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Late recognition is something, it seems, which followed Benodebehari Mukherjee. “He came into the public eye only in the last ten years of his life” as K.G. Subramanyan would state in the introductory article of the Commemorative Volume on Benodebehari Mukherjee. This volume is published as part of the Centenary Retrospective Exhibition (December 30, 2006 to February 5, 2007). The recognition of the artist came pouring in starting with the conferring of the Fellowship of Lalit Kala Akademi, Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India, Desikottama by Visva- Bharati University and the ultimate tribute to his oeuvre by his student, Satyajit Ray through the documentary, The Inner Eye. Subramanyan pardons the “ignorance” of the editor of a Calcutta daily who did not know about Benodebehari, as the artist himself “willfully kept away from the limelight”. Subramanyan sums it all thus, “In this, he was an antithesis to Ramkinker Baij, who was outgoing gregarious. If Ramkinker was the image of a Baul, punch drunk with the sight of the iridescent world, Benodebehari was the image of a withdrawn Taoist monk, seeking speechless rapport with its inner rhythm.”
The centenary retrospective exhibition of Benodebehari, who doubtlessly can be considered as the doyen of modern Indian art, also happened two years after the actual centenary year. When Indian art and cultural scene is scaling great heights and government agencies are pumping money culture and art festivals, we see two curators, traveling from east and western regions of the country, pacing the corridors of power in Delhi, getting entangled in the crawling files. But the culmination of all these was an excellent exhibition at National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi, supplemented with admirable publications.
Edited by the curators of show, Gulammohammed Sheikh and R. Siva Kumar, the Commemorative Volume [I would not dare to belittle it by calling it; a catalogue] has articles by K.G. Subramanyan and by the curators followed by the writings of Benodebehari himself. The time line at the end of the book contextualizes the cultural milieu in which Benodebehari lived and worked.
The book opens with the Curators’ Note, where Sheikh and Siva Kumar recount their two year long journey “to trace Benodebehari’s works in every possible collection within reach in India”, traveling to Banasthali, Najimabad or searching for The Bridge or khoai, which Benodebehari had painted, using almost every possible mode of transport. Even Siva Kumar’s scooter was not spared.
K.G. Subramanyan in his article titled Benodebehari Mukherjee maps the relevance and importance of the artist going through the persona and his genre of art. I personally enjoyed reading the portion where Subramanyan discusses some of the works of Benodebehari “which one might call a ‘calligraph’. Subramanyan justifies in the following paragraph how he would define certain works of Benodebehari as ‘calligraphic’. Subramanyan suggests that this approach is due to Benodebehari interaction with Far Eastern art. Another high-point of Subramanyan’s article is where he delves into the mural of Benodebehari titled the Medieval Saints. I would suggest the reader to remember the following lines when seeing the mural in situ or its perfect reconstruction in NGMA, New Delhi. “The pageant moves like a river: it starts modestly on the hills, swells and broaden on the plains, gets feeders and tributaries that add variety and depth to it, then rides a rough terrain and struggles over the barriers before throwing itself on the ocean of mankind in town and village. This movement is flagged here and there with certain topographical and historical landmarks that give it a kind of zonal and chronological authenticity”. Subramanyan signs off his article with note on the contribution of Benodebehari in the field of art writing and history with his interest in varied art practices.
The article by K.G. Subramanyan is originally an obituary, which he wrote for Visva-Bharati News, April 1981. Reading it one can only wish for a new article by K.G. Subramanyan based on his experience as the student of Benodebehari.
In the article “Ruminating on ‘Life of Medieval Saints’ by Benodebehari Mukherjee” Gulammohammed Sheikh appraises the political and social significance of the “magnum opus” of Benodebehari. “Benodebehari drew upon Bhakti”, writes Sheikh, “to script his India by projecting the saints as silent revolutionaries rising from within the populous and introducing them as harbingers of change”. Sheikh reiterates the secular facet of the “Life of Medieval Saints’ and justifies the absence of Meera as a political issue rather than gender problematic. “The explicit investment of sentiment, nationalist or otherwise, into the image of Meera may have worked as a deterrent for Benodebehari”, writes Sheikh. Unlike Subramanyan, Sheikh saw the mural as journey, “with a series of journeymen in different guises guiding the viewer”. Sheikh then invites the reader/viewer to join the journey through a lucid description of the mural. His admiration for Kabir (as evident in his paintings too) becomes audible when the journey reaches the saint. “He (Kabir) sits in the middle of a musical sangat in a moment of silence before the bhajan begins”.
Gulammohammed Sheikh’s reading of ‘Life of Medieval Saints’ gives a cogent objectivity to the project as he was mapping it entirely as an outsider. He would not claim the involvement with the artist as Subramanyan had or with the site as Siva Kumar has. Sheikhs ideological stand point and credibility are evident in his writing and the curatorial inputs.
If a question is asked about Benodebehari one can certainly quote Siva Kumar who summarizes the oeuvre of the artist thus, “He (Benodebehari) learned great deal from cultural antecedents (Eastern and Western) but he was not a revivalist in pursuit of antiquity; he was a modern who valued the live contact of nurturing roots. But this nourishment drawn from faraway sources underwent such metabolic transformation that we cannot readily spot them in the luxuriance of his expression and in the innovative presence he makes on the Indian artscape”. Only a person who has fathomed into the heaps of documents; may it be small doodles, huge murals, canvases, dusty notebooks, bundled up letters, can conclusively and lucidly write like this. The article “Benodebehari Mukherjee: Life, Context, Work” by R. Siva Kumar first takes the reader through the life of the artist; his career, contacts, influences like Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Coomaraswamy, Stella Kramrisch, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi and then through his works, analyzing the phases which changed thanks to his journey through various environments like Santiniketan, Nepal, Mussourie, Patna and so on. Excellent archival photographs and illustrations of the works support the article. This article could have been printed separately as monograph, affordable to art students or art lovers, not everybody can afford Rs.4,800. (I have cited the articles for a specific reason; so that a person who cannot afford this book will be able to get the flavor of the articles.)
The book also features Benodebehari’s writings as Chitrakar (excerpts from the book Chirakar translated into English by K.G. Subramanyan, Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2006), and My Experiments with Murals (translated into English by Ajit Kumar Dutta, Lalit Kala Contemporary 14, New Delhi, 1969).
Parthiv Shah deserves great appreciation for the excellent design and Lustra Print for superior quality of printing.
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Browsing through the book one of my senior colleagues in Baroda stated, “this is the ideal way one should remember and respect great artists”
The birth centenary year of Ramkinker is already over. Is anyone listening?
Jayaram Poduval |
