Art: Thota Tharani ~ A symphony of strokes

Tharani: a time to take stock

(This article appeared in 2002)


THOTA THARANI means many things to many people. Some know him best as the artist who has held an exhibition of his work every year, a promise he had made to himself after college. Some admire him as the Swarna Kamal-winning art director for films such as Nayagan, Mouna Raagam, Sathya, and Anjali. 

Some are smitten by the naturalistic colour drawings that resulted from his stint at the Banasthali Vidyapith in Rajasthan in 1971. Others were moved by the spontaneous colour sketches on black that he executed over sleepless nights in response to the early strife in northern Sri Lanka, briefly on view at the Sakshi Gallery in Chennai. Some think of him as shy, retreating and introverted, while others try to puzzle out his secret life. Yet, he was credited with the décor for the wedding of Jayalalitha's "adopted" son years ago.

Symphony of Life, an ongoing exhibition of Chennai-based Tharani's paintings at the Lakshana Art Gallery at Race Course Road from September 5 to October 3, proves to be equally puzzling. A display of works done in the year 2000, selected from the gallery's acquisitions, it captures the artist in a time warp of his own making, unusually for a spirit as creative as Tharani.

For each of the paintings at the gallery link back to series by Tharani that are familiar to the eye from the 1980s or 1990s - Force or Symphony or Symphony of Life. Explaining the impetus behind the music-inspired series, the late Chennai-based art critic Josef James wrote: "Tharani moves to the intuitive sense of harmony, rhythm, and continuity to integrate his urges for freedom and refinement. Music generally and symphonic western music particularly have been his inspiration for these spirited excursions. It gives out much colour, in bold harmonies, flashed out in each instance, over strong linear rhythms."

The acrylic colours on canvas spring with gay abandon through the multi-hued borders holding them in, as if seeking to intermingle in free-spirited exultation. Colours so joyous and all-pervasive can seldom be contained by a title, but Tharani tries. The Symphony series began while Tharani was travelling in France in 1976.

"This is my response to the orchestration of music, mainly western classical instrumental. I hear music and I love music, but I don't know anything about music, so don't ask me for details," Tharani had explained during a 1988 encounter. "In Indian music, see, there is either one sitar or veena or tabla; it is a solo thing. Whereas, a western classical orchestra has 60 to 100 violins, about 10 to 20 cellos, and guitars and pianos. There is a lovely break-up of sound that I was interested in. You listen to the music, pick out the notes you need, and make of drawing of it. Then, playing the music, put on the colours. I can identify certain pieces which are influenced by Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite or The Four Seasons by Vivaldi."

To Tharani, technical innovation has always mattered as much as execution. In his Delhi-born Force series, for instance, inspired by a tornado that hit Delhi in 1978-79, different strokes were initially etched on a metal plate, which was broken up - as if from the impact of a cyclone - before the final print was made. Later, in 1987, he chanced upon the Chinese Tangram, the square cut into six triangles, a rhomboid and a square, which fed into the series as patterns in water colour.

The border has always been a crucial element in Tharani's paintings and drawings. It suggests a work that is larger than its actual size, he says, especially when strokes break out of its boundary. This device is much in evidence in the current series, with its patches of colour broken through by lines of contrast that catapult through the often rainbow-like frame. Perhaps offering variants on perspective. Or celebrating the moods inherent in symphonic evocations of a score.

While Tharani's work in cinema has won him accolades and recognition, including the Padmashri, he has always been at pains to keep his art direction distinct from his art. While the former is characterized by extraordinary realism, his paintings are decidedly abstract by choice, defining the borderlines with clarity.

Perhaps the Symphony of Life series does not represent Tharani at his best. Perhaps it is just an interlude between creative phases. Perhaps the artist needed to re-assess the familiar before he ventured into unknown terrain. Perhaps the 2002-launched gallery was limited by its access to Tharani's more creative oeuvre.

No matter what the reason, when the viewer leaves Lakshana, he or she carries with her an unresolved puzzle.

"An artist is free. I don't want to be trapped by one subject or a single style," Tharani once declared. "The best thing is to do what you want to do when you want to. I give myself gaps between subjects, often returning to one every two or three years, to avoid boredom and to prevent myself from getting stale."

