Writings: 1) Allegories 2) Modernity 3) Public art 4) Exhibitions 5) Curations 6) Museums

Ramkinker Baij and some qualms over modernity

 

Anshuman Das Gupta

 

 

I knew Ramkinker from a small portrait and a few sketches in color, published in the autumnal special issue of a well known Bengali literary journal. Those were the only glimpses you could have, at the time, of an artist who otherwise is praised by one and all, sometimes for not very correct reasons. First, there were confusions over his identity, some people, even those who had seen him alive and working, would think of him as a Santhal - largely because, they would insist, he portrayed the local tribes in his works. (Later, I remember, we would joke about this saying… ‘Of course why should an artist portray other people’s family!!!?…’ )

 

This was before I had some of those rare chances of going through the pages of Nandan (journal), where you could get a closer portrayal of the person and again some glimpses of his works, the only likely authentic source you could comfortably refer to.

 

Ramkinker Baij seems to most of us, at least to those educated Bengalis who lived in Santiniketan, Kolkata and even other parts of Bengal; a very well known figure. A figure we know from the many stories that circulate about him. The stories are mostly based upon hearsay and mostly told by people who knew him personally. Some stories got written down in the forms of anecdotal fragments to build an image of him for posterity, while many of them float around in the forms by word of mouth, without a trace as to their origin.

 

He may not have been a wordy person. In his own version: “Mohashoy ami shabdik noi, Chakkhik, rupokar matro” (meaning: Gentlemen I am not a word person, and I am an eye-related (ocular?) person, merely a maker of forms.).  This would help promulgate a greater chance of interpreting those stories around him, or even spinning a couple of them. The major category that one could bracket such stories in can be called “Romantic”. The latest printed instance is from the able hand of a very well known realist novelist in Bengali, Samaresh Basu, titled: Dekhi nai phire (Didn’t look back). It is an incomplete novel, as the author died before he could complete it, but within its incompleteness it still proposes a model, a model for looking into the biographical history of the central character: Ramkinker.

 

The anecdotes as we knew them were inspiring indeed, for many of us in our unsuspecting teenage days found some causes in them that were away from the regular profit and/or glamour oriented thoughts on art. Those causes, fairly humane, convinced us about why art was still relevant and worth continuing with. Though, some of us were quaintly aware of the possibility that some such stories may have been born out of motivations exactly opposite to the lives they represented, and many of us then would even look at the sources of such fantasies with disdain or disbelief or both (e.g. Irving stones Lust For Life, and Agony and Ecstasy) . But to arrive at a method for checking authenticities took some time. 

 

Of course some characters in history do loom so large above the ordinary that representing them may create problems of authenticity. But that is beside the point. In a recent article Dipesh Chakrabarty told us convincingly that anecdotal fragment is a method that is adopted by many Indians in constructing histories. And those are the anecdotes (or, alternately genealogies) that are passed off as life of a person, often merging down the difference between the literacy and the orality (as against the familiar European distinction, for producing biographies). On the other hand, there are attempts to build up authentic biographies based on archival documents (not surprisingly, his only reference to that was Tagore’s Biography by Prabhat Mukhopadhyay and Prasanta Paul. Is this because the documents in other cases may not be altogether authentic, or authenticable? This is still a question.)

 

The Irving stone cycle ( in his Lust for Life etc. ) lives with precarious potential of surviving as a biography, by a willing suspension of disbelief, so does Bose’s Dekhi Nai Phire . Meanwhile though two compilations comprising both Ramkinker’s writings and occasional interviews with other people on his works and life have come out (one edited by Prokash Das and the other by Sandipan Bhattacharya) following the few dedicated Nandan numbers and a combined volume of Visva Bharati Quarterly.

 

Addressing the life of a great literary figure (like Tagore, Vidyasagar etc.) may involve literary documents mostly; addressing the issues around an artist’s life would involve a different and a double de coding of facts, and an altogether different kind of mediation. There is somehow a correspondence that is presumed between the life experiences and the works of an artist, a correspondence that is interchangeable and organic, by assumption.

 

It is a unity that cannot be broken without shifting the codes of identities. In its orientation it is largely guided by Historicism, where the correspondence between the biography and the presumed linear historical time has to be complete, all the parts have to accede to the whole and the end in view.

 

Ramkinkers biography would have attained a different discursive dimension, albeit befitting a period idea to a large extent, if Ritwick Ghatak’s film on him could be completed and viewed.

For in that film we experience a possible dialogue between the maker and the subject often tending to re/dis place one figure for another (say, viewer/maker). The rough edge of the explanations that Ramkinker offers for his works also show sufficiently the possible vacillation over meanings that an artist may face, and corresponding modernist anxieties that we may face.

 

These apart, sourcing Ramkinker for a modernist biographical history runs into another set of difficulties; when the project is typically, as is with the coy science- art history, to build a linear history of his works. As we said, the problem with historicism is that there is an insistence on a progressive unfurling of facts along a chronological line- which is the time line in history (with which, as in this case the biography has to match!). Along with this there is a nagging insistence on the intentionality of the makers. Of all, this posits art historians with a problem, if interpretation is his/ her goal.

