Narayan Acharya
Intro: “A foolish, passionate man”… 1
No….. there was no solitary face of an innocent girl from any of Henry Rousseau’s paintings peeping from all the junk that would meet your eyes in a ‘Kabadi’ shop., neither was there Pablo, the clever acid-eyed Monsieur Pablo Picasso himself.
As far as I reminisce it was in a protracted summer in 2004. Seated in front of the bureau of an art-connoisseur gallery- owner in a busy cosmopolitan market-place of New Delhi, tired and exhausted by the heat-wave that had been ravaging the city, I was waiting for the boss’s call. Dumbfounded amidst innumerable framed paintings of different types that crammed all the walls and even the floor save the ceiling only, a peculiar thought crossed my mind ( given the situation the thought might have occurred to any art-lover): “Oh! Why do people make so many paintings!” I was being gradually ensnared by a bitter, heavy, nervous fatigue. Right at that moment I was redeemed by a tiny, not bigger than 28 x 21 cms. pastel drawing on a piece of packing paper, a nude. It was not the type of artistic porno that hangs generally in the art-galleries of any metropolitan city of India. The whole form has been captured in black lines that leave a suggestion of interrupted flowing and the sculpturesque, firm and elongated figure that is in a gait of stepping ahead with an intimate but very personal mood of happiness has been represented by two or three broad block-defining flat strokes of broken pieces of oil-pastel sticks. As if she will presently lose herself bursting into a symphonic blaze of a fiery dance. In the background opposite to the slanting posture of the nude, the transverse juxtapositional application of dash strokes of limited pastel colours suggest an open landscape to the horizon that almost dialectically reinforce the nude in an intense sonority. Unmistakably I got electrified; indeed. This is not an over-statement with a view to earning money by presenting marketable exalting contents. Undoubtedly the drawing bears smells of academic training and practice but over and above what it retains is the firm binding of bold outlines which holds the figure, the usage of which is exclusively oriental , the age-old collective unconscious of our own Indian heritage. And at the same time through the treatment of the entire figure in pictorial language (which is totally inexplicable in literary language) it has grasped the space inside and back and in relation to it the unknown, changing space in front outside the frame. And it generates throb which is simply inexpressible. To comprehend the whole matter I half-closed my eyes. And the magic that unfurls itself in some very rare hours started to happen. That lady started dancing breaking the layers of metallic darkens of the exhaustion that collected there and gradually that transferred into a deep magical blue of the monsoon and a vast expanse of space whirled splashes of colours. Music occurred there. And the impact remains the same surpassing the least effect of marginal utility even now whilst I’m straggling to pen something about that. If we just fail to remember the imagery, images, pictures and drawings with their several multilayered physical and metaphysical dimensions, then what’s the use? Then on what ground should we assume that the modern Indian painting is improving and adding new feathers to our old cap? Irrespective of being senior or junior I’m somehow acquainted with several seemingly successful painters and draughtsman of our own country from the view-point of market-economy whose works I unfortunately can’t recollect properly. So, possibly for this reason we will have to enter, with patience and active intimate concentration of mind , into our history, into the scattered, conglomerated urban myths – otherwise how can I, as I am simultaneously the writer and the reader of this article, that is to say, while I am writing this, I am reading this , or while I am reading, I am writing this, decide, as a whole body of yours, my limits, vertically and horizontally both, my being perpetually de-constructed?
After that first encounter with the artist’s work, I had had the opportunity to see a large number of his works in different genres. Then one day I happened to enter an aesthetically rich and selective but ordinary government quarter which belongs to the artist’s son on a calm and shady evening when this octogenarian elder artist dressed in austere white Dhooti and Panjabi had come from distant Faridabad only to cater to my whim.
Recently he has become physically weak, one of his eyes is affected with glaucoma and the other eye is still not functioning. Against all this odds, he scribbles, makes drawings everyday and there is no trace of tiredness anywhere in his stout straight burnt Sal Tree like physique. The evening passed chatting with him and his son and family and when after eating a Rajasthani dinner at his place I alighted from his son’s car, and walked towards my place, it occurred to me that I had got something, again & at last! Not like Rilke, poet Rainer Maria Rilke in post-second World War Paris, but in our unfortunate country most of the problems come to our helpless middleclass sensitive people like a hidden current which is intense, protracted and natural and astonishingly enough, such happenings occur even amongst all this….. so natural and so easy!
