Beyond the Hoarding and the Cult?
Soon after the arrival of the infallible reproductions of the daguerreotype silver plates of the early 19th century, painterly portraits seemed destined to attain another meaning. But, fortunately, the role of portrait painters in the gilded framework of posterity was only mildly challenged. Well into the 20th century, larger-than-life renderings on Indian royalty, the nobility and bureaucratic 'nabobs', in emulation of the gilt-framed oil paintigs on the Empress Victoria, her Hanoverian descendants and heirs to Empire, continued. Meanwhile, photography became less cumbersome, more prolific and precise. But realistic portraiture survived simultaneously - even flourishing in at least two areas: politics and cinema, whose ubiquitous presence is more visible on the streets. Broadly speaking these have emerged as the two cult areas of our times - with industry's boardroom portraits, a distance third.
Sanjay Bhattacharys's show on the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi must essentially be seen in this tradition, where cult is not a derogatory word and posterity as a conscious concern is both art and homage. In contrast to the larger-than-life images of street hoarding, this tribute to a brutally assassinated leader is more silent, even in the larger canvasses. The portraiture aspect remains, but it is Sanjay Bhattacharya's landscapes and interiors, cryptic and untelling behind their dark brown layers, which make Rajiv Gandhi a part of sepia books of history and of art. The large "Kashmir" canvas, swaying with daisies, tells of an era from our living memories, when the lakes were innocent as childhood and political leaders were seen without their black cat commandos, when our children were not kidnapped for ransoms, when they rowed alone in the Dull lake and took their mountain ponies into the Valley's bridlepaths, not yet laid in ambush.
There is a cultic reverence in some of these works - not the expected urban and blase response of people who only saw a suave Doon School-Cambridge facet of a man they could only judge on the criteria of his panache, his efficiency and performance. In our complex and mixed society, other aspects are more enduring: the charishma of a darshan to rural audience, a touch, a thoughful remark, even a glance that is made legend of by the common people. For them he had visited their village as an avatar of a deliverance of some kind or other: a road, the magic of electricity, water. It was not incongruous if his shiny, red lipped oleograph hung framed along with their pantheon of reverence or if a political poster was ensconced among the gods of a roadside shrine.
There is a candid, snapshot quality to Sanjay Bhattacharya's Calcutta street 'Procession' where the history of waving flags is no history at all, where the remnants of a colony crumble away in majestic buildings built at the height of Empire. Other works, less literal, more stylised and evocative, recast the moment when Indira Gandhi's body was laid in state, and history was recorded in photographs that will never leave the mind.
Bhattacharya's initial renown was not as much as a portrait painter.
It was his water colours which had first drawn the attention of connoisseurs
for their transparent realism of the Bengal School. But his subjects were
more alluring than the classical street scenes and the gaunt faces of the
poor. He ushered in a return of the darkly-lit interiors and of vibrant
still lifes. It was a chance commission to attemt a portrait of the late
Prime Minister for India House, London, that propelled him further in this
direction. The result was two portraits which have been widely lauded for
achieving a painterliness beyond simple photo-realism, bringing life to
the lips and the eyes of a familiar visage of our yesterdays. One now hangs
with the family and the other was unveiled by Prime Minister Narsimha Rao
at the Indian High Commission in London. It seems evident that Bhattacharya
has taken his subject of a garlanded cult portrait of the Governement-of-India-office-genere
into the friendlier realms of art. His concern has been not with polotical
debate but with the democracy of colours and some of the apolitical moments
chosen for his work - work that can hang where it may, unbounded by party
lines.
© Arts Indian Atelier 1999-2000