What has Thota Tharani done in his artistic life since the year 2000? That's an answer Bangaloreans look forward to with anticipation.

(The Hindu Metroplus Bangalore 2002)

Art: S G Vasudev ~ A celebration of life

Portrait by Mallikarjun Katakol

 (This interview took place in March 1992)

HIS EARLIEST artistic memories are of his mother, who painted cutouts and figures for a family Dussehra in the old-world city of Mysore, where life flows at a timeless pace. Her colours and brushes, amidst the festive bustle, fascinated him. But there were other moments, other icons. The child would watch agog as his uncle worked with his stretched canvases, and he would tune in to tales of how his great-grandfather ~ an ayurvedic doctor ~ had sculpted in stone.

Inevitably, despite parental opposition, the boy defied the family to study art.  The passage of time has  moulded him into an artist named S G Vasudev. A founder-member of the Cholamandal artists’ village, outside Madras, he presents his recent drawings ~ titled The Line ~ at the Pundole Art Gallery in Bombay till March 21, 1992.

What is special about Vasudev’s line drawings? Unrestricted expression imbues their flow and play. Momentary ideas, like stray strands, intertwine, then veer apart. Moods beckon, then disperse, summoning up colours through fluid, circuitous lines.

Thematically, both integration and individualism come to the fore. Man and beast, tree, reptile, earth, sky and fruit, evoke a celebration of life through their inherent contradictions and alliances. In Vasudev’s world, each element is placed within its special orbit, both at ease with itself and with each other. Communing with this imaginary natural universe, the artist is immersed in belonging, never an outsider.

Vasudev’s work has meandered through many themes and media down the years. His mastery of oils, copper reliefs and the line have traversed Fantasies of real and unreal forms, Maithuna or the act of love, the Vriksha series that flowered for years, and the more recent drawings of He and She.

His is a multi-faceted talent. His paintings have been exhibited all over India, in addition to Havana, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Prague, and New York. He was the art director for the award-winning Kannada films Samskara and Vamsa Vriksha. He has designed book jackets for writers like A K Ramanujam, U R Ananthamurthi and Girish Karnad.

How does the world view Vasudev? As one of the most popular and hospitable people at Cholamandal. As a tender and devoted husband to fellow-artist Arnawaz before cancer took her life in 1988. As an individual who cares passionately about art in a technology-centric world. 

In conversation, Vasudev couches his strong views in a gentle voice that seldom rises to a shrill treble of protest or defiance or anger. His spatulate fingers shape nuances in the air as he elaborates on an answer. He seems to be poised in mid-career, all set to take wing.

Here’s a pen portrait of the artist as a gentleman, not yet engulfed by the call of commerce:

Was the painter K C S Paniker, your principal at the Madras Government College of Arts and Crafts, a major influence on you?

When I got a national scholarship for painting in 1964, I joined directly under Paniker. (Wistfully) He never made us feel he was a teacher; he was a friend, philosopher and guide to me. His studio was always open, and I could talk to him about anything. It was good to discuss our work every day with a teacher of his standing. He’d talk about his own painting, and how the arrangement in my painting was helping him with his! It was as if both of us were learning at the same time. He gave us the freedom to work as and when we wanted to.

He gave a very good direction to those who were his best students ~ Viswanadhan, Adimoolam, Bhaskaran, I ~ because he felt we could build a very good centre in Madras. He’d even help us out with personal problems that we could not discuss with our parents. Gradually, that’s how the idea of Cholamandal came about…

Now that Cholamandal is 25 years old, what do you feel has gone wrong between the dream that was and what exists now?

Look, in the 1960s, there was no financial or media support available for us in Madras.  We were in our twenties and willing to work very hard to build up Cholamandal. But as we grew older and as some of us became successful, problems like jealousies and friction were bound to arise. And, in a small place, everything tends to get magnified. (Thoughtfully) But I feel Cholamandal has succeeded in what Paniker set out to do. He felt if 30 to 40 painters, living together, could produce five or six artists of some calibre over the next 20 years, Cholamandal would have served its purpose. It has.

You know, people always think of Cholamandal as a school. They’ve never understood that it is a community in which every artist is an individual.

Did it make a difference to Cholamandal to have a woman artist like Arnawaz in its midst?

