About art history fictionalization 1: DADAISM

 

I love following time. Around 4 years back the bug of art history hit me so hard that I began to reside in the abyss of art world. It started with some mere curiosity and within a few days I got to know that each territory of art history was so vast that whatever idea I could gather about a part of an period was not enough, in every part of ART History there is a hint that the question in mind will be answered in another ART period.

I was in the middle of a creative crisis of my own. I felt being hunted by character I have created over the years for my fictions. I was writing a series of parallel stories with shades of darkness. It was not intentional though but due to nature of those story most of the characters were in deep physiological trouble. Much later after writing those stories I felt being hunted by those characters. Somehow I felt may be I will find solutions to their problems in Art History. It was not about solving my problems but of the characters.     

It was a creative challenge and I like challenges in my creative expression. I got the idea full of impudence –how about fictionalization of those ART HISTORY theme THROUGH MY CHARECTERS? I stared exploring the gullies of those ART period to find some thematic correlation, In cabaret Voltaire ,Van Gogh , Dali ,………

I took up those periods of European art history (Impressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism to be precise) as theme for my forthcoming story. I had to blend art history theme to my story.

I felt creating something that is dark is painful, time consuming (one story in one year) and the darkness of my character disturbed me to the extend that I was on the verse of nervous breakdown.

One of the themes I took for fictionalization was of Dadaism.

ABOUT DADAISM: Dadaism or DADA ART was the creative by product of social depression created out of 1^st world war, 1914-. Intellectuals, thinkers moving out of homeland started revolting against normal social structure and started creating art under protest. Initially their art were criticized as anti art (!) as many of their works were mere juxtaposition of painting, photograph making less and less sense.  But they become extremely popular as art lover could relate them to the depressive stage the society was under at that time.

The success of those arts started the idea of collage, montage, ready-mades in art. And soon the revolution was passed on to cinema, advertising world, literature and many of the work remained classic till toady.

The STORY ON DADAISM : The sense of social darkness that was around in west during World War I had some stark similarity to the darkness of my birthplace Assam, in the sad decade of 80’s. 

I took the clue from here and tried to create a montage (A form of DADA expression, where we put together two three things to create something new, as in collage) out of the situation .That is a montage of

• pain of my characters and my feeling as a writer 
• Assam in 80s
• And of course hallucination of my characters

About the painting used:

I remember interviewing one of the very reputed Painter Mr.Jiten Hazarika confessing with a sloka. “Eksweasya padarthai nanrupe prkapalm” ( ‘একশেচছছ পদার্থই নানাৰুপে প্রক্লপনম.. মানে একেটাবস্তুকে নানাজনে ভিনভিন ভাবে চাব পাৰ.)Meaning it is up to the viewer (reader) to interpret the meaning of a creative form. Most of the artist believes that way and hates explaining their work of art.

                                       

Still I thought it will be better to explain the painting depicting the story. As many people are curious and enquiring….

The painting is also a montage –created by Dr.Uddip Talukdar,on request. Montage is a form developed (montage:French for "putting together" a product of Dada  revolution where a creative structure is made putting together many items like photograph ,painting etc .Montage later on became a integral part of cinematic narrative also ).

Component of the montage  

The courtroom: may be a tribute to Kafka as in his story Joseph K accused of a crime he is not aware of.

Probable Interpretation; Those of us who were brought up in the Assam in the dark period of 80s have a sense of being guilty of some crime we are not aware of. Like Joseph K we don’t know our crime but something hunts us .

The commode: It is the most famous ready made created in DADA revolution. (Fountain by Marcel Duchamp)

  Probable Interpretation: ??? May be its time to flush out the filth and darkness that’s fills our head.

The stage/the boot /the hanging noose/the hat: Waiting for Godot?

Probable Interpretation: In those dark period of 80s Assam  We had nothing to do (school closed, an election without peoples participation, ethnic trouble and the fear of someone attacking you …So  we waited ?waiting for whom and  what we never knew.

PS: I still believe “eksweasya padarthai nanrupe prkapalm” and …

    … I am not art historian /art critique/artist. I only expressed what I conceived in words (or call it visual narrative) to full of my conviction. 

Lesson from History

Restaurant @ Rishikesh –Dehradun road

Now closed restaurant in Mumbai

I sincerely believe history has many things to teach us and if we follow the trend we observe history blatantly repeats itself. Crime committed by one generation haunts the history of mankind. Examples are their everywhere we only have to closely observe them. That’s where the lessons learnt from previous experience should help us so that we avoid such kind of anguish and holocaust in the coming future.

But the seed of evil is also as devil as a rotten bacteria they keeps us hunting forever.

