Independence Day, 15 August 2016

Independence Day, is annually observed on 15 August as a national holiday in India commemorating the nation's independence from the British Empire on 15 August 1947.

Since 1950 until his retirement from teaching in 1989, he helped in shaping the aesthetic vision of the art departments at Maharaja Sayajirao University...

When this exhibition was conceived, legendary Master K. G. Subramanyan was at his peak. The news of his death after a brief illness on 29th June in Baroda brought a sense of despair and gloom for us. Through this exhibition, Aakriti Art gallery & Seagull Foundation for the Art offers its homage to the venerable Master. An exhibition of the Master is always a veritable feast for the senses, even the angels would stop in the middle of their flight end enjoy his eloquent and spirited reverberations.  In the present body of work, one may notice the capacity of harnessing single forms to plural functions which has been the hallmark of Master’s work and is visible here in the present show as well. The practice imparted his work a private, even reclusive character, and the push of this compulsion against the narrow range of overall effect is what gives Master’s paintings their sway. 

However narratively inclined many of these pieces done in either ink on handmade paper or coloured gouaches or reversely done on acrylic sheets, their importance as a whole is that they remind us of one occasion of permanence that seems to lurk in an elucidation. Ultimately it is the Master’s sensibility that gives these works their distinction- We can certainly think painting, but he showed that one can also paint thought, including the exhilarating and delightful form of thought that is painting chronicling his  impressions unfolding  perspective on life as he sees it through a literal prism. It gives us a feeling of catharsis, purification of soul.  In all the paintings Master’s empirical method makes itself felt as support of underpainting and the like are more or less visible. These worked palimpsests underscore the importance of drawing to his enterprise, even while confounding this initial perception of its holistic nature. In the present work, faring that he might become too adept at this language and so sacrifice that sense of unlaboured freshness which has defined his  work so far to questions of veracity and substance.

Recent work by K G S

Even at the age of ninety two, he was at the peak. His paintings were done on walls, on glass, acrylic sheets, handmade paper, and canvasses.  The quality of his attention, the unlikely subtlety and boldness, the harmony he created of tensions,  ambiguities, volume, light, elusive moments speak of an alienation, a simulacra. The presence of the painted surface on these handmade papers is sheer because the perceptual components of the images are woven into the surface exposing the phenomena of sheer surface where the existential meets the topical and the present moment are fleeting, the lights announce as they pass by . In the ‘reverse paintings on acrylic sheet’, figurative references, always elusive become less and less direct as in the other paintings, simultaneously the implied vantage point become more ambiguous.  The whole process of his recent work represents a physical engagement with technical aspect and the psychological meditative aspect which always elevates.  The large ‘Untitled’ sized 24x 30 inches- tilts away from the viewer , its central spine receding toward the top as it courses across everly spaced parallel, horizontal black lines establishes a kind of non spatial field , where illusionistic flatness a white grid in the lower right quadrant struggles to counter act. He considers his jagged figures- fierce goddesses with as much relish and pith as a canny, a leitmotif of animals such as monkeys, dogs or lions, enticing horned goats to be actual objects positioned on a stained field. Juxtaposed to the whiteness are a few darker lightning like brushstrokes that reveal the keen sense of instinctive balance and inner vivaciousness that are true hallmark.  “My main interest was once in the passage of the objective to the abstract. Abstract to mean here an image of relative anonymity. Which allowed it a variety of interpretations. Gave it the ability to play various visual roles.” -He once said in an interview to Prof.R. Sivakumar in Scroll.  The works embody a strong sense of drama. For the most part scenes are depicted from a low vantage point, so that the figures loom over the viewer, fabulous in stature. On occasion, the viewer cannot help feeling while viewing the paintings that the proscenium has broken down, not to let the viewer enter, but to permit an entry from the wings. The diagram that joins the matrices is never an optical effect, which appears as chance, accident or the involvement of figures that are isolated despite the subtlety of their aggregates. The important fact is that they do not consign the painted figure to immobility but on the contrary, render an astute kind of amelioration rather than being the basis for a dynamic compositional system or a clearly labeled marker of the psyche and thus becoming increasingly autonomous .The whole body is ripened by solitude extended by a repertoire that resonates with multi-layered images and forms. The exhibition acts as a reliable and clear sighted guide to that exploration of our innermost mind as well.

