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Minimal lines, animated surfaces
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About a decade ago, noted artist S.G. Vasudev began working on a series of drawings based on the poetry and translations of the late A.K. Ramanujan. In response, the poet had expressed a desire to see the results. But that was not to be _ he passed away in 1993. Vasudev now remembers the muse in his `Tribute to A.K. Ramanujan _ An Exhibition of Drawings by S.G. Vasudev', which is being held at the Nehru Centre, London, from December 2 to 5. Extracts from both Vasudev's essay on Ramanujan and a catalogue on another show of Vasudev's paintings currently on in Munich, Germany (November 19 - December 15).
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"The Boar rescues the Earth", silver ink on black paper, "The Boar Rescues the Earth", Hymns for the Drowning, poems for Visnu by Nammalvar, translated from Tamilinto English by A.K. Ramanujan.
Through an artist's eye
I FIRST met Ramanujan in the mid-1960s, when I was studying at the College of Arts in Madras/Chennai. Girish Karnad introduced us. He asked me if I would design the book jacket for his first collection of poems, "Hokkulalli Hoovilla (No Flower in the navel"). I did a cover design using letters from the Kannada alphabet in white on a dark gray background. I also reproduced a hand-written version of one of his poems on the back cover, in the process in a way illustrating it. He asked me: "Don't you want to use any more colour?"
I said, "No. I can only conceive of your poems in black and white."
... When Ramanujan saw them he asked me if I could do a series of drawings, suggesting that we could have an exhibition at which he could read the poems. I had done just seven or eight drawings by the time he passed away in 1993, and after that I could not go back to his poetry for two years. But later I worked on a series of drawings based on 40 or 50 of his poems which had inspired me. I chose the poems from his books, Hokkulalli Hoovilla, Mattu Ithara Padyagalu, Kunto Bille, Hymns for the Drowning and Striders, selecting those I felt I could relate to or those through which I felt I could bring out something of Ramanujan ...
"Tribute to Ramanujan", ink on paper.
... The drawings are really my reaction to Ramanujan. Now they have become a tribute to a person who did so much in his life and who was important in my life: a very good friend, who indirectly guided me in many ways. Perhaps I would have called this series something else if Ramanujan were alive. Now, I call it "Tribute to A.K. Ramanujan".
Besides the drawings based on his own and translated poems the exhibition includes some drawings that reflect my interpretation of Ramanujan as a man. May be if Ramanujan had seen them he would have written some poems on these!
Theatre of life
Oil on canvas, 1998.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and the women merely players: ....
William Shakespeare
THE world as a stage — this sight of the world we do not encounter with Shakespeare for the first time. It shows up in early Indian literature as well as with Lope de Vega, Calderon, in the religious dramas of the Jesuits and of course in J.V. Goethe's Faust. The "Life and Death of a Rich Man", depicted in the dramatic poem "Everyman", shows this "theatrum mundi" as allegory and effigy alike. You can trace it in the European Fine Arts from Piero della Francesca onwards to contemporary painting. For the last 10 years this theme has been playing a decisive role in Vasudev's work.
His early oeuvre, created in the 1960's and 1970's, is still filled with signs and symbols, as his teacher K.C.S. Panicker used them at the Government College of Art in Madras. "Kalpanika", imagination, these were the titles of paintings from this early time. But soon he discovered the Tree of Life, Vriksha, as an archytypal motive which still fascinates him. Creation and growth, the eternal cycle of life is presented by the symbol of the tree: leaves are falling to the ground; from the ground, frequently also from the centre of a human body, the tree rises again, spreading its crown, sending his leaves back to the ground. This simile is part of Indian philosophy as much as it is of western thinking ...
Oil on canvas, 2000.
... The oeuvre of Vasudev spans five decades. During this period he has also turned to many other subjects. There is the series "He and She" which refer to the Maithuna-paintings, though not showing the archetype, unification of man and woman, but rather the confrontation, the discussion, the dissent. Many of these pictures cast a merciless light at the apartness, rather then togetherness, of man and woman.
The dichotomy in Vasudev's oeuvre can also be traced in other series. During a period of utter distress in the 1980's, when personal visitations dominated his life, portraits emerge which he calls "Manscape". Vasudev employs again, as in the 1970's and early 1980's with their positive attitude, very strong and light colours. His famous blue, comparable only to the intensity of stained glass-windows in French cathedrals, come back. Yellow, red and very intense rust brown too return to his palette. His special technique of scratching lines into the colour is still frequently used. But now Vasudev also uses broad strokes of the brush, the structure of which becomes a defining element to the painting. The surface becomes more animated, dissolved and thus livelier.
... "All the World's a stage, and all the men and the women merely Players". Shakespeare continues: "They have their exits and their entrances". But they are always related to each other. The spectator remains outside, the actors, as remote as they may be, should be conceived in their close relation. This is, perhaps, the secret of Vasudev's art: to see, to look, yet to be part of it. The world is in change, man is an acting and looking person, himself seeing but also seen, part of the "panta rhei". The complexity of Vasudev's approach to the world is the complexity of our times and its manifold appearances.
© Ernst W. Koelnserger
Transliteration: AME FUCHS
S.G. VASUDEV
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