NDTV Masterstroke Art Show | Celebrating India's Artistic Masters

[00:00:01][music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:00:15][music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:00:56][music] [music] >> [music] >> The making of this exhibition has been a deeply introspective engagement entering into the breadth and depth of Tayamea's artistic legacy and situating him [music] in a time of global crisis and uh conflict.

[00:01:37]The exhibition is anchored in the question, how can thay mata help us to speak to or reflect upon what is happening in in [music] the world today.

[00:01:47]Having witnessed and been impacted by several such conflicts across the country such [music] as uh forced migration, the partition of India, communal riots and the uh onslaught of uh daily asymmetries of life. Tahib's painted [music] imagery is processes such existential weight or bears such weight with a lightness of being and an inwardness that is deeply reflective and resilient.

[00:02:16][music] The exhibition also examines the new ways in which thyab addresses humanity in duress particularly uh through [music] his artistic inquiries. So when you look at his early works you find that he is more interested in understanding body and figuration and then we see that the early works carry you know there is raw power in these works. There is a uh frenzy brush work.

[00:02:51]There is a way in which he is fracturing the body in the way [music] that the contours disappear in the form. You have gaping mouths. You have these eyes that are popping out. You have the body in distress in one sense. And this is something that he talked about at length, you know, which is suggestive of pain, of suffering, of violence. Also the story goes that during the partition Tayamea witnessed a man being stoned to death and that memory always haunted him and never left him. And that is where he begins to think about humanity and the catastrophe of the world around him. And you look at these figures as if really they are bearing weight of some kind.

[00:03:37]You know, you see a a pregnant woman reclining here with a man who appears almost as a spectral figure, you know, as a nightmare baby. We don't know.

[00:03:54]One feature that is uh notable and very striking in in Tayam is his conception of space. [music] You will always see the ground is destabilized or fractured. And this comes for me this means that he carries the memory of the partitioned land [music] you know where the figures are always on the edge. They are not stable and they are really looking for a ground uh stable but it is not there. [music] It's a divisive fractured ground that you will always see. And he creates this through flat color planes that he brings a very disorienting geometry into his work. [music] Was very interested in the contradictory nature of reality. You know, the duality of life, the dual forces. And he believed that [music] we all carry multiple selves in us in us. You know the idea of the self is never singular. The idea of [music] the self is multiple and therefore you start seeing composite images that he creates.

[00:04:57]Sometimes the beast and man you know together become one composite image.

[00:05:02]What is also interesting is that he does away with every other external descriptions of reality. There is nothing there. He is shed he shed everything and comes to a very distilled and concise image through which he communicates.

[00:05:19]>> [music] [music] >> The bull as you know became an obsessive image for Taya. He would have made hundreds and hundreds of drawings on the bull image because bull symbolized for him the brutality of forces around in life as well as was suggestive of many other emotions. So the bull is captured in drawings, many drawings in paintings and also in sculptures because he got very drawn to a threedimensional image and looking at uh severed heads or fractured limbs or dismembered bodies in the ambittor [music] really uh triggered in him a need to make bull a symbolic image that he recurrently used. [music] Meta spent a few years in Kolkata and he was drawn to the primal image of Kali and Dura. He lived with those images for several years and he was drawn also to Indian iconography and Indian traditions of painting of uh image making. He uses that iconography but personalizes it in his work in the way that he wants to communicate. So you see a Kali image here. This image certainly has not been painted for reverence but for acknowledgment of the raw power and presence of the goddess. So you see her in her blue skin, you see her with her long hair, her red devouring mouth. Uh there is a brutality in her presence and yet one is drawn to the image. The visual image is so striking.

[00:07:07][music] >> [music] >> This is the first ever comprehensive retrospective of the artist the mata and this was made possible with K&M's collaboration with the meta foundation and saffron art foundation. So uh it this brings together 120 works of the [music] artist.

[00:07:31]What he wanted to emphasize was that this struggle we must accept of life.

[00:07:35]Everyone struggles in life. This struggle we must accept with [music] dignity and with hope and continue with resilience. So there is a struggle, there is vulnerability, there is falling, [music] there is the feeling of loss, there is vulnerability, but [music] there is also hope.