Since 1950 until his retirement from teaching in 1989, he helped in shaping the aesthetic vision of the art departments at Maharaja Sayajirao University and Visva-Bharati and inspired and mentored generations of artists and scholars through his prolific writings, lectures, and art. In his early life he took part in the Quit India movement and was imprisoned. Later he went to Santiniketan and studied art under Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij. His role as a Master practitioner was paramount, bristling with his contribution all over with unyielding restriction even when he was in his nineties.  He truly heralded a genre through his wit, scholarship and brilliance, appearing at a critical juncture of our art movements. In a pictorial world that is vividly rich in colour and detail, his imaginative and extraordinary narrative outpourings continue to grasp us with a certain magic realism, captivating us in thrall. He has been able to choose a spectrum and create a symphony with predominating colour as a keynote, the texture laid with luminosity, imagination and precision both by unique brilliance of his colour technique, recalling vast fields of painted space and evolution of form. The humanity and enactment of the human gesture in the Master’s work, which infuse them, may be traced in some magnitude  to his own understanding  and the love for humanity he imbibed early in his life- the world of our human experience, the beauty of human concern is a sacred value for a cultivated mind of his stature. They create their own untimely rhythm in these works, in what we feel is coolly an objective way to attempt to regain the freshness, craft and intellect of early modernists, particularly the academicians. The venerable Master once said “When nations grow old, art grows cold”. In its prudence, steady development, benign lucidity, and range of historical inspirations, he saw these academic images through a very modern lens of fragmentation, abstraction and an existentialist’s concern for self-realization. The result is a telling hybridization that should be seen as one of the more erudite achievements in contemporary art in the past four decades. There is a lot of truth in the commonly held view of K.G. Subramanyan as a bridge figure between avant garde and the emergent radical Indian Contemporary Art, but it is also an oversimplification. He repudiated avant-garde in the early sixties in the thick of modernism totally. “The kind of education we impart makes people despise manual arts and skills” He once said.” The situation can only worsen in the context of the country’s new economic objectives which will make changes quicker and more drastic and in the process the present art panorama is sure to be devastated” Despite his vast contribution in the making of a language that marks the emergence of an Indian contemporary art in the sixties that denounced western brand of abstractionism and created a vocabulary that remained one of the legacies to younger Indian artists who had looked at his art and then moved from it along very different paths carrying with them the bits of poetic effusion of his work.

Aakriti Art Gallery- Delhi

Though he continued to paint largely in gouache more like that of the paintings of the mid to late 80’s and later, we are encountered by “those enchanted places”, “those delightful spaces” he never wanted to be any more precise. In other terms, in another language, this would translate as the minimal hypothesis of logic of the subconscious, that our psychic symptoms have causes, origins even that the dreams do not cheat with metaphor, and so it pays to be meticulous and rigorous.   These works gradually emerge and arouses our reception, only by identifying, tracking down and laying bare the supreme workings of a great Master and precepts that are scattered far and wide. Whether this integral humanism, sustained only by the sheer energy of despair, does not fail to recognize at least one major resource which exists, almost visibly, in the very fact of our language. Here in this exhibition painted spaces are mainly large to relatively small formats, working with closer to the surface with a sense of intimacy in small and a sense of distance and space.  Some of the works have a sense of monumentality and markers used instinctively to stimulate the surface. Within these painted spaces there is intense application of mind, a narration, nuances; obviously, the energy made visible reaches a certain grandeur, and one has to watch closely the expressive visual modulation of the colour grid into which are woven interlocking planes which are so fragile that they may go unobtrusive . In fact the experience becomes meditative. Instead, he restored these through whisper and gesture, emblem and citation that form into a covert assembly through his unique brilliance of colour technique, recalling vast fields of painted space and evolution of form. Its image and its verbal signifier. reality and illusion, between irony and tragedy appeared with surprising agility.  The various constituents of the paintings are overtly acknowledged accompanied with a cool literalism. The markers here are distilled and then examined as all these fascinate and for us the viewing takes on various roles of spectator and participant, reading a text as well as writing, remarkable and attached.  For him to define the space which is established on the outer edges orchestrating a visual breath as it were a living curious, deviant palpitating thing.  This is celebration here,

 Socialization , joyous discourses. Here is domain of cultural poises. We shuttle between the different spaces, each mode captures an aspect of the idea, and the complementary versions overlap. May be appropriate to say not that we purloin the image but that as language. While he applies a stroke, the gesture is like a toss, breathing like the painting of a poet , it purloins us. It covertly ties the subject into its text and distances from its self as a representation but a vision before which one recites out , even with the perceptible and sensible objects whose action crumbles our love and affliction.  His work gradually emerge and arouses our reception, only by identifying, tracking down and laying bare the supreme workings of a great Master and precepts that are dispersed far and wide in the vast sea of intersexuality that has been able to gather those legacies and make them blossom in such a way as to give our life to something original and sublime. These are works not to be locked away only for posterity or for academic rigueur. These are spaces for us to enter and fathom unfathomable depths.