Once on 26th January in “Parliament Bhabana” open-air dance festival the artist had been sketching in impressionistic style with bits of pastel-sticks. Mr. Hussain was spell bound and then they passed a good time in talking in a low voice and sketching together. Once his son who went to the States for service knocked at the door of erudite print-maker Prof. Krishna Reddy’s flat and informed him of his identity and pat came Prof. Reddy’s questions: “How is Mr. Acharya? Does he continue working? Didn’t he send any of his recent tiny piece for me?” Needless to say this old stoic gentleman hadn’t forgotten
to send him an intimate letter along with a small handy painting.
Though he had been occasionally honoured here and there, most of his life Mr. Narayan Acharya had to pass without proper recognition he was worthy of. This artist whose works had been exhibited side by side with the works of Picasso or many of his great contemporaries had to traverse the long road almost empty-handed. The responsibility is ours. In this connection we may recall Prahlad Karmakar of Bengal, who once received bronze medal equally bracketed with Matisse.
Recently his works which have survived the wear and tear of time are being collected and documented in our country. The hope lies there. Any how, the artist Mr. Narayan Acharya didn’t pay any heed to all this. Stirring his spoon in the cup of warm tea, he tightened the reflections of burnt colours and the warmth gradually took hold of me:
“I don’t believe in any particular, stereotyped style, that is to say fashion. Never. Fashion could be outdated, faded out any time, any fine morning. Instead I’ve continuously been keeping focus on the very aspect of expression that often comes to us along with the changes in one’s life against the troublesome wage of struggle-struggle in the private-societal plane of artist as well as in the track of restless aesthetic dispersal of his own.” In this case, it does not indicate any hints to experimentation. What it subversively affirms is that of conviction and commitment. Commitment with life.
Discourse: “Here’s the gist of what they mean”…2
Now we can identify and pursue the milestones that Mr.Acharya has left behind in the track of his aesthetic journey.
He joined Govt. College of Art & Crafts , Kolkata in the year 1945 as a student, though his stint there was a brief one of two years only. A helpless youth from an interior rural area of Rajasthan, a member of an ordinary village middle class family, he had to concede defeat in his unequal fight against time which did not favour him. His father was ill and a premonition of uncertainty over the impact of the Quit India Movement which prevailed in Kolkata at that time and many other complex problems compelled him to return to his native village. Inspite of all this, a sincere study of his comprehensive works undoubtedly establishes one truth and i.e. throughout his whole life he has been carrying a particular tradition of the enlightened ‘bee-loud glade’ of the then Kolkata with warm love, care & devotion, the tradition of the then modern contemporary art and culture in Kolkata in those golden days of Govt. College of Art & crafts. He has been incessantly experimenting with painting and graphics, passing over the temporary phase of the making of protests, slogans or isms. Art to him is a heritage and to put it specifically in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s words “Depreciated legacy”, through which he intended untiringly to build up a space fertile and even pulsating, quite ethereal.
In 1945 when he attended the Govt. College of Art & Crafts the illustrious art-teacher and portrait artist Atul Bose was the Principal. Sree Jainal Abedin and Sree Basanta Ganguly were among his teachers. Somenath Hore, the great sculptor, graphic artist and muralist was his classmate. Famous painters like Sree Bijon Choudhury, Sree Biren Dey and Sree Arup Das were senior to him by one year. So the unquestionable seeds of dream in him unfurled their wings in the vast open sky in an ambience of a bright and meritorious circle. He apprenticed in academic drawing under Jainal Abedin. In this connection we can mention the ever appealing burning black and white sketches of Mr Abedin of the famished and starving victims of the famine of 1946 in which the rural peasants of Bengal had been dying everyday on the streets of Kolkata and that famine was artificially created by a section of the greedy unscrupulous hoarders and businessmen. Here we can think of the parallel documentation-based and satirical drawings and compositions of Chittoprasad and also of Tebhaga Diary by Somnath Hore. It was a crucial and violent time when a large section of the intellectuals were emancipating and restricting themselves into a quite elitist mode and side by side a small number of personalities of the art movement in Bengal had been breaking up the cheap propaganda of an imposed and self-styled social commitment and finding themselves standing in the center of the nucleus of the localized economic and socio-political problems of the greater masses. They had been searching relentlessly for the quintessence of the content of their art and its suitable vocabulary from the abovementioned background.
