Seppuku: A Hindi Novel on the Shining and Darkness of Indian Art

Book Review

Book Cover:

Seppuku (By Artist Chintan Upadhyay)
Author:
Vinod Bhardwaj
Publisher:
Vani Prakashan, New Delhi
Year:
November 2013
Price:
Rs. 200/-

Attractive glamorous outside always has a different inside reality. A foreseen instance is Cinema world called ‘Bollywood’ in India. The field of visual arts also works under the convictions of fame, money and market. So, is the art field too made of cryptic realities? Do the stories of struggle, survival and success hide betrayal, hoaxing, obscenity with decorum, ealthiness, honesty and voluptuousness? A young art practitioner may think about these questions and an insider only can reply. This is the exact point, where I can mention the short novel ‘Seppuku’ written by art critic and writer Vinod Bhardwaj. 

Vinod Bhardwaj has closely observed, known and judged the art circles of Delhi since 1974. Thus, he is an insider and partaker of art field from almost four decades now. He has witnessed an aura of ‘underground’ created by obscene prodigality in art field after 2002. Then he felt that in 2008 this art world got a jolt and things were exposed. During those days, it stirred his consciousness when he saw the ‘page 3’ picture of ‘smiling’ Manjit Bawa when actually he was in ‘coma’. A long time remaining coma of Manjit Bawa wasn’t the news either. Then he saw the demise of veteran painter like Gaitonde was not the ‘big news’ for newspapers. Those days Bhardwaj tried to figure out the teemed lights and shades of the world of Indian art and poured his grief into his personal notes.  

Including those notes written some years ago, Bhardwaj writes his recent novel ‘Seppuku’. Published by Vani Prakashan, New Delhi, this book has written in Hindi. The book title ‘Seppuku’ derived its impact onto Bhardwaj’s mind while noticing a headline in a newspaper. Besides it he also noticed the popular Hollywood movie ‘Wolverine’ which in opening sequence shows a ritual of ‘Seppuku’ (slitting the stomach) among Japanese soldiers. They did it before the atom bomb is dropped on Nagasaki. Seppuku is a synonym of Hindi word ‘Hara-Kiri’ (hara- stomach, kiri- slitting). In earlier times keeping self modesty was the biggest identity for Feudal warriors. Committing suicide was priority for them over disgrace or letdown, and the way of it was ‘Seppuku’. During the Second World War vanquished soldiers also used to choose ‘Seppuku’. ‘Seppuku’ is a tragic destiny of a self-respectful soldier, but it hides a ritual, philosophy and poem. But when a ‘corporate’ world commits ‘Seppuku’, it can lead larger socio-economical results. And writer feels that this ‘Seppuku’ can be identified, known and tested in art field also. But how the arrival of ‘Modern Seppuku’ has presented by writer in context of art field is the mystery of novel which reader has to catch. 

This novel Seppuku is a portal for readers to peek into the world lived and experienced by Bhardwaj. The incidents intertwined in his mind and heart comes along with imaginative background. Although writer has not used the real names of the mentioned characters/artists, instead he refers the imaginative protagonists as a metaphor. But interestingly as much he keeps his protagonists look unidentified, they open their identity while reading. However writer mentions his conversations with painter Francis Newton Souza, Nobel Prize receptor Mexican poet-writer Octavio Paz, and Ravi Jain of Dhoomimal Art Gallery in several contexts. Writer has combined the various characters, incidents and situations in an experimental technique to reveal the ‘zolaism’ of art. It contains honest struggle of artist yet speaks another aspect of foul play and corruption. 

Compiled of 11 short chapters the novel saves the curiosity of reader in titles of chapters itself as, ‘life is beautiful’, ‘seppuku’, ‘chumban rani aur uska thappad (kissing queen and her slap)’, ‘Suhas Hande ki ajeeb dastan (weird story of Suhas Hande)’, ‘ek gatecrasher ki aatmkatha (biography of a gatecrasher)’, ‘lady chhah footi (lady of a six feet height), ‘lady sweet and sexy’, ‘fake ka cake aur hara tota (cake of fake and green parrot)’, ‘kissa pita ke naam prempatra ka (fable of a love-letter to father)’, and ‘car, action aur mister ten percent’. First chapter starts from mongrel attitude of Page3 culture and its vultures. It goes ahead in next chapters telling the stories of success and failures, amorous lives of artists, birth of gatecrashers in parties and their ‘elevation’, unstable relationships, trade of artist’s assistants and questions of originality, coarseness and ‘commercialization’ pervaded in art field and ends the read with ‘thriller’ style ‘Antim adhyay (the last chapter)’. Writer has not shied away of using the ‘indecorous’ words but interestingly it has shaped the humor, wit and satire.

