What happens when you search
solitude within the construct of an artistic practice? Subhash Awchat a
painter and if we suppose a writer proposes reflections of the self in
watercolours explaining solitude as a material visible construct. I say
if I suppose a writer because he wrote a column in a Marathi newspaper each
week detailing the machinations of his mind as an artist. We sit
discussing his latest oeuvre of watercolours in a housing project for
Maharashtrian writers. He quickly slips into near history in a voice that
holds emotions. I am witnessing as an art writer what determines
contemporaneity of culture in the city where I was born. Our
conversations have a context , I am Bihari - though from privilege , cosmopolitan and
easily unrecognisable for my regional identity. But since childhood whenever I have to
state where I came from in a city to which my grandfather migrated to and I was
born – it always raises stares ,
questions and stereotypes which I allay with my mother’s Maharashtrian heritage
even though her family has been in Bihar since the 18th century ,
sometimes my neighbourhood in Bombay or the cosmopolitan nature of my family's
marital decisions. To interview a painter regarded as what young artists
in art schools across Maharashtra identify as a painter, an artist that
made them make a decisive career decision to pursue art and an artist
that reached them in Yeotmal , Chandrapur, Ichalkaranji and
Islampur , for sure speaks of a privilege I now hold in this essay.
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| Artist: Subhash Awchat |
Why is that so ? Why is
Subhash Awchat prized as the artist of India's second largest state by the
populace? Why do I feel an inclusion within the popular idea of culture ,
with my host culture , as a writer of this essay a privilege.? Subhash
Awachat has designed 7000 jackets of books published in Marathi . If you
read in Marathi you have encountered his visual vocabulary. You know his
strokes , you know his palette and the way with which he treats
colour . He is the artist of my people , the people I live
among. It doesn't surprise me that his column in a popular Marathi
newspaper is well subscribed. Marathi as a language has a rich repository
of literature but the intrigue exists in the passion to translate books from
other languages to Marathi and publish for eager readers. One that
sustains such publishing practices economically. You can encounter
Gilles Deleuze , Jose Saramago , Gertrude Stein and John Berger in
Marathi. Translations not intended at a market but the need to read and
change a society aware of the significance of its language
holds as a catalyst of modernity . Mahatma Jyotibha Phule through
his writings proposed the idea of modernity much before similar deliberations
in the occident and Dr. BR Ambedkar sought a constitutional architecture
for equity in a nation riddled with caste. Both hailed from Maharashtra, a
land conducive to intellectual change . Art History in
our art schools in Maharashtra does let students in Sangli know of
the ' Oath of Horatii ' by Jacques Louis David which hangs at the Louvre through efforts of
this tradition of translation. I recently witnessed a friend identify
paintings at a distance at the Louvre even though my privilege of an English
education did not allow or inform .
Subhash Awchat holds a unique
privilege within the context of contemporary art history less discussed and
investigated. We stand at a time where our memories hold a past that does
not critically examine the recent decades that precede us. We are
embarrassed of the fashion, music and the movies that define a
decade of great confusion. The 1990s released India from the cloak of a
stagnating economy loosely defined as socialism . The 80s were a lost
decade of turmoil , bureaucratic intrigue and a failing idea of
India. Artists like Subhash emerged at the end of an era of
pessimism. Subhash was designing the jackets and
typesetting the publications of the Dalit Panthers and in his art
making the ' Hamal' or the porter his muse. He opened his show
romanticising the image of the subaltern man , it was beautiful , it was
decorative . Why so? Bal Thackeray, a cartoonist and
the son of a Marathi playwright, became the voice of the pushback of
marginalisation of a people ignored by a cosmopolitan culture Naipaul described
as a mimicry of colonial tropes. Vijay Tendulkar in his plays had been
discussing gender and political violence and thus became the conscience of the cultural elite who
were engrossed in opposing ideologies as
well the tumultuous 1990s where we suffered bouts of communal violence and
division. We were in an immense flux culturally , politically and
economically. India had liberalised , we had cable tv , we had just
got to know the internet . Modernism was representative of the old
order. I had just drunk my first Coca Cola and we could buy
Japanese cars with air-conditioning. The upper middle class found jobs in
foreign corporations that were selling
us material goods and dreams of participation in a global world order.