If Arnawaz hadn’t been there, Cholamandal would have been totally different. One strong, outspoken woman like that changed the basic attitudes and concepts of people around. Otherwise, most of the other artist’s wives were very timid.

Now, I’m glad a strong person like painter Subha De lives in Cholamandal. I know most of the artists are not very comfortable when Subha talks to them because she has such strong opinions. But it’s good for them. They should argue things out.

Is something major happening in the world of Indian women painters today?

Well, it’s great to see artists like Rekha Rodwittiya, Vasudha Thozhur, Nalini Malani, Arpana Kaur, Arpita Singh and Jayashree Chakravarthy, confident and proud of their work. I admire their strong personalities, their statements, their involvement.

I don’t know how their husbands have taken their success, though. For instance, Arpita’s husband, Paramjit Singh, is a very popular painter. But Arpita is better known than him now…

What childhood experiences shaped you?

My earliest impressions are of my mother in Mysore, where I was born in 1941. She was an amateur painter of realistic, impressionistic subjects, including landscapes and fairly good copies of masterpieces. Most of her work was done before we were born. By then, she had already won some major awards in Mysore. After her marriage, she settled in Bangalore. She probably inherited her talent from her grandfather, an ayurvedic physician, who painted and sculpted in soapstone.

What were your initial yearnings towards art like?

I drew a little when I was very young, but nothing very special. I attended a college in Bangalore to do my B.Sc. because my parents wanted me to, but I never completed the course. In college I often did caricatures and cartoons of political and cricket personalities. I loved the game and drew G S Ramchand, Polly Umrigar, Hazare, Vijay Merchant…

I was influenced by the famous British cartoonist David Low and copied his style. My pen sketches were published in prominent publications of those times, like Samyukta Karnataka, Prajamata and Thainadu.

What brought you to arts college?

The well-known art critic in Bangalore, G Venkatachalam, helped me to go to arts college. He persuaded my parents to send me to the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Madras in 1960 and gave me a letter of introduction to Paniker.

My father used to send me some money, but it wasn’t sufficient. I didn’t want to ask him for more, so I earned extra money by drawing and doing stylized headlines for the Kannada edition of Soviet Land.

I was surprised when the national scholarship for painting was awarded to me. For the next two years, I had to choose someone as my mentor, I chose Paniker. We worked till late at night. We talked for hours. It was Paniker who taught me about the creative removal of colours. He’d say, “You can have any number of colours on a canvas. What is important is how to restrict or remove them…”

When I returned to college after a two-year scholarship, my new class included a young Parsi girl, Arnawaz, whom I later married. 

She and Tree, 61 x 61cm, 2006

Would you be able to trace phases that your work has traversed?

At college and just after, I did a series called Fantasies, which were thick impastos with lines scooped into the surface. I created fantasies from real and unreal human forms, birds, mountains, shells…

Around 1969, I began a series on Maithuna or the act of love. Yes, it is an old theme in painting. Perhaps I started on it because I had met Arnawaz. (Dreamily) To me, maithuna is not just about man and woman, but also about the sun and the moon, the earth and the sky, the stars and the clouds. My world is animistic. In it, bird and reptile, fish and fowl, seed and fruit, man and woman, live together in undulating hills and peaks seething with life.

Once in Dharwar, I came across the Kalpa Vriksha Vrindavana, a work by the modern Kannada poet D R Bendre. The kalpavriksha or Tree of Life soon grew to take centre-stage in my work. It was drawn from Indian myth. Later, at an exhibition in Delhi in the 1970s, someone asked me if I had read Roger Cook’s book, The Tree of Life. When I read it, I realized that all religions and most artists and craftsmen have used the tree as a motif at some time or the other. Take Mondrian, Miro, Klee… In Indian mythology, we have the Bodhi tree.

All these elements went into the making of the series and later copper reliefs, after I learnt repousse from Kuppuswamy, a traditional craftsman who came to stay in Cholamandal after retiring from the art college.

In 1983, when Arnawaz fell very ill, my tree took in the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Though I never consciously thought about it, it grew to become the Tree of life and death. Then, for nearly four years, I didn’t have any exhibitions in India.

