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Exhibitions - Suvaprasanna
SHUVAPRASANNA'S ICON
The Icons of Shuvaprasanna, despite the title, are no sacred images such as
traditional icons are. Shuvaprasanna's canvases sport images of gods and
goddesses of the Hindu pantheon and no Hindu viewer can miss the identity of
his familiar deity depicted many of them. The artist takes meticulous care to
weave in a good deal of traditional iconography or the distinctive features of
the deities - his or her mounts, emblems, stance and gestures as detailed in the
scriptures or puranas glorifying them. Despite all this, these are no images of
worship, mere religious pictures, nor objects of unalloyed reverence with which
the devotees contemplate, or bow down to, the icons in temples and shrines.
Sacred images admit of no profane experience of the aesthetic in the minds of
the viewers as they are not to be treated as pictures or sculptures mounted in
the galleries and museums. An icon is often considered not merely a
representation but the substitute of a divinity, a presence or appearance of the
deity revealing its splendor to the initiated seeking exclusively salvation, and
not aesthetic delight,
Shuvaprasanna's Icons are very much the oeuvre of the artist, even though the
devoutly religious viewer may legitimately take these images of deities as
objects of devotion. Since they are inspired by, and closely modelled on,
traditional icons and are marked by the formal refinement of classical
iconography. Moreover, a painting - a good painting by any standard - is
supposed to appeal to all kinds of art audience, It fails as a work of art if it
is not charged enough to vary in individual interpretation or not capable of
outgrowing the intended meaning and impact. Nevertheless, a major artist prints
himself in whatever vocabulary he couches his Subject.
Undoubtedly these canvases mark a new phase of Shuvaprasanna's career as a
painter. Though not a phase in terms of style or technique, these things definitely take a big visionary
leap. The artist explores in them the far
horizon of realities and plumbs the depth of our innermost response to it.
Shuva's works in last three decades show a continual widening of his range of
perception from street urchins to existential realities, from city birds that
flock around our homes to the Aves that spread wings beyond the bounds of
familiar sky, from the enclosed spaces of the cityscape to the distant horizon,
from the light, witty and homely to the solemn, awesome and suggestive of the
mysterious unknown.
In the current suit Shuvaprasanna's subject is the spiritual and mystic
realities of the cosmic and beyond. No abstract painter, he resorts to
imaging the abstract, draw ing upon the resources of ancient Hindu
iconography. Those who in the obscure past probed deep into the mystique of
Creation and the aspects of infinity and fleshed out their visionary perceptions
in terms of anthropomorphic divinities were basically poets and artists
even though
known generally as sages and mystics. With similar quest Shuvaprasanna could
easily strike a strong sense of affinity with them and appropriate the
splendid
resources of their vision and vocabulary. He read his source book the Chandi in
between the lines of the verses, taking in every detail of the vivid images in thc
hymns, addressed to Hindu gods and goddesses of Shakta and Vaishnava cult. The
divinities of his canvasses are as often deities of popular worship as of
obscure puranic origin. The
deities like Durga, Lakshmi, Kartikeya, such folk and regional goddess as Manasi
and diverse representations of Krishna and Radha rub shoulders in this suit with
Padmavati in the snake-girdled lap of a massive bluish-gray Shiva, Oindrani on
her elephant mount and Bramhani riding on a long-necked swan somewhere in the
outer space.
Each frame is obviously a spin-off of tradition explicit in all the remarkable
details of iconography, but it is also much unlike any icon of the same sacred
subject that we can recall. A traditional icon of Durga, Lakshimi or Krishna
are cast in a definite iconographic mould evident not merely in figuration but
also in surface, colour, finish and in the rigid symmetry of composition. The
figure of the deity whether or not markedly different from the human is tidy,
stylized, meticulously built to conform to the conventions except when the deity
has no classical antiquity but a regional ethnic or folk tradition.
Shuvaprasanna's icon displays a marked deviation in that it breathes an air of
free-form figuration. As in an icon the divine figure or figures are placed
dominantly in the centre of composition, but the rest of the canvas is left bare
with a stark expressive surface created carefully in tonal and textural
evocation of spaces. Freedom with which he handles the figure is best evident in
the Krishna canvases not only in the distinctive figural and gestural features but
also in the playful diversity of the formal arrangements. Similarly in
portraying the Vedic goddesses the artist's imagination is seldom hamstrung by
what is there in the descriptive passages in the verses of the scriptures. The
scripture credits the goddess Oindrani with one thousand eyes but a multiple-eyed
female face is no less monstrous than the one eyed gorgon. Shuva, however, finds
a most innovative way out. His Oindrani has numerous watchful eyes spangling her
dark mop of hair that spreads with a cosmic embrace, like that of Shelley's
maenad, across the top of the canvas. This is undoubtedly the most evocative
representation of the omniscient cosmic force embodied in the image.
What is most un-iconic and at the same time unique about these pictures is what
Shuva does with the figures of his icons. Unlike in any icon the figures of the
divinities in these canvases are not all of a piece. Each deity has for the
torso a hollow cylindrical form and an uncanny head detached from the rest of
the body, with a yellow girdle floating free around the neck. Nothing could be
more ideally suitable than this to evoke within the figurative what is basically
a subject of abstract spiritual contemplation. The artist seeks to lend a
pictorial visuality to the void and vastness of cosmic spaces and to the
invisible energy believed in every religion to have held them together,
harmonizing and integrating the known with the mysteries of the unknown,
unifying the explicit and hidden dimensions of existence. if one adds to this
the solemn air about the faces of deities, the stark stare in the pointed pupil
in their white or tinted fish-shaped eyes, their arms in most cases handless,
their bodies, except an occasional crown or bangle, seldom bejewelled and
finally the colour scheme varying from frame to frame dominated by pale yellow,
dull dark blue, grayish green or tender off-white, one gets a complete idea of
how Shuvaprasanna's canvases are no traditional icons but iconic nevertheless.
Paintings. |