Take the recent instance of racial slur by fashion moughal John Galliano praising Hitler

Or public acknowledgement Bal Thackeray that ‘I am a great admirer of Hitler’

Or naming a café after Hitler  in Navi Mumbai few years back.

What all these rejected fanatic idea of century bygone  doing in India ?

Events in last century proved all the evil face of Hitler still (like a rotten bacteria I was mentioning) his idea keep on popping up. Few might be by fanatics utopians and many of might be due to simple ignorance or glamour (publicity!) quotient.

Take the example of a small taste fully decorated restaurant (otherwise!) in the Rishikesh –Dehradun road where to my utter disbelieve I saw a Nazi flag hanging out just for show, or may be to attack the young crowd out their.

I am sure the owner, and the so called young crowd whom they are suppose to attract doesn’t have any clue what that flag signify.

It would have been okay otherwise (as in India until hype is created –chab kuch chalta haien yaar!)

But why don’t we think that we are encouraging tourist with the slogan of ‘Atithi debo bhaba’, and many of our tourist to rishikesh Dehradun road are Jew from Israel and many are Germans, I sincerely believe it don’t make any of us (Indian, Jew or German or human race as a whole)

I believe this fatal combo of –ignorance and extreme idealism is a threat to the coming time and only reason for it is we have started disregarding the lessons of history.

Creator of our childhood dreamland

Before we fell in love with words what attracted us were pictures ,cartoons and as we got familiar to words but were young enough to comprehend big big words we referred everything to world of comics (From knowledge ,entertainment , learning about history ,art culture ,folklore or everything ) .Comics were our :TV ,internet, grandma, novel .
I am using we not me because what I am referring to is true for whole of our generation.

Whenever we finish exam, or fall sick or if some one ask what do you want: Answer was invariably: Comics.
For us though we liked Hergé’s Tintin it was too expensive, Lee Falk's and Sy Barry's Phantom was also a bid out of our culture so most of our appetite for comics were looked after by Uncle Pi.
I am referring to Amar Chitra Katha and later on Tinkle.
For our knowledge about Purana, Mahabharta, History and folklore the credits must go to Uncle Pi’s immortal creation.
After two decade what amaze me about his creations is that at the dept of research home work he did for each of the photographs, I am sure he didn’t had the liberty of using computers and Photoshop at that time so every picture had to be drawn in blocks as in old printing technology .But When we look at Lachit Borphukan and dress of Swrgadeu or the background picture of Brmahaputra .Be it Joymotee or Sankradeb (It has familiarity to the drawing of Bisnhu Rabha ) all the characters were live and vivid.
And we often give reference to Sikhari Sambhu, Supandi, and Nassiruddin Hoza till today
Antanta Pi, (or popularly known as Uncle Pi) creator of our childhood dreamland breaths his last on 24th February, 2011,
But what he left behind is a legacy of his own.
We will miss you Uncle Pi.

Words misunderstood

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I have problems with words (or their meaning),

Because when we closely observe, we see that words uttered (or said) don’t really mean what we really meant. This problem trouble me so much that many time I go through aphasia / creative block / nihilistic resolution seeing how wired our mainstay of communication (i.e. word ) can turn out to be .

This problem has been the theme of two of my story .One was about creation, (সৃষ্টি) may be in art, writing or photography and the other was about nothingness (Something about nothing – অসম্ভব লিপ্যন্তৰ).It took two year each to complete those two story (and the literary journal took 3 year each to publish them).

Off late when I was going through Kundera’s works all over again I rediscovered that I am not the only one who have this problem (Ahem! Ahem! )

In ‘Unbearable lightness of being Kundera dedicated an entire chapter on this problem where he discussed how a word can be interoperated differently by different people as per individual experiences and taste .He named the chapter –Words Misunderstood and individual sub chapter as –A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood words .(remember it’s a Novel )

Then I was going through his ‘The art of the novel’ (but it’s a collection of assays) Here also he discussed the same problem in prose - how painful it is to express something and then when its got to be translated –how horrendous it is to see that the translated word doesn’t really mean what you actually expressed in your original writing. This chapter named Sixty three words –he published notes he used to make for such words .We can see one whole page just to express meaning of a simple word like comic, youth….vulgarity.

Let me give you some of my personal experience

Vulgar: A rich MNC worker punch drunk, biting a tandoored Chicken leg was giving lecture on-poor farmer committing suicide in hunger .I found the situation extremely vulgar. (To my friend vulgarity is only when it deals with obscenity or at least immorality. And that man has every right to speak his mind out as it’s a free country.)

