25 January, 2010
"The function of art is not decorative. True art defeats time, place and people. Art must go beyond a pretty picture. My gaze is independent of my pencil holding hand. I think I could shut my eyes without ceasing to scribble," said Krishen Khanna to The Asian Age at ITC Maurya Sheraton few years ago.
For an artist whose work engages the social, historical and political landscape of India, Krishen Khanna needs no introduction. Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart, has done art lovers a huge favour by bringing a historic retrospective of artist Krishen Khanna to the happening, and renovated Lalit Kala Akademi at Delhi.
Khanna is an erstwhile banker who sold his first painting to Homi Bhabha for the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He is also the creator of the "Procession of Life" painting at the dome of ITC Maurya Hotel, Delhi.
The retropsective accompanied by a handsome catalogue of 250 pages reflects prowess and poise at its best. Saffronart has pulled out all the stops to get works on loan from collectors all over the country. "The range of works and the sense of gravity that we see in his work over the period of four decades is indeed a revelation," says Dinesh Vazirani who culled 120 works alongwith the famed Gandhari sculpture, over a period of one and half years.
From drawings of his Christ, to paintings of the trucks and the figures and Bandwallahs the line of evolution is a study in art history. Reminiscing over his poignant Bandwallah series, Krishen says: I am moved by Chaplinesque situations which involve dual emotions. On the face of it, they can be very funny, even ridiculous. But there is a kind of pathos beneath it all.
I see the Bandwallah as a relic of the past appropriated by Punjabis and people in the north in general for their marriage processions and the like. They turn into areas of colour and have little correspondence with those who instigated them.
Their cacophony too turns into a clash of colours which I think is more coherent to the senses. It follows that my subject matter is of importance to me and is not fortuitous. What is certain, and this gives me some comfort, is that a moment of my life was spent in such absorption which bypassed time."
Considering the fact that his phases have looked at Christ, at Rumi the poet, characters from literature and history, Krishen says: "They feed our need to be human. These select ones are just as capable as classics of literature and quite as capable of information about the whirling world."
Khanna's finest works belong to ITC Maurya in Delhi and ITC Chola Chennai. It was at the time of A.N. Haksar, that Khanna was commissioned to do the dome at ITC Maurya in Delhi. Tucked away in the little salon (Bindiya) is a magnificent portrait of a girl combing her hair. Long, lithe strokes along with a heady softening of coloured restraint, Khanna's subjects hold a compelling and characteristic charisma.
The earliest drawing in the show is Lamplight, a 1974 pen and ink drawing from the collection of his son, Karan Khanna presents a poignant flashback to the yesteryear. The earliest painting is a 1947, Fields from Tara Devi. It has nuances of the French masters, with an Indianesque leitmotif. Khanna's masterful deployment of paint to evoke the human situation is unmatched. He exploits the tenacity of the flatness of colour. The thick impasto surface often seems like a prism through which figures can be discerned as if in memory or in remote areas of childhood. Compositional integrity can be a curious thing. And that is what signifies itself as you walk through this mesmeric meandering of the drawings and paintings. Krishen must have made 100 trucks said wife Renuka at the inaugural dinner at West View that night. Krishen's photograph on an elegant menu by Karan became the leitmotif and signature of Saffronart's sensitivity and grace in handling an evening of great magnitude. From the series on the truck -- the ramshackle juggernaut hurtling into space piled up with construction materials and brutalised labour, to the generals and politicians negotiating peace around the table with the skeleton of humanity lying under it, to Jesus and his betrayal, to the cacophonic irrelevance of the marching band, Saffronart gave Delhi a few lessons in professionalism and poignancy.
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