Indian life almost exuding the magic of a contemporary Cleopatra, whether you like it or not. Rekha got married to Mukesh Agarwal, the former Hotline owner, industrialist and a big time depression maniac. He committed suicide because Rekha was too big for him. Rekha’s name unlike Jayalalithaa’s got linked up to so many younger actors periodically sending the rumour mills go crazy and surprisingly she is even accused of having a lesbian relationship with her personal secretary, Farzaana, who surprisingly dress up like Amitabh Bacchan. Jayalalithaa has a sister in Rekha.

(Rekha, the evergreen actress)

I do not see Jayalalithaa as a power monger. She knew statecraft well. Like Imelda Marcos she too had certain fetishes of collecting shoes, jewellery and sarees. But we have to ask one thing; why it is a thing of avarice and greed when a woman politician wear certain types of clothes or amass wealth while the male politicians amass wealth as if there was no tomorrow. I am not here to justify one corruption against the other. Who knows tomorrow Jayalalithaa’s life would not become a thing of historical interest and all those she had amassed would become museum pieces for public perusal? Don’t we see the avarice and loot of the kings in the museums and now interpreted as their aesthetical interests and sophistication? Perhaps, Jayalalithaa’s life needs such a transformation in the coming days. Pitted against the male politicians in this country, leaders like Mayawati and Mamta Banerjee face the accusation of not being sophisticated. Both Mamta and Mayawati are lampooned for their dressing sense, the former for under dressing like a maid and the other one over dressing like an illiterate neo-rich. Here the identity and the dignity of the house maids as well as those of the illiterate women are brought into question and for public ridicule by the male politicians and patriarchal people. Jayalalitha was not lampooned for either under dressing or for over dressing. She was lampooned for her power and her ability to display it without words. Jayalalithaa is history today and we celebrated another woman leader’s birth centenary last month, of Indira Gandhi. Someone had said about Mrs.Gandhi that she was the only male member in the parliament. Tamil Nadu had one man that was Jayalalithaa, but we can say that only when the benchmark of power wielding is still a man with a lot of authority. Hence, let Jayalalithaa be Amma and the time is not that far when she is propitiated as a full fledged deity in the Hindu pantheon, which is already there in a hero-ine worshipping place like Tamil Nadu.   

When the Art Historian R. Sivakumar turns Sixty

Raman Sivakumar aka R. Sivakumar, the art historian par excellence turns 60 today. Had he been in his native place, Kollam in Kerala, his kith and kin would have celebrated his 'shastipoorthi' (completion of sixty years in life) with a temple visit, huge feast, bestowing gifts and praises and above all showering him with a lot of love. But Sivakumar does not live in Kerala; he lives a hermit's life there in Santiniketan which he had adopted as his karmabhoomi almost thirty six years back. Staying in one place is alchemical as much as travelling turns people into gold; Sivakumar is one such art historian who lives in the sylvan Santiniketan, a place as the name shows, the abode of peace, hugely cut off from the din of urban locations where art historians migrate to in search of opportunities, still feeling shy to venture into the land of opportunities, but occasionally doing journeys to the seats of art and education, imparting knowledge that he has been culling from the great tomes and lives first hand and wisdom that has dawned upon him through intense focus.

Destiny, karma and all those words pin one down to or give wings to one's own life and work, whether we overtly believe in them or not have some strange and fascinating connections with certain people and their lives. Sivakumar,  when he came to this earth on 3rd December 1956 did not know that almost 75 years before him, on the same day a person who would be named Nandlal by his parents was born. This boy who was born in the penultimate decade of the 19th century when the clarion call for Indian nationalistic uprising thundering in the socio-political and cultural firmament would become Nandlal Bose, the great master (master moshai) of Santiniketan. And Sivakumar, from a different century would study him and would take the fragrance, form and philosophy of this master to another century. Strange are the ways of life and the great Leela of births and deaths. Sivakumar's life time friend and sculptor,K.S.Radhakrishnan interestingly born on 7th February 1956, and shares the same birthday with another doyen of Santiniketan, Binod Behari Mukherjee. Was it a mere coincidence or a strategic planning of life forces that these two people from Kerala would take the glory of Santiniketan all over the world, one by history and another by art, perhaps a bit more zealously and devotionally than the true Bengalis who too in no less verve extol the praises of their alma mater and the masters there?

Sivakumar got down at the Bolpur railway station on a sultry afternoon and was a bit lost. Speaking no Bengali nor with any previous experiences of long distance travels Sivakumar was waiting for something to happen and he chanced upon another young boy like him on the platform utterly lost but with a rare sense of pushing through to the right direction. They met for the first time and sought solace in each other's company. The other boy would become K.S.Radhakrishnan. They are still a standing contrast; KSR is like a determined Moses and Sivakumar a shy priest who prefers to move around the innards of libraries learning the gospels of art. Sivakumar started off as a painting student and by the second year upon knowing his talents to register history in an academic perspective, the masters in Kalabhavana advised him to pursue art history. I am nobody to say Sivakumar's switching discipline has been a loss to Indian painting but I am confident to say that his desertion of painting has been a gain to the discipline of Indian art history, perhaps as happened never before.

