Tribute to creative genius

In remembrance

A  person’s growth is conditioned by the environment that surrounds him and the fight he has with it. There are things you accept and there are things you revolt.

What we call as culture is a world that we build for ourselves which is in contradiction to what the world really is, says K G Subramanyan in a documentary The Magic of Making. The film was recently screened at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts to pay cinematic tribute to one of the versatile artists of post-
Independece India.

Directed by filmmaker Goutam Ghose, the 103-minute documentary paid homage to the 92-year-old artist who died in Vadodara on June 29. The film explored the life and works of the artist, teacher, storyteller and art theorist who, in his multifaceted creative journey, worked with different materials ranging from paintings on papers, canvases and boards, to creating terracotta murals and glass paintings.

In the film, Subramanyan, fondly known as Mani da, also talked about an occasion where he had an opportunity to handle ancient terracotta artefacts at the Baroda Art Fair where he realised that “the clay has a language of its own. And if one has the ability, he can bring out that language.” He also talked about one of his famous terracotta murals that was inspired by the scattered human bodies and the devastation he observed during the floods in Baroda.

Shot largely at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University, Baroda; at his home; and also at Santiniketan, Lucknow and Kutch, the film takes off with the artist interacting with a crowd at ‘Mythologies‘, an exhibition which was hosted at Galerie 88 in Kolkata in 2013. It also showed the artist at ease in the premises of
Santiniketan, where he studied art.

The film also focused on the turning point in Subramanyan’s life when his brother wrote a letter to Nandlal Bose, who was then the principal of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, requesting him to admit his brother in the prestigious art institute.

Then came the joyous moment for the Kerala-born artist when his request for admission was accepted and the  artist headed towards his new destination in 1944.

“It was a new place for me. Even the animals looked smaller than the ones I was used to in Kerala. The trees had a lesser girth and goats were smaller. You come to a place of monastic simplicity,” he recalled in the film.

“Rabindranath Tagore always spoke about tapovan. Maybe this was tapovan. There was always quietude. The interactions did not happen in studios and classrooms but in tea shops,” he reminisced.

On his practice methods, Subramanyan said he is ‘a compulsive doodler’ and
does not practice anything.

He just sits in his studio daily and either scribbles or paints something. “I must be aging. But there is a profound sense of aliveness in me,” he said.