 

I am, not trying to suggest that interpretation of works of art is a completely impossible affair but merely that those readings of intentionality are never trans-positional and they can hardly bypass the contexts and tools of those interpreting agencies. For, reading of works of art involves two way traffic, ideally within the protocols of representational practices.  

 

A close reading and aspectual studies do not necessarily violate the completeness of a life in its experiential dimension, for totality as a tool is impervious to the consciousness. The insistence on fragments is useful so that the works of art like any other products of special and potentially transcendental human labor are not subjected to either this or that kind of homogeneous ideological code, but can be agents of change. And also so that subject positions or selves can be seen as possibly retrievable positions and are not entirely dead with their contexts.

Friendly sites to relate

1) khojkolkata

2) www.anshumandasgupta.blogspot.com

3) http://shouldwait.blogspot.com/2006/03/they-should-have-waited-for-us.html

A brief biodata

Curriculum Vitae

 

Name: Anshuman Das Gupta

 Born: 14.7.1967

 

Lecturer, History of Art, Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan     ( Since 1997,August )

·        Completed Graduation in Art History in1990,from Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan;

·        Completed Masters in Art History from M.S.University of Baroda,1992;

·        Did a Film Appreciation course,at the Film and Television Institute,Pune,India1993

·        Was affiliated to Baroda as a research fellow;1992-96

 

• Publications:

 

1.      Seminar paper read at the National conference at Delhi on cross cultural performance, IIC, Delhi, March 2006

2.      Seminar paper read at the National conference at Baroda,

     On the  new Art History, Feb, 2006

3.      seminar paper in the international conference on Binodebehari:                    Benodebehari and his Tools, Feb, 2005 ( to be published)

 

4.      seminar paper on Films on Art, Kolkata, June,05, ( to be published)

5.      Seminar paper for the Bhubaneswar conference on Public sphere, July,05,    ( to be published)

6.      seminar paper on Postmodernism at the International art workshop/ seminar at Kokrajhar, Assam/ BTC, Dec,2004

 

7.      essay for the Searching Lines titled- Unreasonable Animals:                  Picasso’s Gambit, Nov,2003

 

8.      research article titled Museareality, Modernity, Desire: fabulous encounters; for the journal Nandan, Department of History of Art, Santiniketan, Nov. 2003-11-23

9.      introductory note titled- A Graphic Workstation Report for the printmaking folio the Lalit Kala Kendra, Kolkata and the Graphic Art Department ( jointly convened workshop), 2003

10. Written for the Journal Marg ( book version) , titled- Sculptural Embodiments , 2000

11. Santiniketan Architecture : Nature as Artifice, 2003

                [A seminar/ lecture version on the same topic was presented at the                        Indian Institute of Technology, (Kanpur), 2002]

 

12. essay for the Lalit Kala Contemporary , called Question of      Authenticity : paintings of our time, (Lalit Kala Contemporary, No.47), 2003.

 

13. Paper titled Migrant ideas ,Transitional Forms: Paintings of our Time, presented during the seminar/ exhibition at the Max Mueller Bhavan,( Indo German Cultural Center, N.Delhi, April, 2003

 

14. paper titled: State of Images :The Specular Body, on occasion of the seminar co-hosted by Kala Bhavan, and Lalit  Kala Kendra, Kolkata, March,2003

15. paper titled- New Medium, New Images on occasion of the Multimedia Seminar, at Art Film Theatre, hosted by the Media Centre, Lalit Kala, Nandan, Kolkata,2003

16. article /paper for the Baroda Seminar titled The New Art History               and the New Images: A question of Interface , ( in book form) , February,2003

 

17. article titled- ‘ Rethinking Avant garde: a possible narrative of otherness, for the art journal Nandan, (Dec. 2002 )

 

 

18. an interview based piece on Jogen Chowdhury for the Art India Magazine, Bombay,2001.

 

19. Completed a final version of the paper presented in the Rabindra Bharati University seminar on Installation and Internationalism.

 

20. an article for the CIMA,(Centre for International Modern Art), Calcutta; all India show of  the Art of Bengal , titled: The Trapeze Acts of the selves,2001.

 

21. an article for the art journal/Book-Marg : On Indian Contemporary Sculptures in the last two decades; titled- Sculptural embodiments: the last two decades , Published in.2000

 

22. [A seminar/ lecture version on the same topic was presented at the Indian Institute of Technology, (Kanpur), 2002]

 

23. an essay titled- Allegories among the Signs of our time for the Art History journal Nandan, 2000

 

24. essay for the Bishwa Banga Sammelan –  (an international conference on the art of Bengal), Calcutta, ( In the catalogue accompanying the show);titled-Calcutta:The Rise of Urban Iconography, 1999-2000.

