 |
| Jatin Das at Sarala Art Centre, Madras/ Chennai |
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE to
separate the public and private persona of Jatin Das. They shade into one
another indivisibly. Whether gauged by his life or his art, he emerges as a
larger-than-life, electrifying personality.
His paintings and drawings have a restless energy, an almost palpable
flow of coursing colour, like blood
through the veins. His focus is Man.
He crams into the human form all life, both within and without it.
His nudes ~
whether as supple line drawings or earthy oils on canvas ~ flow from reservoirs
unseen, encounters uncharted, passions unquenched. His hunger for life, for
experience, for rewarding relationships, is torrid, tangible and occasionally
teasing. What fuels his burning pace? What music palpitates through his being?
Can he cram all he wants to into a single, stratified life?
His paintings have
proved to be best-sellers in New Delhi,
where he lives. Every alternate interview he’s done has proved controversial ~
for Jatin does not mince words, whether about inter-personal relationships or
sharing views on current politics or the commerce of art.
In person, this
recurrently angry, middle-aged man’s interests flow into all matters that touch
the human discourse. His artist’s soul
analyses subjects as diverse as Indian classical music, art education, the
cut-and-thrust of living in real and surreal time. His pride in his Indian
roots surfaces at the most unlikely times. Delta-like, Jatin encompasses as
much as he can within the surge of a river in spate.
“Why can’t a
drawing or painting be accepted for what it is? My work never has an agenda,”
he protests, his hands agitating the air in a flurry of gesture. “I don’t set
out to do anything. My work is not narrative. It’s not telling a story. I paint
first, then draw the outline. I see something and just feel like translating
that onto paper. That’s it.”
Jatin’s subject
matter is derived from everyday inroads into life. From the intense colours of
a sunset over his terrace. From the ecstatic shrieks and cries of children at
play outside his door. From the captivating body language of sweepers,
construction workers and domestic help.
“I take
photographs of trivial things ~ when a tree is cut down, when new sprouts of
sienna and shades of browns and greens appear on a dead log,” reveals Jatin the
individual. “These photographs are just manifestations of my concern. They are
never enlarged. I write a bit of free verse occasionally. I listen to a lot of
music. I am open, willing and ready to be exposed anything and any influence
which comes my way.”
But why is the
human body a constant in his art? Is that an obsession? “I have been painting
human figures for many years. So many works get cancelled in my mind. It is not
the fear of death, but that the factual linear time is short. Every time I
finish a work, I feel it is a starting point, and the feeling continues,” Jatin
explains. “Usually, I like working on a single figure. Now and then, two
figures together have periodically emerged unintentionally. Recently, I’ve become
conscious of it as a series. I suppose I’ve become more and more conscious
about human relationships and our predicament, with the man-woman relationship
as the most complex of them all. But it’s in no way a documentary of anything.”
Is the sheer physicality
of his renditions deliberate? “I try to capture a mood, an emotion. And the
body, the form, the physicality is accidential,” Jatin avers.
Jatin’s words flow
torrentially, changing colour and direction in response to moods. He is as
quick to disgust as to laughter. He enters the spark and fusion of discussion
almost with glee. Phrases from Bengali, Oriya, Hindi and French dapple his
conversation. The poetic, rather than the prosaic, is his chosen metier,
whether verbally or visually.
Winding through
the diverse bylanes of his life, he recalls Mayurbhanj in Orissa, where he was
born in December 1941: “A small town with mountains and rivers and ponds and
fish and dance and music all around… a solid traditional and natural locale.”
From there, he moved on to study art at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay, to live and teach in Delhi, and to exhibit widely at home and
abroad.
Here are fragments
from Jatin’s world, in his own verbal strokes:
How would you render yourself
through the prism of art?
I am a
contemporary painter. The traditional painter did paintings or sculptures or
etchings for religion or worship. He was the product of a homogenous society.
The nawab or the king or the temple looked after him. It was a collective
approach that was congenial to him.
Today, it is
tougher because of the pressure of the industrial situation. Besides, there’s
your ambition and the fight for survival. I work alone. My work is not
religion-bound, but every work of art is bound by the spiritual.
Are working conditions in India conducive
to your art?
In our country,
compared to the rest of the world, we have a lot of freedom that we are not
using. We do not have state patronage or pressures, like in the socialist
countries, of what art should be. Know what kind of freedom I am talking about?
Lack of concern. The indifference of society is a freedom in itself, na?