[00:08:07]>> [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:08:23]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> He grew up in Tamluk in West Bengal. All [music] the lush green fields, the open skies, the gushing rivers and the boats on the guts were his first art experiences. As a [music] child, he experimented with the clay on the mudbanks to fashion >> [music] >> idols of Durka and Kali. But his talent propelled him to Kolkata. He traveled 200 kilometers a day to [music] attend the college of fine arts where he graduated first in his class. Yes, [music] we are speaking of the padshri awardi artist pari. We are here in his studio surrounded by his canvases, [music] his oils and his watercolors and master stroke is here to speak to him [music] today. Thank you parish for inviting the master stroke show into your studio.

[00:09:37]>> My pleasure to you know be here.

[00:09:40]>> You know we must begin with the quote that you often use to describe your work. Light is everything from the garts of Banares to the lagoons of Venice. You seem to have been chasing light it seems in all your paintings. Please describe to me your relationship with light and why is it so important to you?

[00:09:59]>> Very early age I realized that light is life.

[00:10:05]>> Just imagine at this moment if there is no light what will we see?

[00:10:11]Especially for a visual artist the light plays the most important and vital role >> that creates the dimension that creates the color that creates the life. You imagine a day a gloomy winter foggy misty day that has that's beauty but when the shining sunshine golden sunlight how you feel it how everybody feels it I really realized at the age of seven >> at the age of seven >> seven and from that time every day I try to change the light in the morning evening especially falling and rising light even light at night because night is not dark there is a light.

[00:10:56]>> I could see that in your work you you know the light reflects through the atmosphere a lot and I see a lot of your light which is sparkling on the water on the waterways. In fact you know some critics have uh compared uh your work to the impressionists and especially Monet because he spent all his life chasing those light on the lily ponds on the cathedrals on the hay stacks. Do you think it's a fair comparison your work and impressionism? What do you think?

[00:11:24]>> Yeah. My actually if you see my journey into the world of art where I started as you said clay modeling but then it was watercolor >> and the idea was to do the capture the nature and the do the painting on the spot. M >> the impressionist artist what they did they came out from the studio >> and they wanted to see the moment the light and the movement >> and immediate process of painting and direct transformation which I been practicing more than five decades and that's why you will see that there are lot of impressions and expressions are there and light is playing very very important role either in watercolor or in sculpture or oil acrylic even in installation even in any any visual art I create >> the light is there >> so there is a definite cor correlation between impressionism and your work which I can see there's another motive that I keep seeing in a lot of your work and that's the boat >> yes >> because one of your most famous painting is the crossing and and and I noticed the boats do they specify some kind of journey that you're trying to show or is it some kind of a metaphor for life because you really do use boats a lot in your paintings >> as you exactly said that it's a metaphor of life. See even you go back to the history and centuries thousands of years back >> what was the transport mode it was the wood first it was wooden log then it was boat >> where I was born and brought up in Tamil tea surrounded by water water bodies canal rivers so my first interaction it was boat and what I have realized one thing let's say any train or any bus or any other you know mode of transportation what we use generally when they are stopped they are stopped but boat is stopping on a water still it is moving >> so I always found that boat has a life it is never stagnant >> until and unless you really take it to the bank on out of the water but generally I imagine is on the water and that is another thing I have realized that water is life another And many of my paintings, not only many of my art, many of my any creation is it has a relation with water.

[00:13:56]>> That's what I was coming to because you know we talked about light and we talked about boats and now let's talk about water because I've noticed you have a special affinity to water. You've painted the backwaters of Kerala. You've painted the the Vana Sea. You have painted the lagoons of Venice. You have even painted the dal lake in Kashmir. So I noticed this motive. What is this love for water that you have?

[00:14:20]>> Because I was I see art is so economical and political.

[00:14:24]>> What you see, what you experience, what you observe >> that comes into your water. Your art.

[00:14:32]>> So I was born I was like the kira of the water.

[00:14:36]>> I didn't want to I didn't have to go to any place to learn the swimming. But like born swimmer. We are uh some one somebody said that you know he's the kid of water >> because water is everywhere and you won't believe the moment I see the water even this time I always you know wait to see the monsoon the rain because that brings the dimension that brings the life >> that brings so much of joy not to me to the universe to the dhi >> I think your love for what is fairly self-evident because if you remember the last time we met, we met on the lagoonss of Venice. We were together at the >> Grand Canal.