The words they clutched sincerely were idealism, faith and a dauntless bravery of fighting or breaking up. Naturally their drawings overthrew the barriers of the academic
training of the art college and derived their sap of life, their inexhaustible boldness that denied the law of marginal utility, from the nature and man in his socio-economic, socio-political, changing, shifting and contradictory perspective. This discussion draws its relevance from the fact that the recent liberal trends unleashed by the market-economy and globalization have initiated a vogue of urban audience-friendly art cultivation which has shifted its emphasis from the sincere and noble labour of defining, identifying, exploring and cultivating substantially. Eventually the standard of drawing not only gets lower, its relevance almost becomes indiscernible. So, in the then situations when Mr. Acharya studied, the ambitious and meritorious students had had on them the influence of their idealist artist teachers and out of those different gold lit circuits emerged some famous and comparatively not-so-famous artists of today with their individual stories, which ultimately have become the story of us and the story of all-the depreciated legacy- the multi faceted, layered rock that they have been carrying on their untiring shoulders. Mr. Jainal Abedin was one such teacher and our artist under discussion Mr. Narayan Acharya was one such student though for his publicity- shyness he has gradually become comparatively less renowned (almost like Gobardhan Ash of Bengal). Apart from his teachers the other material resources that stirred him to inspiration were the drawings by Pablo Picasso (he was fortunate enough to have seen some print reproductions) and the down-to-earth drawings and sketches by Acharya Nandalal Bose in his later period in the pages of the famous Bengali journals, the “Prabasi”, the “Ananda Bazar Patrika,” and the “Desh”. The third factor was his challenging and fruitful experience that he had had in that practising stage and that was his experience of painting cinema posters. It was a time when people were all agog for cinema and so the young efficient and poor artists had been engaged in this work. Mr. Acharya made huge large scale posters of films like “Kismat”, “Barsat” starring Nargis, “Har Har Mahadev” starring Pahari Sanyal etc. for the famous cinema halls of the then Kolkata: “Ganesh Talkies”, “Minerva” and a hall in Chitpore. The wages that he used to receive according to the price – structure of the then Kolkata was like the following:-
50 paise per 2’ x 2’ area space for the initial rough charcoal drawing of the poster.
Rs.2 per 2’ x 2’ area space for the final painting of the poster.
Rs.1 for lettering of the same area space.
According to Mr. Acharya this type of work helped him in obtaining deftness
to visualize in large scale and to render the drawing.
to acquire consciousness of the pictorial quality of the objective quality of things.
to scientifically delineate light and shade & depth, i.e. contrast so that the pictorial text could properly be visible and read from distance.
After that the young artist had to return to his native village in Rajasthan with unfulfilled dreams. Even after returning there this natural artist had been engaging himself in continuing his art practice in his tiny sketch books. In all those scribbling emerged the typically featured people of his indigenous village and also the people of the surrounding areas who had been running in search of livelihood to the newly developed and gradually developing New Delhi. He himself was one among them. His desire of a settlement and the pressure of his family had led him to frequently visit New Delhi at that time. The static and mobile small scribbling of life done at this phase of his life eventually gave birth to a series of small and medium size kind of tempera drawn in gouache medium. Having passed some time in uncertainty he was appointed as a draughtsman and modeller in ‘Bayoo Bhavana’ (Air Head Quarter) in the year 1951. He continued this job till retirement to maintain his family.
In this connection we can’t help stating remorsefully that a man who deserved to work as a professor of art in a university or at least in a govt. art college and thereby could enrich the world of art of this country through his pupils had to compromise with the work of a petty government servant throughout his whole life. It is our great misfortune that the history of our modern Indian fine art is full of such fatal follies and what do we get in lieu of it and how much and whatever are we receiving now? The budding artists who remain outside the ring of establishment or rather who are in the realm of anti-establishment are still not allowed sympathetically to bloom in India even today. To come back to Mr. Acharya’s career, with a view to completing his academic training and overcoming the technical inconveniences in the place of his service, he joined Delhi Polytechnic as a student.