Awchat emerges as an artist at this moment.
His stories are intimate; they
revolve around his deep intimacies with Marathi
writers, Bal Thackeray's views on the Bombay School of Art ,
friendships he held with Narayan Shridhar Bendre and KK Hebbar. The
moments of success and journeys into the interior of Maharashtra with Sharad
Pawar who would remember the names of a million or more constituents , eat in
homes in villages only Pawar knew the way to and directions that confused his security
detail . What it meant to be among the
people. He was the painter to the resurrection of a people who were
asserting their place in politics through the actions of Bal Thackeray and
Sharad Pawar and we became Mumbai from Bombay .
Much of these happenings have
been ignored by the society I come from. They inhabit a safe space of privilege
called South Bombay. But Awchat infiltrated their collections and circles
. He came from the applied arts
and was not a trained painter from the Sir JJ School of Art. He was not
restricted to a school or an aesthetic agenda that he had to play out in his
works to prove his mettle as an artist. Rather the act of being an artist
enticed him. A multifaceted technique and aesthetic defined his
practice. You see him work with landscapes portraits and
abstracts - all of them have poetic titles.
We now face an artist with age
. Loneliness is a facet of time. The pandemic allowed us to face
our interiority with great intimacy . Awchat was left alone without
access to his acrylics or his canvases. A pad of watercolour paper was
all that he had access to. A pad gifted to his grandson and for colours
he had basic watercolours that were fabricated here in India. Tired of
marathon calls and attempts to escape the quarantine he began painting
watercolours for the first time. These were landscapes he had sitting
somewhere in his mind. The Lebanese artist Etel Adnan wrote poetry
of deep detachment, pain that is inherent in the nihilism of Levantine
Politics. Syria , Lebanon and Palestine are lands divided by
religion , race and at times language to suit the interests of the great powers.
These conflicts have a deep impact on the lives of people who author poetry
, art and cinema. Her landscapes may seem childlike but they
are intense witnesses of both nostalgia and happiness one imagines of the land
to which they were born. Watercolour is a medium that needs great
dexterity. The command on colour and form-forming is urgent when the
brush touches the paper you need to draw with water or the images
turn to smudges. Awchat displayed much ability in handling colour and
form. He changed his palette.
Illness in old age is always a
transformation. In his later years Henri Matisse used pre-painted
gouache cut-outs to make formidable forms that we seem to remember him
with today . Physical disability allows an artistic mind to find forms
that are relentless in their expression. Subhash has spent time near a
lake in Bhor on the Western Ghats of Maharashtra. This plateau-esque
terrain with valleys and a reservoir is stationary in time. Watercolours
from here capture Awchat's view of the Sky as blue. He sees homes dwarfed
under the horizon of the Sun. His monk-like figures run under colourful
buntings that have affinities of form with geometrical abstraction. We
realise how he uses space in his canvases; a particular work divided the paper
into a palette of pastels . He is not using ochre . Brown is not to
be seen . Bright Yellows , Pinks and Light Blues fill spaces where
he doesn't find forms. A social person finally finds in the
landscape a form to draw solitude.
I have always wondered what and
how artists will depict the pandemic. We are far beyond the ugly forms of
the bacteria that artists drew up during the pandemic . For me it was a
time of deep contemplation , seeking my faults and imagining myself who I would
be if I survived in times when I lost
loved ones , those were bleak reminders of our mortality. Subhash
Awchat sought solitude , he wrote about his mind in newspapers at a time
when he had no memory of his childhood. He is presently
reconstructing it through photos sent by friends and stories told to him
by his sister. But his present series of watercolours is a reflection of
time, its structure not measured by a watch but one that is witnessed
when we fall humble in a magnificent landscape. In French we would say
' aquarelles au fils du temps' or watercolours over the passage of
time.
Art & Soul Editorial
From: 13th October to 15th November 2022
AU FILS DU TEMPS | OVER A PASSAGE OF TIME
AQUARELLES BY Renowned artist Subhash Awchat
VENUE:
Art & Soul
11, Madhuli, Shivsagar Estate
Worli, Mumbai – 40018
Contact: (022) 2496 5798/ 2493 0522 / 8080055450
www.galleryartnsoul.com
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