Culture & cramps

The Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata, of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) has a short but sad year-long history. It took years to be constructed, and it dragged so long that Charles Correa, who had initially designed it, abandoned it long before its construction started. Its galleries are cramped and do not have space enough for experimental contemporary art, as was evident when it hosted the Italian exhibition. Some of its hastily-put-together exhibitions of Bengal art have been nothing short of disastrous and its catalogues are even worse.

They must be spending lakhs with so little to show for it. Now comes the ICCR website www.tagorecentreiccr.org and it proves that its Kolkata chapter is well on the way of establishing a tradition of the glorification of utter lack of taste and refinement. Everything from the layout, the font, the laughable selection of photographs (there is a delightful one of an animated Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in front of a sketch of Rabindranath trying to make a point to an impassive Pranab Mukherjee) and press clippings lack sophistication and aesthetic sense to such a great degree that one is not surprised that our repeated claims of Kolkata being the country's "cultural capital" amuses everybody save the people of West Bengal, who love to take themselves seriously. The account of the inauguration of June 1, 2008, describes the dignitaries as "distinguished," and the likes of Somnath Hore and Pradosh Dasgupta are lumped with certain sculptors of little worth, a mistake which even the uninitiated would never commit. Surely, ICCR, if not Kolkata, deserves better than this. After all this is public money, but government organisations are above the law.

They say that art activity has all but stopped in New Delhi and Mumbai. But in Kolkata it continues unabated, never mind its quality, if there is any awareness of the latter at all. In the last few months galleries collectively organised a series of exhibitions on terrorism, followed by the ongoing K. G. Subramanyan 85th birthday show, and now Emami Chisel Art has launched its magazine, Art Etc. A few months ago, Akar Prakar had launched its art magazine as well, and both have some things in common, traits that they would be well advised to avoid. To begin with, both have too many photographs of the organisers and events held in the galleries. Hopefully, these are not just house magazines and are not meant to glorify the activities of the gallerists alone. Moreover, the quality of the essays could definitely improve, and there should be evidence of the blue pencil being used more often. Only then would the worth and authority of these magazines increase. Art Etc. has an additional drawback — the quality of paper used could certainly have been better, leading to poor printing. In some pages, colours have leached out and smudged the reverse.

Manoj Roy is a graphic designer who is also a compulsive painter, attacking canvases till well into the night and often using pastels as well to express his feelings about the fears that have invaded the world of late through an array of visual imagery. In his current exhibition at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Roy displays large canvases drenched with colour, and forms that belong to real life but seem to have drifted from the artist’s dreams, or perhaps nightmares.

Occasionally, he conjures up images that remind us that terrorists are faceless and should be identified only by the violence they perpetrate, and politicians who bleat ceaselessly. There are rickshaw-pullers too. Roy often uses harsh, contrasting shades such as orange and viridian and blue and red that enhance the dreamlike quality of his images. His large canvases emphasise the starkness of his imagery.


Soumitra Das, The Telegraph Metro