 

25. Seminar paper presented during the International seminar- The Edge of the Century, titled- Paintings Among the Signs of Our Time ,British Council, N. Delhi,1999

 

26. Authored a seminar article( being published), during the International seminar, The Calcutta Metropolitan Art Festival, titled- Museum and the desire for modernity, 1997.

 

27. Co- authored two articles: ( one of them being on Installation in India) Published by Lalit Kala Contemporary, ,( Journal of the National Academy of arts) No.41, 1996, titled- The Transitional Modern:Figuring Post-modernism in India;

 

28. second one was- Art, Ideology and subjectivity, by Indian Institute of Advance Studies, Shimla, India,1994.

 

Wrote a few exhibition catalogues From 1994-2005:

One being for the show hosted by the British Council, N. Delhi, For Indian Printmakers Guild, (2000), for Prithvi Art gallery, Mumbai,1997; For CIMA, Calcutta,2001; and for Gandhar, Calcutta,2005, For Anant Art gallery, N.Delhi,2006

·        Seminars:

 

Attended the international seminar on Globalization and the multiple Cultures, Mumbai, Feb 2006

Read Paper at The national conference on the New Art History, Baroda, February, 2006

Read Paper at the National Seminar on The Public Sphere,Bhubaneswar, July,2005

Read paper at a international conference on Postmodernism, Assam, Dec 2004,

Attended an international conference on curation ( TAC) in new Delhi, December,2004,

Conducted a three day long seminar on Postmodernism at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, March, 2005

Presented papers at the two conferences held in Calcutta, Feb, March, 2005

Conducted a workshop on cinema ( 7 days) , IIT, Kanpur

Participated in a symposium on the theory practice isuues at the Goldsmiths college, University of London, June,2003; Two seminars at The New Tate Gallery,London,Jun- July’03; Worked on a reseach project at the British Library,June-July’03

Co- convened and Presented a paper At the Co-Hosted Seminar With Lalit Kala Academy, Kolkata, and Derparment of History of Arts, Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, 2003; Invited to read paper at the seminar on Migration, N. Delhi, 2003; Was invited as a paper reader at the Multimedia/ video workshop, Kolkata, 2003;Was Invited to two seminars- one, at the Department of Art History, M.S.U. Baroda, 2002; another at the department of humanities, IIT, Kanpur ; Conducted a workshop at the IIT,Kanpur, Feb, 2002 on Film Viewing and Film Genres.

Was invited to present a paper in a seminar coducted by the Benares Hindu University,Benares ( Feb-2000)

Presented paper at the Calcutta Metropolitan Art Festival, ( International ) seminar,Calcutta,‘97

Presented a Paper at the international seminar at  British Council New Delhi, (titled:On the Edge of the Century) , 1998.

Participated and presented paper at the annual seminar of the Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (1996).

Presented papers at the Departmental Seminars at the Department of Art History, FacultyOf Fine Arts, M.S.University of Baroda, Gujarat, from1992 to 1996

 

·        Curatorial Ventures:

Curated Three shows: one at the campus of M. S. university of Baroda, this was curated and written at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.University of Baroda, India, on the young painter Prabhakaran,K.(94);

Another one In New Delhi for the French Embassy , New Delhi, on the occasion the Birth Centinary of Dramatist Antonin Artaud(1997);

Authored and collaborated in a large scale installation show at Kala Bhavan –1999.

Currently curating at least One large scale show and a small scale show at the central venues in Delhi and Kolkata

·        Teaching:

Taught at Various Nationally and Internationally reputed Institutions- namely: At IIT Kanpur as a visiting Faculty ( September to December, 2004) at the National School of Drama, as a  guest lecturer, N.Delhi.

Taught at the foreign language department, Jawaharlal Nehru University, N.Delhi, Taught at the National Institute of Design,Ahmedabad under their Science and Liberal Arts Programme; 

At the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and taught as a reseach fellow at the Dept. of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S University Of Baroda. Presently teaching at Kala Bhavan (since 1997) .

·        Other engagements:

At present writing three long essays ( one for Marg Publications) and Two book -length works  on Contemporary art in the last two decades, Another on Postmodernism (In Bengali)

Have  worked as the chief researcher for two films on Art and Santiniketan by an eminent film Director Arun Khopkar. Earlier,  was engaged in two films as researcher on the artist K.G.Subramanyan, and on the artist Ramkinker, Directed by Ritaban Ghatak . Made a short video, and authored a few filmscripts.

Taken two workshops at the I.I.T., Kanpur on Film Studies and film production: From script to Cinema in February, 2002, and April,2004

 

 

 

Currently

active as member as well as Chairperson  of Khoj Kolkata, an international forum for artistic interaction

Member of the advisory board of the proposed Delhi Biennale

 

(Anshuman Das Gupta) Department Art History, Kala Bhavan (Fine Arts Faculty),Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, W.B, pin-731235, India ,Ph # ++91 3463 264657 (r); mobiles: #09333510463 , 09333510952;          ++91+3463  262751,6lines(O) e-mail:  #   anshudg@yahoo.com