But over 1989-90, many things I’d already done over the past 10 to 15 years came back to me. I found I wanted to paint. I wanted to get things out of my system. In some of my recent work, you can find influences of my earlier work.

For instance, I was always fascinated by portraits while in college. In trying to break away from the tree motif some years ago, I brought in a human element. The tree is still there, but the head is now becoming more prominent in my work. The heads grew into two new series of drawings ~ He and She.

In late 1989, I’d designed the sets for B V Karanth’s production of Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana in New Delhi. That set me off on a series of drawings with the same title. Do you remember how the main character in the play sets out in search of a human head?

Theatre of Life, 91 x 91 cm, 2001

Why is it important for a south Indian artist to exhibit in Bombay and Delhi?

If I’d exhibited my work in Bombay or Delhi more often, it would have made a difference to my career. I would have been better known because that’s where one gets maximum publicity and commercial success. Because there’s so much of all-India publicity generated from these cities, it’s not important for a north Indian artist to come south, though.

I felt this when, after three or four successful shows in Bombay between 1967 and 1974, I didn’t exhibit there for a while. When I went back to visit after shifting to Bangalore, I found everything had changed in Bombay ~ attitudes to art as an investment, prices for work by my contemporaries had rocketed…

I’d always fixed my prices according to lifestyles in Madras, and then Bangalore. I realised that artists who’d come five or ten years after me were selling more than I was. It’s not that they were better artists; it’s just that they were in the market. That’s why I want to exhibit in Bombay and Delhi more often.

Given the current worldwide recession and the state of the Indian economy, is the current system of pricing art justified?

In India, Bombay decides the prices. Pricing a painting high in India doesn’t make sense because you’re not really helping work to get into many homes. You’re confining it to industrial houses or the homes of the very rich.

If an artist like Tyeb Mehta does only four or five works a year, I can understand him pricing each very high. But what about others, who paint 20 to 30 works every month? (Excitedly) Why should each of their paintings sell for one lakh? Is it necessary? Will they be able to sustain their prices?

This places an artist like me in a dilemma. I can’t have one price for Bombay, another for Madras. I’d like even the average middle-class person to buy my work. So, where should I place myself?

(The Independent, Bombay/ Mumbai, 1992)

   

Art: Sacred Spaces ~ abstracts by Shivani Dugar

'Midst': 22 x 42 in. each, Oil on linen canvas

(I wrote this catalogue essay on Shivani's abstract paintings for the Mahua Gallery, Bangalore, in 2009)

Still centre of the unknown

(An encounter with the abstract paintings of Shivani Dugar)

  

Abstract paintings are fictitious models because they visualize a reality which we can neither see nor describe but which we may nevertheless conclude exists.

                                                                                                      ~ Gerhard Richter

There is a sense of atmosphere, there is an approximation of music and, what is most important, there is a throbbing mystery about the very process of viewing and responding as if one is sucked into some still centre of hitherto unknown experience.

                                                ~ R.L. Bartholomew on V.S. Gaitonde’s abstract paintings

Abstraction in art often seems inexplicable. Or permeated by an unimaginable secret code. It seems ever-changing, like wispy clouds that morph and waft and vanish into forever. Or the surge in the depths of an indigo vat. Perhaps like the drifting icebergs off Antarctica that seem of the southern continent, yet above and beyond it. Like the chattering of squirrels, a twittering of birds in a cherry tree outside a bay window, unfathomable to the lay ear, yet cogent within its world.

This intrinsic subtext imbues the paintings of artists who veer away from the tried, the tested, the tangible. They brush past the figurative, the immediately cognizable, the near-photographic modes of representation. Instead, their outward expressions delve into their innermost chambers, where thought and emotion integrate into a terrain that changes colour and pulse with the moodiness of inner Ladakh landscapes. Such creative spirits take the viewer on a near-yogic journey into the sense of essence, the breadth of breath, the calm core within infinite flux.

Shivani Dugar’s passage to light, to the realization of her own artistic pulse, turns more than a sidelong glance at Richter and Gaitonde, at their mastery of the metier. For her oils on canvas today have emerged as meditations on nature, as wordless paeans to the beautiful unsung, to its unnamed hues, its intrinsic moods, vistas, melodies.