Dark: Once I told ‘I have a dark thinking thought processes

1^st friend seriously enquired ‘Do you think of Sex all the time?

2^nd friend commented ‘you should see a psychiatrist, you are suffering from depression.

3^rd friend said ‘How can you think in the dark, it’s scary.

‘Boy boy!’ and I replied nothing...Words misunderstood hah. :-)

you can also read :denial

Tragic Heroes

We follow only the winners and while following them many times we fail to recognize some personalities as history try to brand them as tragic hero (or many say they were villain).While deciding through the accepted denominator of write and wrong we don’t accept contribution some people whose name should have been taken with some respect otherwise.

Take the case of cricket – In a country where we (used to) eat drink and sleep cricket we have seen this game metamorphosed through our eyes .what transformed the game into a world sports – may be exiting fielding , professional attitude ,proper field placement ,game plane ,bringing statistic and technology for development of the game. Everything was introduced (together) by a very clever dedicated duo of Bob Wolmer –and Hansie Cronje .

But we remember both of them for some other reason altogether .Personally I feel Hansie Cronje is the only person in this scandal hit game who have acknowledged the truth. So we call him a villain .Otherwise people of similar track records are now –member of parliament ,chief selector commentator and so on and on.

The list of tragic heroes are innumerable –remember in 90’s when India was emerging as a module of failed nation (economy, political unrest, mistrust) them came one prime minister and with few steps with vision that rescued the almost bankrupt nation from economic collapse.

But now when we talk about them talk only other things.

I am no historian, politician or intellectual (but a pseudo one) neither I am defending or approving those scam (who am I to defend anyway!) for those charge. But I am not at all ashamed to say that they are my hero for the positive contribution they have made.

Kechaikhaiti (কেচাইখাইতী)

Before the Viashnavite renaissance (1400 AD ---) in Assam in the remote eastern corner in a place called Kundil (now Sadiya ) there was a temple of powerful goddess named Kechaikhaiti (কেচাইখাইতী).The local tribes – Deuris, Kacharis ,Chutiya used various kind of offering to their powerful deity. As time passed many of these offerings in fact turned out to be human. In the beginning it used to be a voluntary affair and the person who has volunteered himself to be sacrificed for Goddess was called a xar (ষাড).The xar and his family used to get immense freedom ,respect and benefits from the society as the notion was once Goddess is satisfied there won’t be any calamity in the locality for the year .

Then Ahoms invaded the area ,and Goddess Kechaikhaiti become one of the important reference point of sociopolitical situation of 600 year old history of Ahom dynasty .Many of the Ahom kings become devotee of the Goddess .So yearly there were many offering(as sacrifice) from the kingdom for peace and well being of the country. And many times this human sacrifice became a mean to get rid of rivals in the midst of political chaos of Ahom kings.

That slice from historical literature always fascinated me like anything .

As history fascinates me and when the bugs from history bites my I have to scratch the itch .One of such scratch was the visit to Kechaikhaiti than situated in remote location inside Sadiya. It was Diwali of -2005 and we had a break of two days from hospital duty in Dibrugarh .

We used Bike ,Bus , boat , tempo to reach the place after two days of journey we reached the temple –all alone and unabashed by the river Kundil .

It was nothing to many, but for us the feel of the place was something else.

Tunes of the forgotten boulevard

Young Jayata had a promising future .If he wanted he could have opted to become a rich industrialist .he cold have settled down abroad but what hunted him was ‘Tunes of the forgotten boulevard’ (এৰা বাটৰ সুৰ).Jayanta was at the cross roads of his life .In one way he was compulsively drawn to the tunes that people have started to forget, likes songs that are sang in jungles of Goalpara when they venture into the jungles ,songs that are of the country yard of Kamrup ,Songs they sing when they lift tea leaf from the garden from upper Assam ,
And the music continued
There was a long musical medley (?)then the movie ended ……
It is the synopsis of movie ‘Era Bator Sur’ made in 1956 .
As a child when I first saw the movie I thought hey what happened? What kind of ending is this.;
Now after acquaintance with world cinema ,and hopefully a better understanding of life & language of cinema (then 20 years ago) I have been remembering the movie again and again .
Godard,, Chabrol en all started new wave cinema started in France in mid fifties (at the same time ) Pather Panchali was released in 1955 and at the same time young man known in his native place as a lyricist and singer and music director made one film that by merit quality and content is as great as any contemporary international cinema.
It’s a regret that after all those initial brilliance now a days we have stopped thinking original, whereas we have a rich history of originality ever since 1935.
Photograph source :http://bhupenhazarika-news.blogspot.com/