Our
media is totally indifferent to the visual arts. Our government does not have a
cultural policy. Any committed, serious-minded, involved artist here works in a
state of vacuum. Whether you have a good write-up on your paintings or a bad
write-up, whether you sell or don’t sell, whether you exist or don’t, nobody
will worry. Uday Shankar died, a great genius; but nobody cared. In our country,
you need sustaining power. You have to burn your own fuel and fall back on
yourself because we do not have proper criticism.
There
are many good artists here who realize we are the product of a bastard
situation. (With mounting excitement) Who is aware that at Bombay and Calcutta and Madras ~ you know, the
150-year-old British schools ~ we learnt of Michelangelo and the Greek concept
of sculpture and figuration that the proportion for a beautiful body is
seven-and-a-half heads?
In
our iconography, we have five-head, ten-head concepts. Fantastic! Concepts
which have not dated. I’m surprised that few Indian artists are working with
the virgin material available. I’m not talking of bringing in Indianness by
copying, by aping it. I am talking about digesting or imbibing all this to do
what you want to do.
I’m
not saying this only as an Indian. I’m saying this as an artist.
What do you feel
you have contributed to Indian art?
Oh my
god! Oh my god! That’s such a heavy question! (Laughing aloud) I don’t think I have contributed anything at all to
Indian art. No, no, I am purely responsible for myself. All my work ~ good or bad, whether you like
it or don’t ~ I don’t blame anybody or the situation or anything for it.
Mind
you, many people think I am a painter, so I should be concerned about the
sensibility of Pattachitra or Pichwai or Kangra miniatures only. Personally, I
feel if Kumar Gandharva has arrived at such a stage that, when I listen to him
I sit at the edge of my chair in the audience, I’m terribly envious that I have
not reached there yet. He was lucky because Indian classical music has flowed
like a river, uninterrupted, till today. Contemporary art has had no continuous
flow. It has taken off from the colonial period, from Ravi Varma.
What
I am saying is: contributing to Indian art is all bullshit. I haven’t done a
thing. I’m just waking up gradually. I’m frustrated that I haven’t done enough.
And so much has been done already. In any discipline of art or science, if you
knew how much has been done, you would stop working. It’s only because you have
a compulsion, for no reason, you paint or draw…
How do you
select your themes?
The
landscape (in my paintings) is now contained in the human form. In the past, if
this was the format (hands block spaces
in the air), there were landscapes and smaller figures. What has happened
in the last 18 years or so is that the human form has enlarged and occupied
full space in the canvas and the landscape has been contained within.
When
anybody does a Ganesh, Shiva or Parvati, he is representing iconographic
codification or simplifying it. When I paint a human form, I try to give it an
attitude of charge or energy. Because my paintings are only bare human forms.
They are not clothed. They are not naked. There’s no locale. There’s no
architecture. There’s no vegetation around it. Just the minimal human body.
What’s the
impetus for your art? Are you conscious of any outside influences?
When
I paint a human form, why should I be influenced by a painter who is painting
human forms? Why not by human beings themselves? It is a wrong notion that an
artist has to be influenced by another artist. My experiences are also derived
from theatre, music, dance, painting and poetry… and cobblers and
basketry-makers.
There
are many persons you have been carrying around with you to your bed or to your
house. I don’t know much about how work evolves, but I do know some aspect of
it ~ from eating, from drinking, from gardening, from making love, from taking
a walk or from being concerned with other people or picking up the suitcase of
an old lady who can’t carry it…
My
work has evolved in different directions within the main current. I have not
yet exhausted that direction. When I do, whether the public like it or not, I
will go on to another. But I will go naturally; I will not force myself. Each
canvas differs in terms of handling. But they are not very different because I
am the same person. I have the same expertise in my fingers, in my muscles.
Now,
I look back and find different rhythms at different periods. This rhythm is
unknown to the artist and (vehemently)
I don’t want to find out. It is not
necessary. Believe me, all this analysis is meaningless… I don’t know my work
fully well. By indirect observation, I find I am pre-occupied with the human
predicament or charge and energy, that is the governing pivot around which the
human being lives.
How important is
technique to you?
I
believe every medium has innumerable possibilities. It is the journey of the
artist, what he or she discovers. The technique is just a vehicle. It’s your
mind, the spiritual content of your work that’s important. Technique is not
important, but the whole of the western world is caught up with the innovation
of newer techniques for the sake of newness.
I am
open and willing to try different mediums or techniques if I can make them my
own, to say what I want to say.
