A detour to the world of art
We despise thought, even if it is the only gift God gave us. While being beautiful, it does take away our sleep. After a hard day’s work, we need to relax, put our minds to rest. So we stop thinking. We hate anything that provokes thought. Be it cinema, telly, books or music. We want ‘thought-free’ stuff, packaged as mindless entertainment. Blowing up of buildings, sexy dance moves, cheap humor and our day is done. Things have to be obvious on the screen, if a man plays chess with death on a sea shore; he is playing chess with death and that’s it.
Waking up to every new day, many of us pick our laptops, board a vehicle and travel towards a tech park. In Bangalore, my daily trip is an 8 Kilometer ride to EPIP, Whitefield. As the Volvo takes a left turn at Kundalahalli gate, all of us anxiously listening to FM, iPod or its cheap Chinese variants, reading Chetan Bhagat or Dan Brown, lead our lazy minds to the safety of comfortable cubicles. Breaking the limits of our logical and copy-pasting abilities, we return back in the same Volvo 335E every evening.
One such day while returning back, I took a detour into BEML layout, a left turn just before reaching the Kundalahalli HDFC Bank and walked straight to the end of the road. The destination which I had in mind was the Sara Giselle Arakkal Gallerie. The Gallery had put up an exhibition of a collection from four artistes, all thematically unified by a tribute to Francis Bacon. Each one of the paintings requires hours of attention to garner the ideas they need to convey. The still colors in a canvas spoke to me, more than any recent 2 hour long babble-fest ever did, without a single spoken word.
Each artiste had his distinct approach to depict their tryst with Bacon. Firstly, CF John greets us with amazing works that suffocates and liberates us alternatively. His works seem to have essentially spiritual undertones, with the principal figure reaching out to the unknown. An amazing feeling, the same plane where you are transported while immersed in a Bergman drama. Especially one work stretched itself beyond the canvas, to eternity and Bacon via intersecting arcs, the same way a girl awaited God to reach from beyond the silver screen through a broken wooden plank.
CF John and Bergmans images
As we leave CF John, in an enchanted but disturbed mood, a masterpiece by Yusuf Arakkal presents itself in grandeur. The twin piece, which has won him laurels, is a must-see work. The enchanting thing about Sergei Paradjanovs’s movies is his fetish for hues. The uninhibited master, the Karma Chameleon painted the screen red, gold, green and what not. Sayat Nova, Ashik Kerib and Suram Fortress are amazing stretch of imagination woven in rainbow yarn. In a similar push into trance, Yusuf Arakkal has painted two large canvasses emanating everlasting beauty. The intrigue of this piece has to be experienced in person, words are passé.
Yusuf Arakkal and Sergei Paradjanov- Two Masterpieces
Then we climb to the mezzanine to view the work of B Devaraj, who brings to life the chimerical beasts. Inspired by the Bacon’s works, Devaraj is able to create images that are out-of-worldly, as in a nightmare, yet very much within our reach. These paintings find us in a position where, Linklater’s ‘Scanner Darkly’ or Adrian Layne’s amazing ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ would put us in. An amalgamation of qualities achieved through the unification of form creating an alternative existence.
B Devaraj, Wim Wenders and Francis Bacon
Finally, straight out of Bacon’s palette and Eisenstein’s camera, we have M S Prakash Babu with his series of mini works that adorn the wall. Perhaps the most accessible amongst the lot, yet equally compelling and details, these works give us a glimpse into the inspiration, life, struggle and intrigue that was Francis Bacon. Strangely enough, Bacon’s inspiration was the astounding imagery of ‘Battleship Potemkin’, which continues to enthrall audiences even today. When the seventh art inspired its mother, we see the ripples, after generations together in Bangalore.
M S Prakash Babu, Eisenstein and Francis Bacon
Furthermore, the beauty is that all this food for the dead-and-out grey matter is free fodder. If you like the experience, there is an option to extend your patronage at the art shop attached to the gallery, from where you can pickup some original Painting or it imprints on mugs, t-shirts and many other curious items. But, those of us who patronize bollywood in cinema halls for destroying every possibility of budding thoughts and sensibilities could at the least spare some time to appreciate these genuine works of human creativity.
Tags: 335E, Art Exhibition, C F John, Cinema and Art, Devaraj, Food for thought, Francis Bacon, Ingmar Bergman, Prakash Babu, Sara Arakkal Art Galerie, Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Paradjanov, Wim Wenders, Yusuf Arakkal
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Nice write up.Keep writing.
Thank you Negi…
Bad-write up. Stop writing.
But seriously Ram,
Do you know what your heartfelt and exploratory/cognitive article on art( 1 comment) has and an early obituary for PAA (200+ comments) does not? It doesn’t have bad grammar. It doesn’t have shallow dissection/speculation of an unreleased hatke-but beech mein film. Now isn’t that something all the passionate souls on PFC love?
I simply loved this write up. This is one of the most thought provoking things I have read on PFC. Most of the posts here that I have loved has fetched less comments but so what?
We dont need to judge quality of an article by number of comments it recieves. That would be a very wrong measure. Its like saying a movie is good because it made 100 croroe rupees in the first 2 weeks.
Keep writing Ram, even if no one comments, write it for your own hear-felt satisfaction. I loved your write-up.
Ranjeet and Jay..
Danke Schoen…
Ranjeet,
Atleast few of the opening lines have some validity now… don’t destroy that by commenting more..
I realized this one was this bad only afte posting it..
That Bergman image from “Through a Glass Darkly” is not abt reaching out to the unknown… It’s a mere depiction of a character’s (a character that beyond help)helplessness..
If u have seen the movie, u wud know that the scene symbolizes a moment of “incest”. Harriet Andersson makes love with her brother, who she thinks is the only person who perhaps understands her
Yes Sreehari,
I do remember the superb sequence in the dilapidated boat, where they make love, she rapes him rather in a fit… and this one is immediately after that…
I was pushed to the mood of this film.. when I saw another image, the one which I had written about, with ‘intersecting arcs’, it reminded me of the bouts she has inside the room looking for good to appear from across the wooden planks..
The CF John image I had a good photo of, was this one…an image of restraint, and compassion after struggle.. which appears in the painting series…
To put it in short…The writing and picture refer to different paintings… I merged them with pictures of Bergman, Bacon, Wim Wenders, Paradjanov and Eisenstein which I got from the net based on availability and compatibility…
Same is the case with the image of ‘Chimera’.. which is very little related to the Angel in ‘Himmel Uber Berlin’.. unless you want to intrepret representation of an angel as a chimerical beast.. The thematic resemblance is addressed by ‘amalgamation of form’, but the merging had to do with the visual appeal of Wim Wenders imagery, of course, availability being a major constraint…