By the time Sivakumar completed his masters in art history, as it happens to many talented academics he was given a teaching post there in the same department and the rest is history. Sivakumar's studies took roots there in the fertile soil of erudition and imagination initially nurtured by none other than Rabindranath Tagore himself. With a seminarian's discipline, focus, zeal and ultimately the ability to burn one's life for the mission, Sivakumar took it on himself the study of Santiniketan's art history at the outset by vocation then by the force of his own living philosophy. Rooted in one place was never an imposition for the young historian then as he had by the end of his academic training developed a serene detachment from the materialistic life which would later help him to pour his attention in to the details that the itinerant historians of the Bengal School had missed in their treatises.

Proximity with the land of history which he would study in detail later and also with the persons who kept on extending the living philosophy and aesthetics of the place helped Sivakumar evolve not only a historian with academic objectivity but also a chronicler of their lives with unfiltered clarity which he would use later in his works to substantiate and embellish the fresh observations that he has made on them. Sivakumar is a niche art historian who at once focuses the place and all those who shaped up the philosophy of the place: Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Nandlal Bose, Binod Behari Mukherjee, Ramkinkar Baij, Sarbari Roy Chowdhury, K.G.Subramanyan, A.Ramachandran and finally his own friend, K.S.Radhakrishnan. There could be critique on his historical engagement post-Sarbari Roy Chowdhury Santiniketan art as he has not delved deeply into other 'Bengali' artists and visibly aligns his historical with those artists who have a definite Malayali origin as himself. The only answer I could find to defend Sivakumar in this matter is that an art historian by virtue of being the historian of a place need not necessarily be a historian of all those who dwell there but could focus on those people who have prominently extended the foundational philosophies of the school/place that Sivakumar has adhered to from the very beginning of his career as a historian. More importantly, his Malayali identity has never come in, blurring the lines of objectivity when he historicises the works of the three Malayali artists from Santiniketan.

Almost four decades of a career as an art historian has brought the best out Sivakumar and we could happily expect many more best historical engagements from him in the coming days. Indications of this future explorations have already been given by him in his recent work on an imaginary dialogue between two Tagore's (Rabindranath and Abanindranath). What Sivakumar looks for here is their search for a lost language; Abanindranath looks for it in the Mughal era and Rabindranath, in his own erasures. Perhaps it could be seen as Abanindranath excavating the chimerical and Rabindranath submerging one language for the emergence of the other, yet both pining for the loss. The book which would come out of this study would give a definitive new direction to Indian art historiography and would be inimitable, I am sure.

R Sivakumar and Johny ML

At this juncture, it is important to ask what would be the magnum opus of R. Sivakumar. When you have a niche historian it is imperative for each of his works to be magnum opus in their own right. However, I would say the four volumes of Rabindranath Tagore's works published as Rabindra Chitravali during Tagore's 150th birth year celebration exhibition (Last harvest) is it. The labour of love that has gone into the making of these volumes against all odds (especially when there are multiple agencies including the government ones involved in the production of it) has to be acknowledged with the country's highest civilian honours as Sivakumar deserves it. He deserves honours not only for this one particular but also for one of the great propositions in Indian art history, contextual modernism, made in his book on Santiniketan, which in fact has given a discursive tool for regional historians to articulate regional modernisms not only to pit themselves against the hegemonic national modernism but also to find their own voices within the national narratives of art history without feeling secondary to it by virtue of being regional. Sivakumar's studies on Nandlal Bose, Binod Behari Mukherjee and Ram Kinkar Baij are also voluminous and full of erudition and insights.

Sivakumar has been a close associate with both KGS and A.Ramachandran and each time they come up with a new body of works they seek Sivakumar out for the reason that they in their advanced ages need not spoon feed a new historian with the philosophy of their works. As Sivakumar is privy to their intellectual and personal lives, he could come up with gems of views which would give historiographic clues and directions to the future art historians in India. Sivakumar is a great pedagogue. For his students he is Siv da. Amongst the curators he is a giant with a quaint presence, always shy of limelight. Once on the podium, he self engages with the topic so that the audience cannot but follow the lead till the final round of applause of wonderment. Sivakumar curates exhibitions based on his works and the field of engagement and maintains the sanity of a musuem curator. Sivakumar calls himself lazy which nobody would like to believe but he adds that his laziness stems from the fact that if he involves in any lazing around or divert his attention to something else he loses a few minutes from his engagement with art history. Some people relax by doing their work; Sivakumar is one such personality. Sivakumar has the aura of history but he is ready to shed it for a few good jokes cracked in Malayalam and show him some sweets, he becomes a kid once again. I wish Sivakumar many many years of happiness ahead.