The pedagogue of Indian art, KG Subramanyan, leaves his thoughts beyond what he created, says Uma Nair
Picture a young student as a nationalist who comes to Shantiniketan to pursue art. This young student comes armed with ideas and a patriotic fervour. He measures everything through an intellect that pierces the veiled world of superficiality to study the past while defining the present and shaping the future. This student not only becomes a mentor, but an iconoclast in the world of Indian contemporary art.
He teaches six generations of art students in Shantiniketan as well as Baroda. He becomes an essayist, a muralist, an artist of many shades and seasons and gives to the artistic world the niceties and quirks of modernism. The pedagogue of the Indian art world, KG Subramanyan, leaves behind other than his art his thoughts and his dictums that made everyone think. “So the world I observe is naturally a fairy-tale world. It is high-keyed. It is distant. It has a variable configuration. It is ambivalent in image and implication...Not just a bunch of facts, but an intriguing icon.......Maybe there is an assumption, too, of play-acting on nature’s own part.” These words by KG Subramanyan embellish the Art Heritage catalogue in Delhi for a tribute to the master as they celebrate a new space at Triveni Kala Sangam.
In an equally fascinating essay, professor R Siva Kumar gives us an insight into the mind and world of the artist. “Subramanyan’s works were a delight and filled with exuberance. The world glowing in the morning sunlight, men and creatures basking in its glow, trees and plants in bloom, filled his eyes and stirred his imagination and he wished that every day of his life could be a celebration of this gift.”
To look at Subramanyan’s works is to be drawn into a fragmented, fractured grid of evocative kohl-eyed women who have expressive airs and gestures and are always conversing. Subramanyan in his works wanted to move between the real and the imaginary. His interest was once in the journey of the objective to the abstract. Abstraction for him meant an image of relative anonymity. He translated abstraction as a variety of interpretations. For him abstraction meant the ability to play various visual roles and we see that in these works that bustle with life and multiple connectivities.
He gives us images that are merely more than visual. His imagery is a mosaic of a complex identity. It weaves in diverse cultural associations and brims on the beauty of folk idioms and background lore. He could pit literature and folk tales into the same
frame.
His Hanuman had a whole line of characters behind it. The intrepid monkey who captured the sun, who had the god of wind as father and got from him speed, power, agility, volatility and the ability to change in size also became the staunch devotee of Rama, his emissary.
Characters veered between playful, tragic, comic and heroic. Similarly, gods and goddesses had various versions, ranging from elegant deities to multi-armed war goddesses astride a lion or tiger, who fought and slayed the buffalo demon. For him the lion or the tiger, even the monkey, symbolised positive powers that fired as well as supported our initiatives. His folksy idioms and his wit blended to create works that were curious and unforgettable. His wit and eroticism were the hallmarks of his paintings. They were never staid and always dynamic. In many of his works, the man and woman would face each other, traversing modern and tribal settings alike. He could create animated coquettish women and throw in an excess of romantic colour. There would be fierce goddesses in gay abandon, appearing in a splendid riot of colour.
This is why he wrote: “My working process follows these models to a greater or lesser extent. I analyse what I see and break them into building blocks, then recompose them. I believe that artists, like literary men, should cultivate a language that can reach out to others at different communications or contact levels. This comes to them as part of their new status as creative men, not just professionals in a set activity niche.’’
At Art Heritage in Delhi, this tribute raised a toast to a veritable genius. His words swing through the walls. “An artist has a world within himself he cannot easily step out of. It is built with the experiences of his growth years and their off shoots. All the rest has to come to terms with this; it intercepts what you see, it gives a twist to what you do.”