Her landscapes travel deep, into silences beyond forms and themes, bounding over mountains and rivers, seascapes and ocean drifts, the legacy of leaves, stem and bark, the loamy-sandy history of soil. She chooses hues that have yet to be named, terrain yet unrecognized, almost inter-galactic interstices, yet serenely poised within its own certainty.   

Shivani’s certainty has been sculpted by her artistic explorations. For instance, by watching her mother paint at home, by imbibing her spiritual inclinations, the meditative chakras as visualized through landscapes – where, for instance, red embodies the earth, orange the water, green the air, purple stands for space, and so on.

Her galvanic change from within became an electrifying force when she relocated to New York City, where she did a Master’s in printmaking at the Pratt Institute. Shivani was drawn into the whirlpool of the art, its cross-hatching, its intricate linear passages, the gentle planar quality of lithography, the uncertainty that was built into the practice. She learnt to eschew the decorative for muted innate expressions. She veered away from architectural forms to paint from feeling while engaging with natural planes and spatial relationships.

En route, Shivani sought to express the awesome magnitude of landscapes, but in an individual, unconventional way. She would mull over Gaitonde’s paintings, seek out their infinite communication through an indecipherable code. Equally, she delved into the world of Richter, his multi-track evolution, his nuanced questionings, his breakaway forays from photo-paintings into abstraction. That led her to other voices with similar souls, like Somenath Maity. Or the UK-based magic realism, the chimerical qualities of Canada-born Peter Doig, who often pays tribute to Le Corbusier.

         Her art is deeply rooted in reminiscence, but not for the immediate past or for distant dreams. Instead, her yearnings stem from nature. Her canvases gaze inwards at an atavistic past, at omnipresence on a solular journey centuries ago, at meditation on transience, even on inner certitude. 

Detail from 'Search': 40x40 in, oil on linen canvas

        Shivani’s moods, once abstracted, reflect those of the seashell that sings of an inner surge, of the butterfly bound for the cloud on horizon, of the blue beetle that claims the clinging vine as home. She expresses nishabd or the voiceless through banded, ever-layered hues, through prismatic seeings into the unseen.

        Light imbues her delving into the darkness, almost like a deep sea diver in search of the rarest of pearls. But unlike that simplest of passages, Shivani’s ebb and surge, quietitude and implosions, take the viewer back to a classic Indian concept: that of the trinity of the deities Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, who represent creation, dissolution and regeneration.  

      Distilling essences seems to be Shivani’s forte. Like her illustrious predecessors in abstract art, she evokes the transcendental, the timeless, the contemplative and the poetic. Amidst these trajectories, she binds yet unwinds the flexi-connections between the earth and the sky, the rocks and the ripples, the space and the sea, the sunset and the moonbeam, the inner quiet and the outer retort. For can these ever be expressed in word or photograph, on stage or on screen? Perhaps not. For only painted abstractions or soaring music can do them justice.

       This truth has been proved before by art stalwarts like Anselm Kiefer and Achuthan Kudallur, Jackson Pollock and Nasreen Mohamedi, Sam Francis and Viswanadhan V.. Perhaps Shivani feels in sync with what Pollock once said of his experience: “When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.” And maybe she connects as easily with Kiefer's words: “All painting but also all literature...is merely a process of going round and round something inexpressible...”

      It is the inexpressible moment that Shivani expresses through her broad strokes, her inner gaze. She is in her paintings, as much as of them, and yet a meditative detachment steeps through them. She participates and alters, visualizes and demystifies, allowing the intuitive impulse, the non-imagistic ground, the overlayers of pulse on the serene first coat, to break free, to breathe, even to just be.

     For, to Shivani, her abstract landscapes are often about air, fire, earth, water, and space, essentially “their depths, emotions, moods, the warmth, the coolness, the movements, the drama, the unseen,” as she couches it in words. Her textures and tones hint at the unheard, the unseen, the untouched.

    Shivani’s intent remains both subliminal yet spirited, with spirituality at its core. Submerged within, subsumed by natural abeyance, her intelligence grapples with the moment with intensity yet respect, with both bhakti and shringara, resulting in cadences that speak with the rasa of Odissi, the unheard notes of the shehnai, and the thunder of a waterfall, all intermingled in a moment. Perhaps that is her fiction, her reality, the call to her persona from the still centre of the unknown.