Book Title:
‘Readings’ Manjit Bawa
Edited and
compiled by: Ina Puri
Published by: Lalit
Kala Akademi,
New
Delhi ,2010
Paperback
220pages
Size 18
x23.75 cms
Full Colour
ISBN: 81-87507-42-X
Price: Rupees 1,000/-
Manjit
Bawa was an individualist; an artist and human being who lived life on his own
terms. Through his art, he brought into play modern modes of expression in
painting, while also referencing the Indian aesthetic. “Being a turbaned Sikh from an ordinary middle-class
family was daunting enough but to strike out against the prevalent forces of
Cubism and the iconic Klee was to really ask for big trouble”[i].But
he did venture out; creating a new figure, a new landscape and
spoke in a new voice.
Art
in its essence is an experience; a silent communion between a viewer and an
artist’s canvas. Its understanding matures as we do. The simplicity of this
communion has become compounded in the crowding of urban life, where time is at
a premium and such contemplation a luxury. Today, for most people, art is
either a commodity to invest in or too challenging an intellectual activity to
participate in. For some, art has been reduced to being just a piece of
decoration.
Each
artist however, spends a life-time devising an iconography that speaks most
evocatively of their thoughts and feelings. This complex language that
encompasses all dimensions of their being is not easy to decipher. In Manjit
Bawa’s own words[ii]
his work was “a continuous process that takes up almost all my waking hours.
Even when I sleep, I have experienced visions in my dreams that are related to
my painting activities….. I wanted to create my own style….to find a new idiom
and a new language. In every sense, this was a stumbling block that needed to
be tackled with immense patience and fortitude[iii]”.
Many
books about artists become technical and theoretically complex, excluding
rather than including the lay viewer. ‘Readings, Manjit Bawa’ compiled and
edited by Ina Puri, published by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, reaches out to
us through essays, interviews, conversations and reminisces by Manjit Bawa himself
and other artists, providing a unique insight into the artist and his oeuvre. It
is not didactic, but eclectic; each reader is thus able to formulate their own
ideas, to look at the artist’s canvas through these perceptions. The text is
bi-lingual. There are writings in both Hindi and English. Ina Puri’s close
association with Bawa’s art reveals itself through this selection, providing insight
into the man, his persona and what made his art; the people that influenced him
and how childhood memories led to the cow and goat becoming leitmotifs. Prayag Shukla [in Hindi], sums up that the
animals and birds and all the different emotions and feelings that Bawa brought
to life on his canvasses that had not been seen before in Indian Art and “in
par ab Manjit ki ek vishisht chaap hai” that the seasons and their colours have“apne
he vishisht aakaron aur rangon mein kramash dhaal liya.”
Informative
and refreshing to read, the book is illustrated with over forty full colour
plates, photographs of the artist and some of his drawings. A full list of
collectors is appended at the back of the book, but regrettably none of the
works are dated. It would also have been useful to include a small biographical
note on each of the authors published in this compilation. A comprehensive
biography of Bawa tells us about his numerous exhibitions and art camps he
attended. We also learn that Bawa curated shows of Indian Art in Syria, Egypt
and Australia, was a founder member on the Committee for Communal Harmony,
organized peace marches during the anti-Sikh riots and more.
Essays
by Ranjit Hoskote, Ashok Vajpeyi, Gayatri Sinha, Richard Bartholomew, Ina Puri,
Geeti Sen, S. Kalidas and Madan Gopal Singh bring some in-depth analysis and
critical insights, while painter Krishen Khanna, a friend through the decades,
reminisces of his early encounters with Bawa. J Swaminathan, friend and fellow
painter, does a quick summary of the evolution of the modern Indian art movement
from Amrita Sher-Gil to Tyeb Mehta, stating that “Manjit’s figure is at once an
assertion of a tradition and its negation” owing hardly anything to the realism
of the West, suggesting instead a linkage with the Pahari Miniature tradition.
A year before the riots in Ayodhya, Bawa wrote
an article for the Times of India which provides a glimpse of the artist’s
unusual perception of things. He also brought attention to the fact that most
people agitating in the name of Ram were quite ignorant about the Ramayana. They
were mostly “sons of shopkeepers and petty merchants…. seething with frustration”.
He arrived at this conclusion, not through some obscure intellectual analysis,
but by engaging with people on the ground: one human being to another.
The
book has diverse material on Bawa’s evolution as an artist, his engagement with
the world, involvement with communal issues, work as a curator and artist and
also how he encouraged younger, aspiring artists. His preoccupation with various dimensions of
being, both physical and spiritual, all find place in these readings. In a talk
given to art students at Shantiniketan he ends, with accrediting Ina Puri for
motivating him to think anew and sums up with a Sufi saying: “simply trust…… do
not the petals flutter just like that? Trust life….” He was well versed in the Hindu
epics and could challenge the young protestors outside the Babri Masjid on the
Ramayan just as easily as he could quote from the Gita, even though he “found
it difficult to subscribe to many of these values.” An independent thinker, he
questioned things. This is brought to life in this book, as in his art.
The
interpretations of Manjit Bawa’s art are many and all equally illuminating. Hoskote finds a “jagged edge of eroticism and
risk in an intimate battle of beak and dagger, the swelling tongue of the bull,
the tumescence of the goat” adding that “Bawa is more significantly preoccupied
with the sheerness of pleasure at the edge of language.” While Kamala Kapoor
sites that “Bawa’s images…. appear to reflect his desire to intervene in a
world burdened with over-rationality, as he draws forms in the air that
undulate and reform into pliable boneless shapes.”In a small note of personal
appreciation, the author David Davidar makes an interesting observation about Bawa’s
use of colour, where “artwork so vibrantly alive in hues of yellow, red,
carmine, electric blue, green and gold was tamed, cooled and recombined through
some strange alchemy such that a flaming red soothed the eyes, a glaring yellow
could alleviate a migraine headache and the startling blues suggested a cool
draught of water.”
The
book may not represent an exhaustive research and analysis of the artist’s
work, but it is the kind of book that makes Manjit Bawa and his art accessible
to a large section of people. We become acquainted with the man behind the
images on his canvas, from whom readers will draw hope, solace and inspiration
at many levels. The mix of analytical
essays with reminisces, interviews, exhibition reviews and writings by the
artist himself, give this book a unique place: useful to the student of art, to artists, to
the lay public and also the scholar. It is the first book in the series called
‘Readings’ of writings on artists and sculptors introduced by Lalit Kala
Akademi, New Delhi.
The coloured photographs were re-worked to create caricatures or ghostly ‘absent presences’ of people. An empty cubbyhole added to this, while the disembodied voices created a sense of displacement. Babu on the Terrace augmented this sense of dislocation, where a Babu was seen on a Victorian terrace overlooking a crowded, middle-class residential complex. Dressed in dhoti and kurta, wearing a supercilious expression, he seemed to look into the horizon. The sky above was covered with menacing predatory birds. Kejriwal probably intended to depict the arrogant Babu preying upon a disputable inheritance and through the solarized images she probably intended to comment on the carelessness of the upper class Bengali gentry. 
