It feels strange to imagine Ramkinkar Baij in today’s world – every time a student of visual art or perhaps, anyone with a creative mind visits Kala Bhavana he must feels it too. What would have happened if Baij was still alive and assigned with the task to make sculptures in the Airports, or in front the Parliament, or the Reserve Bank of india? It seems fascinating to think that way. Maybe, then we could have encounter another “Mill Call” in the Reserve Bank, or another “Gandhi” in the Parliament – with the congenital intellectual mockery of his, Baij could have created a “Corporate Family” or a “Money Call”. Or, on a second thought, Baij would have refused the offer it flatly. He was a man of passion – commission, fame, reputation, these things meant nothing to an artist that he was. He created for his own satisfaction, to sate the hunger within himself. For everything else, he did not care.
Ramkinkar Baij was among those with a huge potential and absolutely individualistic approach toward the world. In fact, the artistic style and treatment of Baij did not match the typical style of Kala Bhavana at all. Created as an answer to the conventional British method of education, Shantiniketan, Visva Bharati worked as a champion to the ancient Indian style of education in a rather unrestrained manner with a very close acquaintance with nature. Kala Bhavana (the arts faculty of Visva Bharati) on the other hand, focused on the revival of the classical and folk Indian style of art challenging the typical Western artistic format prevailed to that age. But, in Baij, we witness an altogether deviation from the classical format – instead of the painting pattern of Ajanta, or the sculpture pattern if Sarnaath, Ramkinkar goes for a rather western treatment for his oil paintings (as evident in “Lady with Dog” in 1937, or “Birth of Krishna” in 1950), and a unique blend of the folk and the classical for his sculptures (“Buddha” or “Sujata” for example) with his inimitable modern touch.
Despite of these dissimilarities of style, Ramkiakr Baij actually could have not been a successful and individualistic artist if he had not joined Kala Bhavana in 1925. It is the unrestricted and open educational system that made it possible to flourish his individuality. His unique style of sculpturing using latarite pebbles and cast cement bears the essence of the tribal santhaal people living in the villages near the premises of Shantiniketan and their lifestyle close to raw natur . Against this backdrop he sets the slight and slow effect of industrialisation and urbanism in motion to depict the history in the most imaginative form – in this he is an artist of the subaltern. “Mill Call” and “Santhaal Family” bear the evidence of this. However, Baij has also dealt with mythological subjects like Nandalal Bose and Binodebehari Mukherjee, his teachers at Kala Bhavana, his treatment was all together different. Again the laterite cast cement forming the lean and slender “Sujata” blending the classical curves of Indian sculpture with the lineal feature of modernism add a new dimension.The view of life of an artist is the interpreter of his artistry. But, as Baij himself said “it is hard to be an artist, but it is harder to understand him”; this statement is, perhaps, is apposite for Baij himself – attending classes in Kala Bhavana, an epitome of celibacy, with a bottle full of native liquor, sleeping on the village road of Shantiniketan with Ghatak after a heavy drink for a whole night, stuffing oil painting on the dripping straw–roof during rain were only possible for him. This embodiment of sheer talent, craziness, an intellectual supremacy and his passion for artistry is peerless.Baij’s fearless observation and statement is at its best in a political work of his. “Gandhi”, created at the time of the Leave India Movement, voices a startling statement while human skulls are shown under the feet of Gandhi. The secret behind this fearless observation of this “Padma Bhushan” winning artist is disclosed by himself in the documentary by Ghatak : While Baij was making a portrait of Tagore, during one sitting, the old poet advised him to approach the subject as a tiger and through the observation suck into its blood. After this, in Baij’s own words, he “did not look back”.
Binode behari Mukherjee
The sun journeys from the eastern sky to the west, and the darkness blankets the world to a tired sleep – twenty four hours pass and then the sun rises again marking another day in her register – book as history. But we remain the same, unaltered. Nothing comes and nothing goes – in this urban world we all are just as Estragon from Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”. Beyond this urban symmetry of identical boxes, languid and lacklustre, there lies, however, another world where the morning breeze still adores the skin and strokes our hair. Expression, free and charming, lives amid this pastoral domain.
Binodebehari Mukherjee (born in 1904) is a messenger out of that world – a shaper of expressions in the most lucid, yet intense, manner. Nature and the people living with its essence have always found the most vivid and ringing manifestation in Mukherjee’s artistc output.It was the free, unrestrained and culturally rich campus of Shantiniketan, Visva Bharati University – where the stream of life flows in an enchanting unison of the Natural with a tint of modern suppression of urbanism– and the influence of Kala Bhavana’s creative artists of the highest stature regulated and formed the artistic vision of Mukherjee. The congenital curse of the loss of one eye turned out to be a blessing for him – this handicap prevented him to follow a regular educational course and he was admitted to Shantiniketan as a student of the Arts faculty (1919). In Kala Bhavana Binodebehari Mukherjee’s vision found a new dialect. The tutelage of Nandalal Bose and originality of fellow students such as Ramkinkar Baij opened a new vista to him.
While in his early works we encounter a direct influence of Nandalal Bose, as Mukherjee matures as an artist, he successfully forms his own language. After completing his study he joins Kala Bhavana as a teaching stuff. In 1937 Binodebehari visits Japan – the brush stroke style of the 12th century Japanese artists left a deep mark within him. In the fresco on the ceiling of the new dormitory, Mukherjee put an Egyptian fragment of a pond in the middle, but added every detailing that his eyes witnessed from the premises of Shantiniketan – each minute image of the Santhaal settlement nearby, the people, the animals and the nature. His next fresco on the wall of the China Vabhan came two years later. The free flowing treatment of the former had been presented in a more controlled manner in the latter. However, the artistic genius of Mukherjee reaches its peak in the 40’s – apart from countless paintings full of mastery, he created another fresco on the wall of the Hindi Bhavana. Dealing with the life of the medieval saints, this third fresco is a masterpiece of sheer craftsmanship. It is a perfect combination of the traditional Indian concept and expressionist treatment blended with a religious approach that voices humanism. Not the didactic and ascetic doctrine, this bears the essence of the simple philosophy of love and tolerance.
Going through the artistic life of Binodebehari Mukherjee, we notice a sudden turn from 1949. In this year Mukherjee went to Nepal to work as the curator of the Nepal Government Museum, Kathmandu. Moved by the pictorial beauty of a different taste in Nepal, Mukherjee started to capture the native customs, the air and the fleeting aspects of nature. But the deteriorating eyesight soon culminated into the tragedy of the loss of his second eye in 1957.
Visual art and sculpture, in a very basic sense, is the embodiment of a vision, abstract, originated in the artist’s mind, influenced by the scenes that the eyes behold. The loss of eyesight, hence, marks the death of an artist, especially for an expressionist like Mukherjee whose subject always had been the nature and the people. But, this could not blind him – Binodebihari continued his artistic life forming a language altogether different from his previous style. Instead of the descriptive approach to shape and colours, he took resort in the taut simplicity – shedding superfluity of details, Mukherjee went for sketches with aphoristic brevity of mere lines. This journey, from one style to the other, the continuous development of thoughts and ideas, the blending of the rural and the mythological, the expressionism with modernism forms the unique creative language that not only influenced the next generation of artists of Kala Bhavana, but of India, is captured by Oscar winning filmmaker Satyajit Ray in “The Inner Eye”. For his contribution to the Indian art, no doubt, Mukherjee deserved the accolade of Padma Vibhusan by the Govornment of india.
edited by Arnab Mazumdar
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