This 103 paged Hindi novel one can read in a few hours single sitting and a translated version in English by Brij Sharma will be followed soon.

Trajectory of Trash and Transmigration

Review

A quiet world of subdued hues unravels in Tanmoy Samanta's works at Gallery Espace, in the solo, 'All I have learned and forgotten' made from traditional materials dowsed in untraditional thoughts, reviews Nisha Aggarwal.

Two pronged antagonism indited through the colors and sublunary objects, yet divulging the harmony, balance and symmetry. This is what lies at the surface of Tanmoy Samanta's paintings and 3D-book installations. It effuses into denser world of artist, as one engages conversing to multiple layers of the works. I devolved into artist's profound personal world, while visiting his third solo show at Gallery Espace, Community centre, New Delhi, titled 'All I have learned and forgotten' commenced from December 12, 2013 till January 11, 2014.

The show engulfs 20 works soldering painting and 3D materials which takes viewer into evocation of time, space, memory and then beyond to it. Tanmoy collects junked keys, locks, clocks, old books and maps that no longer keep their functional value. He ambles around flea markets and street shops in lost lang synes searching these 'out of time' objects. Then these objects are transformed into motifs that also appear often in his 2D works/paintings. Old books, glued the pages together, layered with rice paper, carved shapes out of the paper and added other objects to them evince another life they hold within. His recycled book 'shadow palace' shows how a colossal structure can disappear yet stay alive in the latent of one's mind. The protagonist here is a palace, which is symbolic of any building that has/had a denoting effect. It accosts that something dominion can be left behind just as a shadow without a body.

Shadow Palace

Tanmoy's fervor of reading travelogues, indulgence with maps, globes, interest of tracing countries and continents exhorts in his work 'Cartographer's Paradox-I and II. He brings in all continents and countries together by rendering the dividing line invisible. Here, he becomes a mapmaker playfully making the 'jumbled up' maps without line and borders, tracing the inspiration from John Lenon's 'Imagine'. One side, it questions the concept of political boundaries and on the other hand, gives them a new identity similar to his recycled books. He explicates these found materials both as an artefact and a medium. Thus, his artistic process becomes metamorphosis to these objects giving them a new life, and manifold interpretations.

The Padlock

His paintings also delineate the potential of umpteen testimonies. For instance, object like human figures, void like objects, eggs like void, unidentified objects like animals, weight that creates emptiness, and amorphous shapes seize the viewer into a zone of daze, arcanum, fantasy, poetry and philosophy. A sitting green figure holding a 'heavy' vacuum in one hand and a 'line' in other hand says what? An anhistous form lodged onto a red seated 'chair for nobody' is who? 'A pair of gold-fish' gives stance of tailor's scissors or tailor’s scissors are kept in aquarium like bowl? A globe glares like eclipsed moon or it's a shaky picture of a globe only? In 'at dusk' a bird is perched on a gun or on a branch? Watch dials incased in a 'bee-hive' shape makes 'the time hive', are examples of some 'visually created' questions to embroil the viewers. This 'visual play' becomes the interplay of simultaneous act of remembering and forgetting, for artist and viewer both.

A Chair for Nobody

Images, not of artistic imagination instead gathered from his surroundings create frozen narratives allowing the multiple readings. They are like statements of enlightened philosopher loaded with layers of meaning. Artist's spanking control over line drawing makes him able to navigate images into one another, or transmigration of them. His technique has developed from the traditional Japanese school of painting where linearity is maintained while not losing the corpulence of figures. His training as a painter at Shantiniketan is evident in the selection of traditional media like fragile rice paper, gouache, and pigments. It itself traces the history in the works of Abanindranath and Rabindranath Tagore both (artists of Shantiniketan tradition). But the choice of traditional mediums has not impounded the relevance of his contemporary images and themes.

A Pair of Goldfish

Tanmoy's works expands into conceptual territory of magical realism, which is because he read a lot. His parents belonging to the field of literature, made him exposed to classics in his childhood itself and he continued reading them. A self-confessed fan of writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Franz Kafka, Tanmoy says that colors in his color palette stems from his nature. His toned down and muted colors reflect him to be an introvert. He starts out with brighter and darker ones, but consciously mellows them down to subdue the cacophony of hues. Working on more than one canvas together, he creates multiple layers of the colors under the visible ones. He uses wash colors to get the fluidity of watercolors and the opaqueness of other paints. This way, his simple sounding works imbibe the complexity of process, meaning and interpretation. They dilate the level of epochal image-making from ordinary to extra-ordinary, and trace the trajectory of trash and transmigration, of images and objects both.

(First appeared in The Art Daily online)