The two exhibitions at Emami Art, Play-Forms featuring Partha Pratim
Deb (born 1943) and Aranyaka featuring Arunima Choudhury (born 1950), brought together two artists who could not have been more different. While Deb is one of the most inventive and whimsical artists to have emerged from West Bengal in recent times, Choudhury, beautiful though her works are, has not deviated from her familiar concern for the environment under assault and her sense of wonder at the all-pervasive presence of nature that manifests in feminine forms.
Deb was once the dean of faculty of visual arts at Rabindra Bharati University and, although his works were rarely seen at exhibitions, he nonetheless worked tirelessly,
creating truly innovative pieces of art with the most unusual and unconventional material. Much of it is lost and few galleries dared to touch them for they never
had a market.
Deb works indefatigably with pen and paper, and has filled up innumerable notebooks with the free flow of his lines that depict nothing in particular, creating fantastical
forms that have no resemblance to objects we see around us (picture, left). His figures are like the protagonists of an absurdist drama in which one would search in vain if one were to look for the logic that guided their actions. These works, large versions of which were displayed, however, give an insight into Deb’s creative process. He often splashed colours around for no specific purpose but one may read a subversive intent in them. For they may be silent broadsides against the entirely commercial gallery system that has a stranglehold on the art world and formulaic creativity. Deb’s delicate toy-like figures, fashioned out of discarded stuff, reinforce this idea. His frenetic energy is similar to Jean Dubuffet’s in its endless fecundity.
Arunima Choudhury’s talent is of the more measured kind. Her recent works may be described by Andrew Marvell’s lines: “A green thought in a green shade”. Without being an activist, Choudhury’s concerns as an artist and the natural pigments she uses are derived from nature. She relies on leaves for her dyes. Choudhury had grown up in the hills of North Bengal. Love for nature thus came automatically to her. She is an enthusiastic gardener and collects leaves wherever she can. Her favourite poets being Shakti Chattopadhyay, Jibanananda Das and Binoy Majumdar, life, death and nature exist in communion for her. Over the years, she has sought out experts with knowledge
of natural dye-making. She has taken out prints of ferns and roses by directly placing them on rice paper on which they left their traces. She uses her skill in needlework and painting to evoke the lushness and the fecundity of a forest.
Besides paintings, Choudhury created scrolls to tell her stories of the decay of the Earth’s ecosystem and the destruction of the natural environment. The forest manifests itself as a woman with an ageing body (picture, right). But nude
humans with youthful physiques find fulfilment in their physicality, exuding an energy that could rejuvenate nature.
To celebrate the 78th anniversary of India’s independence, the Victoria Memorial Hall, in collaboration with the Delhi Art Gallery, presented Past in Print: India’s Freedom Struggle, a multimedia exhibition showcasing graphic work, posters and calendars related to the topic in both collections. Students’ works inspired by these were exhibited alongside.