The Lotus Pond is in full bloom. The double shaded lotus leaf, round and smooth. The flowers, white and pink. The bees, the cranes, the fish. The village belles, who come to wash and bathe. The temple steps close by: a seat for meditation, for song, for gossip. A band of long-tailed monkeys scampering up a kadam tree.Or the lonely woman peeping from under her veil, leaning languidly against the flaming palash tree. Only, this tree springs from the navel (nabhi) of a reclining Vishnu-like figure with the artist's familiar face, his hair a halo of serpents. The high noon of a dhatura-induced vision. A dream sequence under the shade of the Mahua tree.Wander into the idyllic world of Attingal Ramachandran, one of India's most versatile artists. Singer, painter, sculptor, illustrator, writer of children's books and a teacher, Ramachandran is currently showing his latest offerings of bronze sculptures, oil canvasses, water colour on paper and line drawings spread over two galleries in the capital - Triveni Kala Sangam and Art Today.Vast Canvas: A versatile artist, Ramachandran experiments with many forms"My paintings have become idyllic since I gave up the mistaken belief that my art could change the world," he says taking a dig at those politically correct artists who pledge revolution through art."If one were to be sincere about alleviating the ills of society one should have joined Mother Teresa or Baba Amte," he remarks as he supervises the final rub on his bronze of a woman with a lamp astride a Sphinx-like figure of the artist. A loner by temperament, Ramachandran has stayed aloof from the politics of the Indian art scene. "Nor am I bothered if my work fits into any global trend," he asserts.Ramachandran's studio occupies the entire first floor of his modest house in an east Delhi suburb. Eclectic images adorn the walls: a Ravi Varma portrait, bazaar art oleographs, Rajput miniatures. Ramachandran paints with the stretchers mounted flat against the wall, his technique like that of a muralist.I am not bothered whether my work fits into any global trend or not.Almost like painting on the wall itself, as he did during his childhood in a matriarchal Nair family home in the small town of Attingal, Kerala. "I always had very good visual memory. I could record in my mind's eye any form or detail that caught my fancy. And then I would reproduce it on the walls of our large house. In fact, my father got me some large-sized papers and colours with two things in mind," he says, "first to keep me from spoiling the walls and second to see for himself if I had any talent.".preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Aparajita flowers and the insectsDespite such precocious beginnings, his talent for painting remained dormant for some time. In fact, Ramachandran's entree into the world of the arts was through music. Selected for a performance on All India Radio while in college, Ramachandran came across a book on Santiniketan that belonged to another singer who had been trained there. "There was this photograph of Ram Kinkar'sSanthal Family.That one image changed my life. I decided that I wanted to sculpt and paint like Kinkarda." Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, he had found his mtier and his mentor.In 1957, Ramachandran left his native Kerala for Santiniketan. There he groomed under his chosen master, the inspiring but bohemian genius Ram Kinkar Baij. It was a classic guru-shishya relationship; Kinkar was the relentlessly hard-driving master and Ramachandran the unquestioning pupil. "For about a year and half he paid no attention to my work," recalls Ramachandran nostalgically. "Then one day to make a point he took his stick and broke the clay mould that I had so painstakingly prepared. When he saw that I did not protest but set about reworking the piece, he warmed up towards me."Water colour: in praise of Ramdeo VIIISantiniketan, with its galaxy of art teachers and artists like Nandlal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee, opened up a whole new world for the young man. More importantly, it also gave him a vision to look at nature and life through the eyes of an artist.If Kinkar was his personal idol, he could relate to Bose and Mukherjee because of their use of epic themes and their wall murals. As a child he had been mesmerised by the mysterious and other-worldly atmosphere in the temples of Kerala, which also has a tradition of wall paintings.While many of his contemporaries in the Indian art world dismissed the Bengal school as "revivalist", Ramachandran now believes that nothing significant in art is ever really new. "It is the refashioning of old material, like in our classical music, in a new way that is the essence of art." So to borrow his allegory, just as a Bhimsen Joshi or a Gangubai Hangal reinterprets what Abdul Karim Khan sang a - generation ago, Ramachandran believes his present idyllic vision is a reworking of the pictorial vocabulary that he picked up from his mentors.Separated from his childhood village by time and space, Ramachandran has over the last decade adopted the desert country around Udaipur in Rajasthan, especially the rural mela at Baneshwar, as his own.Bronze Lady with a lampAlthough he sees changes here too, compared to the life in metros like Delhi and Mumbai, "it could be a different country in a different time". Each village is a microcosm of the Indian social organisation, complete and comprehensive.Here in unspoilt Baneshwar he could find echoes from the Mahabharata, the iconography of Ajanta, the songs of poet-saints or the plants and trees mentioned by Kalidas. The Lohar and Bhil tribals with their love for bold, bright colours, their sinewy bodies and expressive faces, provided the artist a perfect form to be infused with the spirit of an idealised sense of beauty - say like that of the apsara Urvasi. That makes Ramachandran somewhat like Pururavas, the greatest connoisseur of beauty and pleasure, who judged all the apsaras in Indra's court and singled out Urvasi to be his elusive bride. Ramachandran's recent works, whether his totemic bronze sculptures or his oils and water colours, are a celebration of this vision of Baneshwar's beauty and its people. So not only does Ramachandran rework the classical tradition with a contemporary sensibility but he also transcends the folk-classical (desi-margi) divide in a breathtaking sweep - embracing the iconography of Ajanta, the colour and space organisation of the miniatures, the episodes from the Mahabharata, the bhakti of the Dalit Namdeo, the body of a Bhil tribal woman all at once. And the effect, to say the least, is sheer magic.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 2, 1998--- ENDS ---