Recent work by K G S

There is a stripping away of layers to reveal complex infrastructures of his work. A certain austerity, these paintings celebrate their artifice, and sweeping brushstrokes seem genuinely felt, warm and intimate. On the other there is something to observe in these works, even if it is not what we may commonly think, and even if seeing what we commonly see may blind us to another truth, a ‘more true’ truth that is none-the-less there, though its mode of being there may not resemble anything like a fixed contemporary presence. He had an ability to state the most enduring truths in a style that is measured and patiently gathers a luminous energy as we navigate feeling invigorated of our senses. His spontaneity and ability to create compelling compositions are features that we get to see in this show. His work reinforces the sense that the evocation of a quiet, nondenominational inwardness that trembles the soul and stir poets.

 The other new paintings have considerably more staid but gentle messages. Usually a single colour figure on a white ground, they read as particularized symbols of a universal if entirely nolatarian language and are splendorous. They assert their own beauty first, meanings follow- different perspectival readings are impose from image to image , so that we seem to peer down into paintings , but what concerns here is this absolute proximity, this co-precision, of the field that functions as a ground, and the figure that functions as a form on a single plane that is viewed in close range proceeded with the somber, the dark, or the indistinct face on the grid , the panel that is stark. The search is spontaneous and bodying forth of feeling, delivering the pleasures of  a gesture in a personal or expressive idiom and at the same time transform  figurative markers that ends a sentence into minimalist visual experiences which is particularly his genius and thus postulates that patrocentric use of language is motivated toward idealizing the subject , defining it so as to mark contradiction , then alternative strategies that could lead to a decentering of it may include the discursive use of a plurality of codes and readings disruptive  of set conventions tracing the invisible points of origin.  Its almost like a meditative search that these important issues are raised.  He does not reconcile us but gives us the gift of the irreconcilable of the mind and the desire for elevation. The beauty grows in time when on this beautiful constructed and thoughtful show , revealing the enduring of a great mind. The impact is immense. - by Nanak Ganguly



The exhibition can be viewed from Monday to Saturday, 11 am to 7 pm excepting Sundays and is also available online at www.aakritiartgallery.com.

                                                                                             


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National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai was opened to the public in 1996. It hosts various exhibitions and art collections of famous artists, sculptors and different civilisations. It is located near Regal Cinema in Colaba. 

 Sir Cowasji Jahangir Public Hall, M G Road, Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400032

रज़ा का फ्राँस में रहना भी हिंदुस्तान में रहना ही था। वे जिद्दी थे तो वहाँ रहते हुए कभी फ्रांसीसी नागरिकता नहीं स्वीकार की ..

रज़ा आखिरी सदस्य थे प्रोग्रेसिव आर्टिस्ट ग्रुप के। उनके जाने के साथ एक जिद की उपस्तिथि ख़त्म हुई भले ही अब वो किसी दूसरे रूप में दिखे किन्तु उस शान्त, चमकती रंग उपस्तिथि का सिर्फ अहसास बचा है। रज़ा लम्बे समय तक अस्पताल में अपने होने को शायद कभी नहीं पसंद करते उन्हें पसन्द था स्टूडियो में होना, अपने रंगों के साथ होना और खुद को उस रंग में डुबाते रहना। रज़ा का फ्राँस में रहना भी हिंदुस्तान में रहना ही था। वे जिद्दी थे तो वहाँ रहते हुए कभी फ्रांसीसी नागरिकता नहीं स्वीकार की और जब पूरा परिवार पकिस्तान जा रहा था तब भी उन्होंने हिंदुस्तान में रहना ही चुना। 

SH Raza

उनके चारो भाई, दोनों बहने और पहली पत्नी पकिस्तान चले गए किन्तु वे यहीं रहे। गाँधी के प्रभाव में, गाँधी के सपनो को जानते, समझते और अपनी तरह से उनमें रंग भरते। रज़ा सिर्फ रज़ा ही हो सकते हैं अकेले रज़ा जो अपनी रज़ा से जीवन भर चित्र बनाते रहे और नियमित रोज सुबह अपने स्टूडियो में जाना सिर्फ काम करना। मुझे नहीं लगता फ्रांस में रज़ा को पता था कि अण्डे कहाँ मिलते हैं ? वे स्टूडियो के बाहर की दुनिया से लगभग अपरिचित ही रहे। अपने काम में डूबे रज़ा को पसंद था कविता साथ, अच्छी पुस्तकों और चित्र कला की दुनिया के अलावा वे अपनी पसन्द की रेस्तरॉं इन्द्र में अपने दोस्तों को ले जाना नहीं भूलते थे जहाँ उनकी पसन्द का हिंदुस्तानी खाना मिलता था। उस समय के चित्रकारों का कविता, शायरी से सम्बन्ध चित्रकला के एक अंग की तरह ही रहा। रज़ा को याद थे कई शेर जिन्हें वो वक़्त की नज़ाकत को और गहराई से बयां करने के लिए सुनाया करते थे। रज़ा का न होना सालता रहेगा हम सभी को और उनका जाना ख़ाली कर गया एक विलक्षण, विनम्र, विवेचना कर सकने वाले चित्रकार की जगह जो कभी नहीं भरी जा सकेगी।