It is known to most of us that at that time Delhi College of Art was non-existent and Delhi Polytechnic was the only center in the city for imparting modern art education, which in the long run had been expanded and transformed into Delhi College of Art. Sri Ramendranath Chakraborty, a bright ex-student of Govt. Art College Kolkata, a significant personality as an artist, painter, draughtsman, print maker as well as a much admired professor was the Principal of Delhi Polytechnic at that time. Having seen the high standard of Mr. Acharya’s works as well as his clear ideas, he advised him to take admission as a third year student. Mr. Acharya selected commercial art for specialization because in his service he had to do drawings of different sites from the aerial perspective and water colour all the time. Also from time to time he had to do drawing rendering of architectural designs. Out of all this Mr.Acharya successfully worked out some quite balanced and aesthetically rich compositions about which we shall discuss later on.
All the teachers of Delhi Polytechnic at that juncture of time were successful students either of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan or of Govt. College of Arts & Crafts Kolkata, who at the later stage became Semitic figures in the sphere of national art & culture.
To name a few we can recall our ever loving “Baba” , revered Sri B.C. Sanyal, and Sri Sailaj Mukhopadhyay, Sri Dhanraj Bhagat, Sri Bimal Dasgupta, Sri K.S. Kulkarni, Sri Haren Das and after a lapse of time Sm. Jaya Appaswami and Sri Somnath Hore etc. a boiling pot supposedly in the true sense of the term. And most of the revered artists of Delhi and of India today had their nurture and nourishment in that Delhi Polytechnic. From this institution Mr. Acharya completed his art education with a first class first and returned to his ‘Bayoo Bhabana’ job and also parallely to a silent and solitary religious regularity.
Before joining Delhi Polytechnic Mr. Acharya had been actually expanding what he had learnt in Kolkata Govt. College of Art & Crafts. Through the experience he had been through in his phase at Delhi Polytechnic and through his interaction with other artists in different workshops and artists’ camps in the national level he began to break himself gradually ushering in changes which in accordance with his inborn nature never had been very loud. It was almost like a soliloquy, or a subterranean flow. He had always been cultivating in different mediums and in a multifarious ways. His words can be recollected here: “I don’t believe in style, any specific stylization . Never. Instead what I do prefer to keep trust in is changes in expressions’’. We can judge his changing patterns or to say it otherwise aesthetic dynamism fundamentally from three four viewpoints.
1.Contemporary scenario happening around.
2.Practice in academic and traditional miniature styles.
3.Random experimentation with different mediums in both painting and graphics.
4.The inevitable phenomenon of countless drawings and sketches.
Let us first take an account of the time. That was the post–independence period when all the important spheres of art & craft in India like Kolkata, Mumbai, Baroda and Santiniketan had been breaking up with the established British academic school and also overcoming narrowness of the nationalist revivalism and at the same time rebuilding the whole frame in the modern international format. And New Delhi as it remains the center all the time had been receiving the breaking waves of the changes and evolution of experiementation from all the corners, be it individual or joint, collective or collaborative. Artists and intellectuals from all the places of India had been gathering here frequently for mutual exchanges and interactions, exhibitions, seminars and for sundry intellectual and cultural reasons. Revered M.F. Hussain left for Mumbai after staying in Delhi for a considerably long time, although his presence in Delhi was uninterrupted for the sake of his friends and his own exhibitions. Some dream- laden members of the “Bombay Progressive Group” sought shelter in Delhi for a shorter stint but ultimately they migrated to Mumbai and found out their own “Kholis” in the varied Row Houses in a happy mood in the warm and romance – burdened climate. They also confirmed to visit Delhi off and on. Parallely an untiring endeavour was set in motion by respected Prof. K.G. Subramanyan. K.G.’s striking experimental large-scale paintings of the Blue series were being exhibited at “Art Heritage” Gallery that belonged to his dear friend and well –wisher Mr. Alkazi. Often he would come to Delhi to attend seminars or workshops render lectures or demonstrations or merely to enjoy friendship with idealist teacher comrades or his students or the students of Delhi Polytechnic. Besides them, the legendary print maker of today, ex-Santiniketanite Krishna Reddy also came to Delhi at that time on a few occasions on being invited to demonstrate in the workshops at Garhi Studio. Side by side the majority