ART & CULTURE

ART REVIEW

Through the self

Whether it is painting or unconventional media, the artist cannot be separated from his or her artwork, since what he or she puts into it are personal experiences, thoughts and sensations. Whatever the degree of assumed or unconscious subjectivity. In the contemporary circumstance, when art strives to reestablish direct access to reality with its raw substances and relate to its dynamic, layered mechanisms, the multi-disciplinary ways of installation are essential .

Hence, performance is resorted to. Smitha Cariappa’s recent event at Chitra contained all those elements, in fact focusing on the nature of the aesthetic process considered in a relationship with certain phenomena of the current world as empitomised by her personal, body-bound attunement and recall. Being a woman, perhaps used to probing, sensing and shaping her appearance, to locating subtle feelings in the physical, must have facilitated the choice of the means and the application, which she did with elegance, delicately intimate concreteness and as well as with a distanced and cool, abstracting reflectiveness. 

The exhibition dealt with the fluid, ever mutating edge between the natural and the artificial, between the fleeting present moment and the equally tentative memory, both incorporated and observed within sensations which shape the doing of art. 

The artist’s own engagement happened there simultaneously at several levels, both literal and generalised. The main and the most interesting manifestation came with the photographic images. 

Mallikarjun B. Katakol shot Smitha’s new, fashionable haircut with magenta streaks showing it from the back. 

The takes repeated over slight variants, and done in the convention of consumerist glamour, blended the spectacularly anonymous with traces of the palpably personal, as Smitha’s glossy manicured fingers gently touched her neck and hair. Juxtaposing pictures of her previous long braid, the artist scribbled her musings about the temporariness of change always mediating residues of the past and its recurrence, here in the black growing from beneath the coloured. 

Side by side Smitha placed sign--resembling sketches of gesturing hands and abstract signs and vectors of mutually inflecting occurrences. The necessity to abstract is to enhance sensations by cleaning them up from the chaos of irrelevant disturbances. 

The artist’s performance captured it, when the spectator noticed her seated mute and immobile in a hall corner "Facing the Wall". 

The restraint of her presence was more effective than the somewhat vague dance by Tripura Kashyap, as were the two eye inserts in the head back photographs. 

Another plane came with the employment of mirrors – in terms of a means for self-scrutiny and indulgence, for the retention of memory and, still more importantly, as an almost painting or drawing-like tool towards selecting and moulding the image of reality from what appears on its surface from the surroundings. 

Awareness of the elusive but again supportive borderline between rudimentary experiences and their intellectulising provided an additional aspect of the show. It was bridged by Shitha’s ample writing. Although one could understand and empathise with her perceptiveness, the excess of theory and words acted against the same. The installations with clothes and mirrors were too perfunctory and obvious.

Unique design

The silkscreen prints of M. F. Husain at the Husain Sankalana recreate his own canvases from different older and recent periods. The numerous graphics done over the past year relate to diverse themes familiar from the artist’s oeuvre – deities and mythological events, horses, evocations of Kerala, the Raj series, mother Teresa… Although they emphasise the many kinds of imagining and composing, the uniformity of the technique helps to realise that all of those belong to one design. 

Figures may be dynamic and angular or silhouetted by continuous, smooth strokes. Their filling may be flat or involve painterly texturing among planar diagonals or against a kaleidoscopic frontality. Shapes may recall sketchy signs or imbue traces of realism. Still, they all tend to fall into a somewhat predicable design. 

This is echoed by the dependence on bright, contrasting colours and reciprocated by the illustrative character of the content. 
Even the grand scheme of the "Theorama" cycle on world religions ends up as an assembly of well-known symbols associated with each system rather than being expressive. 

Thus, one does admire Husain’s fluency and free energy but tends to be tired by the monotonously cheerful and literal tone of the works. The display is on till March 31. 

Portraits of writers

The portraits of Indian writers by the French photographer, Olivier Gaza,l have a virtue of modesty which however eventually disappoints. 
The smallish, black and white shots at the Alliance Francaise are quite classic in the way they approach the models with a blend of direct closeness and respectful distance, refraining from artificial manipulations and drama, even neutralizing backgrounds. 

