Ramananda Bandopadhyay and Ramkumar Manna. Two artists from two generations in two shows in two galleries, one a painter and the other a sculptor, but descended from the same lineage of stylization: the rounded proportions, the uncontoured limbs, the wide eyes, the simplified form that you see in much of traditional iconography. The reputed senior, Bandopadhyay, is still very active as he enters the eighth decade of his life and shows his paintings and drawings at Galerie 88 till November 26. The younger artist, Manna, working with quiet conviction for over two decades now, displayed his sculpture at Gallery Range recently.
Bandopadhyay's area of enchantment - Hindu lore and women - remains more or less unchanged over the years. As does the language he'd evolved from his Santiniketan training under Nandalal Bose. But whereas Bose moved from his Bengal School style to a lively minimalism, his student has remained faithful to his initial inspiration.
Expectedly, therefore, Bandopadhyay plays around as he usually does with the form of the elephant-headed god, playing up the 'cuddle' quotient. Ganesh sleeping, offering puja to a Shiva lingam, chiding his mascot for raiding a container of sweets and so forth. Endearing images, amusing too, no doubt. But so steeped in déjà vu have such Ganesh adaptations become from the commercialized cuteness of a god believed to bestow success that there can only be diminishing returns. Unless variations are invented to refresh the form and bring surprise to the mythology around the deity. Yet Bandopadhyay makes the goddess Durga less cloying mainly because of folkish lines and parched colours textured with the grainy paper surface.
The artist's women are invested with a symbolic Bengali air in look, dress and manner that recalls an era past and, basically, asserts the artist's concern with form. You can't miss the sugar but it's spiced somewhat with an undertone of amusement that's both sympathetic and detached. The lyrical flow of fine lines and comely gibbousness bathed in glowing shades of red, yellow and green, proclaim Bengal's mother goddess as an ideal of beauty and is part of the stylistic convention the artist is accustomed to. When depicted in pairs or groups -as in Nos. 5, 6, 9, 10 - the women seem to be both idealized and everyday, rather human, rapt in light-hearted, convivial, perhaps typically feminine, gossipy exchanges. However, you do wonder if this period boudoir ethos hasn't outlived its sanitized prettiness. The one exception in this group is No. 4. Its satiric narrative goes back to the Kalighat pat, with a little drama of subtle chemistry woven around its threesome of babu, bibi and woh: of sanctioned possessiveness fending off with arch confidence a tentative, lovelorn intrusion.
On the other hand, where fine, flowing lines give way to smudgy pastel trails and jerky angles - as in Nos. 7 and 19 - it immediately imports the throb of life into the mannered idiom. No. 23 is the example to cite for here Bandopadhyay resorts to a quaint verticality of perspective. No. 22 must be mentioned as well for its breezy lines reminiscent of the Santiniketan masters, Baij and Benode Behari. Completely different in tone are the monochromatic ink sketches with their spry abbreviations and touches of humour. Unfortunately, though these drawings are some of the best works, just a few of them are included in this show.
What must be noted about Manna is that he's self-taught and has evolved his own technique of building up tallish terracotta sculptures and firing them. The title, PerForm, immediately suggests a double meaning: performance - particularly by musicians - and the exploration of form. Which, like Bandopadhyay's, is summary, reductive, with naturalistic details edited out, and refers mainly to tribal grammar.
The exhibition note says that the sculptor saw it all in a dream: musicians performing silently in an empty space. Such visions do float across a twilight consciousness but only the creative can translate these experiences into art. And what the gallery does is try and approximate the dream atmosphere in its arrangement: lights trained on each sculpture, leaving the rest of the space bare and soothingly, silently, dark. Standing or seated, the men and a few women clasp or cradle an assortment of instruments - percussion, wind, string - lost in concentration. There were also some works in plaster that have been given an arresting bronze patina.
Shown alongside Manna's sculptures were the paintings of Dipankar Sankrityayan, representing the contemporary generation. Colourful though they are, the young artist still has some way to go to channel multiple influences into an individual voice.