of teachers of Delhi Polytechnic were engaged not only in teaching but also in finding a new language, exploring new interesting techniques, cultivating in abstraction in their own personal studies as well as collectively in graphics studios. Simply unthinkable! And our artist loitered in the gray chiaroscuro of a spacious unending veranda with blue seeds of dreams in hand in such a time- passage amidst the love of many of his teachers and fellow students. He has never learnt to speak out his own demands and unavoidably this publicity shy artist had to live an ordinary middle class life banking on his own conviction and trust and faith in himself for the blue seeds of his dream to sprout up and for a protracted time, almost all his life he had to carry on his works in the level of art endlessly tiding over all the oddities and difficulties. Out of his own, solitary conviction, with his feet firmly planted in the sanguinary mire of the river of blood, he had to cull the imagery of his journey,- images and the incessant varied wound-wrought path ways- the rhythm of the broken, torn and tattered lines. In this connection a remembrance of one of his beautiful viscosity which he worked out under Krishna Reddy at the Garhi Studio and which eventually was collected in the N.G.M.A. comes to mind The image is almost like this: A slightly orange slightly red broken, incomplete flow of water set against a quite rough textured squarish flat background of light veredian green, which is a river and which finally marks the indomitable but simple quality of flowing. The textured inscription betrays Reddy’s faint influence although the technique is exclusively the artist’s own. Apart from this, the space divisions and 2 dimensional projection of a dominant natural form may remind one of Mr. Akbar Padamsee’s “Metascape”, but it would be mistaken to judge it as his direct influence, because at that juncture of time there was a prevalent practice of fruitful give and take through parallel experimentations. His job of a draughtsman in the’ Bayoo Bhavana’ Air Headquarter, New Delhi, demanded him to make isometric drawings from the aerial perspective (or top view) of the suspected target spots of foreign aggression. And he was compelled on administrative (military) grounds to maintain a reserved almost masquerading life-style avoiding free mixing with friends and relatives, attending social gatherings or roaming spontaneously at large. This alienation and his experiences linked with his job gave way to some abstract or semi-abstract architecture-contained nature- scapes. Here comes the flashback of one of his unique compositions. On a rectangular canvas along the lower-end borderline a long sanguine red vermilion stripe which signifies the horizontal base of the balanced composition made out of precise geometric measure and at the same time possibly a stream in the contrast of various green that keeps a delightful play in a kind of semi transparent geometric divisions of medium and lighter tones. In the middle portion of the greenery there are some grayish whitish middle-sized block like architecture (much familiar in bureaucratic Delhi) projecting cast shadows. Aesthetically this work is of high standard, undoubtedly. But he realized the limited impact of the beauty of the visual designs (derived from outside reality) and his real source of passion lay in the drama of activating human figure. So, same technique of rendering geometrical light & shade in the oil paintings he applied in his human figure based compositions. And although these compositions are executed in oil medium, he used thin layers of colour almost like water-colour, and side by side with dark medium and light tone, he played with light and shade using stripes which was in semi-expressionist style and that also reminded us of late artist Mr. Bimal Dasgupta. We find influences of Prof. K.G. Subramanyan in some of his blue-base viscosity and calligraphs. In these works it is seen that some representative fragmented units of the happening reality have been presented against the vastness of almost flat but slightly varied blue. A sort of dynamism can be distinctly felt in these compositions. Undoubtedly these are very interesting works and potentially inspiring for the young learners. In some of his prints he presents the village life of the people of North India, the people, particularly the women have had to leave their villages to stay in the city. These prints remind us of Akbar Padamsi and Hussain and also of K.K.Hebber. The images or the specific figures which have emerged out of marginal simplification to create a poetry of some broken straight lined contour and have their own strength are actually the out come of the artist’s own personal life. His strength, straight forwardness, resistance- all these qualities he has achieved from his real life experience, a life reared at an ordinary village family of the desert region of Rajasthan, and his continuous struggle with poverty and conditions of living within marginal expectation.