Instead of forwarding his interpretation, the lensman allows the poeple to pose on their own, somewhere between the conventional and the natural, thus letting them to reveal themselves. Because this is overdone, the impact depends on each person’s innate ability or inability to self-express. 
The portraits of Bhisham Sahni, Nirmal Verma or Geetha Hariharan are full of character. In particular, the consciously adopted Islamic looks of Kamala Das are staged by her with a gentle spectacular touch. Elsewhere, yet, a note of the indifferent may enter, a forced one (Pratibha Nanda Kumar) or one of formalistic lyricism (Ananthamurthy).

Marta Jakimowicz

THEATRE

History repeats itself

Arjun Sajnani has done it again. He has roped in the best cast and technical team to create another spectacular and lavish production. And this time, it is one more play by Girish Karnad – Thuglaq, currently playing at the Chowdaiah Memorial Hall, Bangalore.

Thuglaq, the 14th century sultan, who is remembered for his eccentric ways of administration, takes centre stage in Karnad’s play to emerge as a multi-dimensional character – who is at once an idealist (his subjects read this idealism as madness) and a scheming politician, conservative and very progressive, and romantic and brutally realistic. This multi-dimensional character was well-interpreted and brought on stage by Ashok Mandanna through underplayed body language, which spoke of profound intensity. 

In Thuglaq, nowhere does the author make a statement about the play or the characters for the reader. It is this strategy that gives the play freshness and allows for varied interpretations. And, in Sajnani’s play the interpretation paves way for heroes more than one. Thus, we have an Aziz, the only person to make hay while the sun shines; who uses every opportunity thrown open by a Sultan in hot pursuit of a perfect change for his kingdom and subjects. Vivek Shah as a flamboyant trickster and criminal was a character to behold, though sometimes one did wonder if his language, style and pronunciation was a little out of place with the roles he was playing. 

Then there was Prakash Belwadi as Najeeb whose head consistently straining a few inches away from his body (wonder if that was deliberate) completed the picture of a suspicious minister, which he performed with élan. 

What struck most in Sajnani’s production is, even the so-considered ‘minor’ characters gave a performance that one would later remember. For instance, Vivek Madan who played the young man, crowd and soldier. Or the Hindu woman played by Divya Raghuram. The lighting design by Pradeep Belwadi, music and sound by Amit Heri and Clay Kelton created some stunning effects. Even the black out after each scene made an impression and interpretation. But, ultimately it the good mixture of powerful dialogues and performance that made for an entertaining evening.

The marriage of politics and religion, the clash of development and poverty, the horrors of Partition –all wove together to remind us of our present rather than a history of the bygone days. But the end – where the director tried to elevate the play to an unfinished pathos -- destroyed it all. Was the gimmick really necessary?

Maithreyi

Promising youngster 

Sumitra Vasudev gave a delightful vocal recital at Sri Rama Lalitha Kala Mandir, Banashankari on Saturday. She is an upcoming artiste, with a keen sense of melody, sound imagination and the ability to render sangathis fluently. She is the disciple of Sangeetha Kalanidhi R.Vedavalli of Chennai. 
The good training in traditional patanthara was emphasised by the way she presented the keethanas. After the varnam in devamanohari, the sketch of mayamalavagowla drawn by the vocalist was neat for the kriti vidukula of Thygaraja. 

The piece Sitpathe (khamas) was presented by her palatably with some hearty passages of neraval and swaras, followed by vamsavati( viswambari) of dikshitar. 

Her description of karaharapriya for the Purandardasa kriti Bharatidevya was vibrant and included a good number of sensitive phrases and this kriti was rounded off with neraval and swaras. 

Next was  Karunaithanden(begada) a Tamil song, which was rendered with poise, in keeping with its kalaparanam. 

The raga Shanmukhapriya gained in sparkle as sancharas were layered in strata from madhyama sthayi to the thara sthayi and the tanam that followed was good with melody and brighas in appropriate places for the ragam tanam pallavi, which was simple and pleasing. 

The seasoned violinist Lalgudi Rajalakshmi provided excellent accompaniment playing beautiful raga phrases and answers to swara passages. Tani by S U Jayachandra Rao(mridanga) and N Amrit(kanjira) was played with good understanding and  was laudable. 

She concluded the concert with a Kannada song in ragamalika.

Jagadha Kumar