[00:15:20]>> Yeah, the Grand Canal. And you know, you have been going back to Venice for over 30 years. I was just going to say that.

[00:15:27]And it seems like it is your artistic companion. You seem to be having a love affair with Venice. Please explain this uh this special love for Venice in your paintings. My first journey to Venice it was 1993 when I finished my MFA >> from Delhi College of Art. Then I had a visitorship from British council.

[00:15:48]>> I finished saving little little money and beginning primarily I used to do mainly landscapes.

[00:15:56]>> So I was in UK to study Turner and Constable to greatest landscape painter.

[00:16:02]Turner is one of uh the most famous landscape painters of the British uh art world >> and he's painted you know hundreds of painting of Venice >> Kalto to you know you tian to anybody you name >> every artist in generation they have captured the Venice that is one place the light is so romantic it changes every moment every season it changes the light in a day it changes many times the light.

[00:16:33]>> Mhm.

[00:16:33]>> So when I arrived in Venice, I thought that would be probably the first and last trip. But when we met after in the last month we met again, I was there this month in >> this is a love affair. [laughter] But if I was so in these 33 years that you've keep going back suppose Venice was not a city and Venice was a person, what would your relationship with be with what would you say is your relationship with this person? If it was a person that I had to think that time I don't know what reaction >> I think you are in love I think definitely >> Venice is something every or not only Venice even Vanasi to Kerala whenever I leave visit >> I see the new dimension changing >> every time I see every time new thing >> I said no I have not seen the last time this >> so I have to paint this >> which brings me to the question that I was going to ask you you know after having painted did thousands of sunrises and sunsets and and you know the lagoons and the garts and the rivers and and the banks. Is there anything that you still want to capture? Is that that is still unseen? You know, and you think, okay, I'm waiting for that moment in my life to see something that I haven't seen before that I'd like to capture. Is there anything like that?

[00:17:51]>> Always there.

[00:17:52]>> Always there.

[00:17:53]>> Yes. The thrust is always there. The search is always there. M >> Otherwise you know any creative person is stagnant >> that incomplete that thrust is always searching the co is there otherwise it will be stop everything >> is that why you do these monumental paintings I mean the Delhi airport painting was 850 ft long that's right >> and Nida you've just done a fewund I mean that's massive scale How do you approach scale? One thing is to paint something which hangs in a gallery and another thing is to paint something for a public space where you know there are millions of passengers walking by and they're going to experience this monumental scale painting. How do you approach that?

[00:18:41]>> See you may not have seen I have done painting like watercolor and oil like miniature.

[00:18:46]>> So from >> 3 in >> 3 in to 850 ft >> 50 ft. So the scale is very very important for an artist.

[00:18:56]>> When see I stand in front of a let's say 8 by 10 canvas I can see the left and right >> but when you are standing in front of 100 ft painting you are lost. So I want to get lost like I get always you know lost in nature and then I don't know where to start where to end what to start challenges comes and that really >> but what is the challenge of painting something which is 850 ft long. I mean >> I I hope that there will be more bigger size painting will come that I would love to paint. I love to really paint if I get the opportunity. I mean you've done uh you've painted for over 40 uh years. You've had kids 91 solo exhibitions if I'm right 93 worldwide.

[00:19:46]>> So okay let's turn this on our head before we end. Uh so if you met the young parish mati today and he's a young parish mi starting out as an artist right the world the artistic world now is very different there's artificial intelligence there's social media the world that you started and the world which is now is very different what is one piece of advice you would give this young parish betty as he started his artistic career >> there is no nothing you get without hard work hard work is the greatest life there is no shortcut in life and forget about AI forget about digital you know imposing art is purely heart soul and your feelings >> and that will remain always the same which will touch everybody's heart and everybody will get joy and happiness throughout >> well >> because digital medium or artificial int there they are tools please remember >> they are not really can create the soul.

[00:20:52]They are not able to create that passion, the love, the emotion.

[00:20:57]>> Art is any form of art in visual art, you know, music, anything is emotion.

[00:21:05]>> Well, Paris, I hope your art continues to touch the hearts and souls of all the viewers who come across it. I wish you the very very best and thank you for letting us come into your beautiful studio. As I said, it's really wonderful that you could make it and come. You're always welcome and it's a great pleasure for me.

[00:21:23]>> Thank you. [music] [music] A [music] [music] heat.

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