Is this business
of exhibitions important to you?
When
I exhibit, it is a fraction of the total body of my work in the studio. The
total body of studio work is a fraction of my total thinking. So, it is a
fractional thing you are seeing. On the other hand, there are many paintings
you may have in your mind that you just cancel in your mind. You never do them.
How about that?
One
is caught up in the vulgarity and basic dichotomy of modern living. I’m not
living in the Himalayas and I’m not being
looked after by society and the state. I paint and I sign on my paintings.(Furiously) One has imbibed the western manifestations of
a gallery and museum and selling and cataloguing and all that nonsense which,
personally, I don’t believe in but, for my own survival, I have to be a part
of.
When
I paint, nothing matters. But it is also human that I should like people to see
my work. I would like my work to be sold and written about, but I’m not
ambitious at any cost.
How do you feel
about the morality of selling paintings?
Everybody
has to sell their commodity to survive. The only difference is I am not selling
my soul. I am not making sweet, romantic Indian landscapes for foreigners and
Indians to buy, those who will match their curtains and carpets with my
paintings. My paintings pose a great problem for people to buy because they are
stark and confront you. If you have one in your house, it will demand your
attention. You can’t ignore it as a wall hanging.
I
have given away my work free to very close friends. I have sold my work at
half-price or in installments. Sometimes, I don’t sell or show a work to some
people. (Sadly) But I have also
learnt a lesson. I have given away drawings that are still rolled up or left on
a shelf.
Now,
I even want to price my lovely brochures nominally, so that you won’t throw
them away. This is the modern situation. I am not living in the 18th
century or the 6th century or whatever…
How do you
relate to your viewing public?
Intellectual
understanding is a nonsensical thing, a false western attitude. What is
important is exposure and familiarity, not understanding.
In
1976, I was taking my drawings to the Kumar Gallery in Delhi in an autorickshaw for an exhibition.
The rickshawallah said: “What are these? Can I see?” So, I took him along
before the opening and he went around. He said, “It’s the first time I’m
looking at such work.” And in his own simple Hindi, he realized that the
figures were tense and full of energy.
Let
me give you another situation. I was holding a show in England. People
arrived. Just before entering the gallery, they asked me, “Are you a cubist?
Are you an expressionist?” They want to term me, to place me. It’s like
westerners expecting Indians to be snake-charmers or elephant-riders or,
maximum, painters of miniatures and temple sculptors. (Indignantly) They are not ready to accept that contemporary Indian
art exists.
How important is
art education?
Our
total education system is faulty. The British made a hotchpotch of it to churn
out clerks, not to educate people. Schools and colleges should be centres where
you are longing to go, to learn. The bridge between school and home and
society, between art and science, should be deeply embedded in the system. All
the allied arts ~ tribal, classical, folk, contemporary ~ should be shown to
children at the primary level without force.
What
is the point of going to Ikebana classes for a young, sophisticated lady who
does not even water her plants at home? We are aping the superficial western
world of the 1930s and 1940s. The government is doing nothing to curb video
games. They don’t realise it will create generations with all kinds of
aggression. It is vulgar. (With agitation)
These days, people are buying real-looking plastic pistols for their children!
Does the art
critic have a major role to play in the Indian context?
It is
his role to bridge the gap between the artist and the viewer or listener, to
put himself in the shoes of the artist and find his pulse. He should be
educated, sensitive, ready, willing to travel with the artist. He should start
out with humility, not with arrogance. Only if you have artists do the
historian and the critic and the buyer and the onlooker come in.
The
critic’s role is also to go in search of the artist. His personal viewpoint is
of no consequence. He should be so enlightened that his personal viewpoint
becomes a total viewpoint with a knowledge of the art world, the art situation,
the social surroundings in which the artist lives.
Is there more
that you’d like to share of yourself?
Sometimes,
I’m so frustrated by my own situation that I feel I should give up painting and
go and work in a village. But I’m not cynical. I still have the energy to
bulldoze or fight. Or dash off a letter to the (Lalit Kala) Akademi or to the
government blindly, to register my protest.
I’m
concerned about everything. I go and spy if someone is beating up a child. My
friends complain that I indulge too much, dissipating energy. That’s how I am
and it’s too late in the day to change.
I’m
also very impatient ~ not scared ~ that time is running out. There is so much
one is capable of, that one hasn’t done. So much one wants to do that one hasn’t
done…
(Originally published in Indian Express, Chennai/ Madras, in September 1983)
No comments:
Post a Comment