He has acquired the scientific knowledge of drawing of human figures in relation to their particular time and space and rendering them their specific and different local characters right from his student life through making innumerable 1st hand sketches, memory sketches, scribbling and doodles. Naturally in greater sphere of art he didn’t face problems to express the essence of the reality through figuartion. He never has to take recourse to wild imagination for building up the figuration and relevant surrounding space construction according to the gesture codes and characteristic & psychological motifs. He didn’t need to introduce artificiality or any kind of amoral agency. People poverty-stricken, problem –worn, confined in their particular culture and suffocating at the pressure of the dominant urbanism- are now a days generally represented in the fashionably framed deliberately shaped back drop, draped in Khadi or expensive traditional handloom wear without finding out the principles of their exclusive reality or attempting at a parallel or at least a substantial space construction. This is how the profitable business of exporting Indianness to the international market is kept on. Fortunately Mr. Acharya didn’t have to do all this. Whenever he renders one or more than one figures in pen & ink, charcoal conte or soft pastel on an almost suggestively drawn background or on a base surface white or surface-coloured ground, the subtle play of broken lines and contour of the surrounding reality identify themselves with the contours of the figure/s and contextual reality comes up with its weight and comprehensiveness amidst the chiselled out human figures.
I think the lion’s share of Mr. Acharya’s assimilitated sense, his conviction and vital energy, his artistic insight-all have been hidden almost in an inborn original way in all these drawings and sketches. The posterity, students and young fellows of the next generation have many things to learn from him. These sketches & drawings might open before them a newer avenue. What has been made possible by some senior artists of the classical school and in the field of Indian art it has been accomplished by a few idealist seminal erudite artist teachers.
Here I can’t resist the temptation of quoting some words from Mr. David Robinson’s article …… in a special issue of “Outlook” brought out on the occasion of 50 years of “Pather Panchali” by Satyajit Ray.
“…so well received in the West was because of the negative picture his film showed of poverty in India. This is, of course, rubbish. Certainly the people in his film were poor and their lives were conditioned by that poverty. But poverty, in one degree or another, is a fact of life for a very large part of the world’s population. The people in Pather.. are engaged in the struggle to survive; but it does not impair their humanity. The idea-and it is certainly not confined to India- that it is somehow unpatriotic to portray your country in anything but a totally favourable and sunny light is pernicious and dangerous. It is a recipe not only for bad films, but also for rotten societies.”
In a few of Mr. Achray’s works which he has done by adding this layer over layer of acrylic in tempera process, we discover all these qualities of Sri Sailoj Mukherjee permeated except that enlightened playfulness. The reason perhaps lies in our artist’s restrained personal life and his suffocating life –style. Consequently we find suggestions of a measured articulation and the playfulness works here in a hidden suggestive manner.
Practice in both traditional and academic style.
As he has been brought up in Rajasthan, a special liking for miniature and miniature like paintings was inherent in him. Also he has studied for a long time the schooling tradition of working, in this particular genre, the Guru-Sishya Parampara. Later in his older age in a quiet peaceful state of mind he has taken up pieces of rice- paper of Rajasthan, pasted them air-tight on the board, prepared the ground with Multani Mitti and with his unmistakable strokes of pointed brushes he has painted pictures in the miniature style using limited colours. The then Calcutta Govt. College of Art & Crafts used to give students an uninterrupted lengthy training in the British academic process and the industrious students could hone their skill to perfection. Till then the movement of making a new exclusively Indian language ignoring the British academic process had not been developed. Later when this consciousness came into being it has been observed that most of the artists who were the ex-students of this college remained in a rather confused transitional state midway between the periphery of the strict British academic style and the experimental process of building up a new pictorial language they engaged themselves in different self-imposed styles, styles of expressions which could be stated as fashion to understand the matter more clearly; and it is obvious that fashion is always outdated. It is curious to note that in the perspective of that time, Sri Acharya had been doing extraordinarily sensitive works in quite impressionistic style. His Nature-morte of the fruits done in soft pastel can be mentioned here. The middle sized paintings done in wash technique can also be recalled.