 - अखिलेश -2016

(Text and image source from Akhil Esh)

HELP : The memorial plaque narrating the story of Hedma Ram, killed in an alleged fake encounter.

About the Plaque

This plaque in Sulenga village in Bijapur district, Bastar is named after villager Hedma Ram, who was killed on February 4, 2016.

His name is painted at the top of the plaque, divided into three panels. The upper panel shows man, presumably Ram, resting while cattle grazes. He is then surrounded by armed men in the second panel. They are policemen with guns in the plaque.

In the third panel, at the bottom of the plaque, Ram is again lying on ground. Hedma Ram, following his death was “dragged by police.” Other animals, including a crocodile, are witnessing the encounter in the plaque.

Photographed by Kamal Shukla

The villagers of heavily militarised areas of south Chattisgarh have embraced traditional Gond art to narrate their tragedies. The last moments of Gond tribals before they are killed by the security forces, are narrated on Mritak Sthamv [memorial plaque] made of stone. The villagers have captured those moments when security forces have allegedly killed the tribals.

Gond tribals often put up a stone or two to mark the passing away of a member in the village. The plaques, not headstones, are not placed in the burial grounds like in organised religion but mostly in an open space near the village and coloured with pigments extracted from trees. And it’s on these that encounter killings are being documented.

Kamal Shukla is a veteran writer-journalist and activist of south Chattisgarh, who has been documenting such plaques.

An Appeal

Kamal is suffering from cancer and the adivasis of Bastar have joined in an effort to raise funds for him for his treatment for which he has to come to Mumbai regularly. The adivasis  are collecting whatever they can individually in their areas. This is an appeal to all artists, photographers, painters and the readers of this site to help contribute towards his medical expenses. Thank you.

His contact no: 9981635944

From the Director of MOG- Dr. Subodh Kerkar

I had the good fortune of meeting Syed Haider Raza a number of times.In his death India has lost an iconic person.

S  H  RAZA

Apart from being a great artist Raza in my opinion was the symbol of India's pluralism. His works and his being,positioned him beyond fences of religion, cast and creed.He visited all places of religious worship to find the connectivity with the cosmic and the unknown. And spoke passionately about universalism.

In his company I felt an energy of a saint.His bindu painting exudes the feeling of Shunyata.

In 1947 when India became independent Raza Shaib was not only concerned with his personal development as an artist but also worried about what direction ART in India should take.He along with the other members of the progressive group were the torch bearers of the journey of Indian Art.

I will use Nehru's lines after Gandhi's assassination to express my feelings about Raza."The light has gone out of he Indian Art scene.However that light was no ordinary light and will continue to inspire generations of artist to come.RIP I shall not say because Syed Raza was the epitome of peace all his life and in peace he will always rest."

We at MOG join the nation to mourn Raza's death and we are grateful to God that such a one lived amongst us.

-  Dr. Subodh Kerkar

Usha Khanna- Tremendous talent rests in peace forever!

Art and film world and was shaken at the news of demise of Usha Khanna on Saturday, 16, 2016. She was 74 years old. 

(Image copyright : Sudharak Olwe/ source fb)

Remembered as the owner of Café Samovar, at Jehangir Art Gallery at the time it was closed last year, art patrons miss her more for the strong, cheerful personality she had and that vibrated in the Samovar Café and her music. Almost every day when she would be there for hours curiously taking interest in visitors and conversing with them on vivid topics. Never airing her ownership she had mush faith in her staff and the head who looked after the delicacies and cuisines severed there. Satisfaction, be it at her Café or by listening to her music was important. Art was her life and music her soul. India prides in her talent as a third Indian woman music director and intelligent business woman. She died a natural death on her way to hospital. She is survived by two daughter and a son, who made names for themselves in their respective fields like their mother. Her children did the last rites and cremated her in presence of art patrons and film personalities. 

(Memorable Image from Café Samovar )

Text By Pankaja JK 

No copyright image claim by Art Blogazine 

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