About
Since the early sixties, down to right now ought, surely, be deemed a long enough stretch of time, to have gotten to know the work of any one particular painter! Well, one should never be too categorical. Even so, if one may say it, I have been acquainted with Sudhi Ranjan Bhusan's works for years. And thus, looking at the latest crop - of the last five years - sends my mind hurtling backwards into his very first shows. There were those collages, still something of a novelty on the local scene! I watched the medium change, evolve and mellow in his hands as the years went by, and finally, when I happened to select three of his largest paintings for an exposition in West Europe in 1 973, it was transparent that the pointedly jerky, brusque collages, in all their newsy addenda had onow matured into multi-coloured butterflies. A continuity was maintained, but the taste of his work was rather different, to say the least. And then came an introduction to the painter's sculptures in metal and stone. These had not come out of nowhere, but carried the stamp of the forms implicit in the paintings. It may of course well be, that sculpture is the more active medium with this artist; for observing his painting, it becomes evident that Bhusan is really at pains to tackle volumes, often in ovoid shapes. These certainly emerge in the paintings from time to time, although the paintings are really a colourist's works.
Bhusan is, after all, a pupil of Ramkinker Baij, as also of Benode Behari Mukherjee! No wonder he pursues the two media as a matter of course, and with ease.
When I went to see these latest works at the Kumar's Sainik Farm gallery it was, as it happend, to be a beautiful morning with a fine clear light. There was almost no one else around or in the gallery, and I was able to get an uninterrupted view of the pictures from the moment I entered the building. The immediate effect was assurance. It was. plainly a fine reception, one in which a kind of dignity was combined with a transparent gaiety of spirits. There they stood, the works, at their best, radiant, lively, and, stable - the permutations and combinations of light in space, being their real true mission. Light in space, and time standing still! Well, such have been the choicest of his works, even those not present in this showing. Space, time and light and I thought to myself of the vanishing space, and on which an unknown - S.K. Razdan, a man of great intrinsic passion for the nature of Being and Time, has recently produced a magnum opus. The Theory of Vanishing Space - Vision beyond Relativity. Now though this is a scientific treatise, by a lover of rock bottom physical truths - it has a good and certain bearing on the nature of art. Here is what the author says in his opening chapter and it helped me understand Bhusan all the better:
"Beauty has its shrine built wherever appearance and vanishing feature together in sublime proportions... The phenomenon of vanishing, all around us, is the fount of abiogenesis, of all art. In fact the essence of art springs from the dominance of its vanishing element over the direct or distorted Nature that it reflects. Distortion is in appearance, and the vanishing of Nature through art shows how far these prior attributes of existence cannot be escaped. A few strokes can instantly perform what the solar system perhaps cannot accomplish in a century... Of all the arts, the art of painting cannot be excelled 'in its potential for the exposition of the spirit in the being. Though most uncommon, the art of painting is at the same time an instant passport for the liberty of the spirit in man. After silence, music comes nearest to the truth. It is so because unstressed beat has its source in the vanished Nature."
I have quoted Mr. Razdan at some length to emphasize the unstressed beat in the work of an excollage maker, but also to point at the preoccupation in it with music, or musicians, and the dance. The reality or mystery of space, of time, of the moving light, is also of the observer as well. So that when we speak of nature we should not forget that we are also part of it, that we should observe ourselves with as much curiosity and sincerity as we observe a tree, the sky, or an idea, for there is correspondence between ourselves and the rest of the universe. We can discover that correspondence, and then give up trying to go beyond it.
No wonder artists - unlike critics - deverbalize nature. Extracting the visual impression from its frame of associations, they see things as colours and shapes, independently of their designations or overt meanings, thoughts or actions. The eye liberated, sees or feels a lot more, and so the poetry of painters like Bhusan is entirely contained in colour and discrete shape. If the human being is introduced in one of Bhusan's canvases, he or she becomes a part of diffused pictorial space, one whole coagulated, seamless mass. Bhusan is not painting things, over-wrought as he is by emotions. His colours at their best, as with the Bismillah canvas are pure, and their harmonies strident. So also the other work with the musicians. Bhusan often uses reds or similar warmer hues as counter-point to any one of his predominant colours, since he is concerned with evoking atmosphere and rhythm, and even though his pictorial space is drowsy with summer air, though in it dim objects float lazily, or perch uneasily in a precarious equilibrium. To create such an atmosphere, he is prepared to paint almost impressionistically, concerned as he apparently is only with the transmutation of events and objects into pictorial states of mind no longer intended to 'reveal their structure or configurations, but to make them more delectable. Here is a form of alchemy and which may well be a sort of frustration to some, namely that the objects or events cannot be told apart from the picture.
Well, in this order of work the normal or virtual space, as matter, has vanished, but a parallel world - the one held by pressure of emotion materializes like a ghost. Everything over here is in the service of emotion, of an intense awareness of plastic properties, and as the articulation of the object - or more correctly, of their interconnections. All this, at its most successful, accentuates vitality rather than emasculates it.
In common with all colourists Bhusan is finally concerned with light. His image is light, and it is more than a sensory experience. Then again since artists usually have a limited subject matter, dancing and music. combine, as I already said, in various forms in several of Bhusan's paintings. Certain of the works are variations on rhythmic movement. From light and no light, colours may be evoked in their transmutations. They can be seen as flat areas adhering to the picture plan, or, changing our way of looking, the patinas of colour shake themselves forward in space in varying degrees. Seen this way, even a dot of black can become telling. The eye moves from plane to plane of colour, feeling how each area is balanced, or it can travel linear along the boundaries of each connecting area. We are delighted to accept the endless games a painter plays.
There is nothing ponderous about Bhusan's best showing, nor are we forced to admire the fineness of judgement with which limited means have been exploited. There is nothing ascetic about these, on the contrary here we have a sufficiently rich, accumulated, experience of nature. It may have the power to move on more than one level. Yes, we are free to move in this inebriate dance, so to speak, if it pleases our senses, and yet remain secure - there' is no danger of our falling. It is a gravity free zone. Space and time, as we know them literally, must vanish, if we, the observers, are to be awakened to the coloured kaleidoscope of this other, the pictorial space.
- Keshav Malik