In his art of making truthful vivacious and quick sketches and in his drawings of different historical spots of Delhi based on his first hand experience he has followed the style introduced by his teacher Sri Sailoj Mukherjee; the style, it is interesting to mention, is still very popular with the young artists of Delhi.
As an artist Sri Acharya has always been unhesitating to face challenges and so he happily accepted the task of making life sized coloured copy of the relief sculptures at the a birth place of Haridasa in Mathura. Cashing in on his experience of making cinema hoardings and posters in his early life he took up this work and gave shape to a somewhat religiously idealized figuration. To vent the internal spirit of these works and to keep up the proper expression he used earth colour. There are many things to learn from these works.
3. Uncountable sketches, drawings & scribbling:-
I was really awe-struck to see the bulk of his drawings, though I could not manage to look into half of his works which have been stored in his residence at Faridabad. The artist’s deft hand has touched everything – small and medium size sketches, scrap books, invitation cards of wedding or other family functions, envelopes sent to friends and relatives, cards for the exhibitions, waste papers, monthly family accounts., writing paper pads. Later his son used to provide him with small pads of cartridge or bond papers and he would fill them playfully with drawings or sketches. And even today when he is 84 and one of his eyes is affected with glaucoma, he still engages himself almost instinctively sitting with his spine straight in confirming his playful interaction with paper and brush.
A work of drawing lines with a heart, hurt, wounded and dissatisfied he keeps on carrying a track uninterrupted or a stream ever flowing. Perhaps this will take us to a galaxy of stars. That’s the instinct of an artist. Sometimes he plays with the physical structures of men, women, and children, sometimes with speed and rhythm. Sometimes he scientifically analyses the fragments of a whole and transfers them in pictures. Not only human figures but also nature and all the everyday objects come into his focus.
A selected collection of his work in the perspective of today, which will be an essential showcase is necessary not only for the young generation but also for all of us. We have forgot to do all this, haven’t we?
Experimentation with material ingredients.
The burden of maintaining a family within a limited income posed financial constraints on his working as artist and therefore most of the time he had to prepare substitute materials. He was such patient and industrious a perfectionist that the pigment executed with his own oil colour and linseed oil are still intact. His viscosity done on the plate which he made himself does not show any difference. Rather he has greatly freed himself from the metallic rigidity of the conventional materials.
Coda: “What is there left to say”…3
“RIDER’S SONG
Cordoba,
distant and lonely.
Black pony, large moon,
in my saddlebag olives.
Well as I know the roads,
I shall never reach Cordoba.
Over the plain, through the wind,
black pony, red moon.
Death keeps a watch on me
from Cordoba’s towers.
Oh, such a long way to go!
And, oh, my spirited pony!
Ah, but death awaits me
before I ever reach Cordoba.
Cordoba.
Distant and lonely.”
By, Federico Garcia Lorca
(trans. Alan S. Trueblood)
Mr. Narayan Acharya’s career of an artist apparently dim and covered with a blanket, is not the story of an artist who has alienated himself to install his works in a trendy way in different packages in the artificial market of the metropolis. Instead, he is the history of a comprehensive time and a positive respite to examine newly the unwanted parasites that have grown under the cover of foolishness. His life does not decide any final product, but what it makes is a “broken journey” which could be explained by words Christopher Maurer writes about the poem by Federico Garcia Lorca quoted above.
“… desire is defeated, its object recedes beyond the horizon, the rider’s voice-brave voice-expires in a final sigh of resignation. “Rider’s Song” is an emblem of Lorca’s own broken journey, toward a destination no critic, no reader, no poet will ever define. ”
The path of this journey is strewn with many a potential equalization and hints to the next dispersal. So it is important for young generation today, especially when the given platform is the flashy Delhi on one hand and the remote and reluctant Rajasthan on the other.
References:
Taken from W.B. Yeats’
“ A Prayer for Old Age.”
“Under Ben Bulben.”
“The Curse of Cromwell.”
* The title is taken from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story: “The Last Voyage of the Ghostly Ship.”