In an old set of essays he wrote for the Lalit Kala Akademi, the artist, aesthetician, writer and pedagogue KG Subramanyan wrote little gleanings of philosophic reflections on the reality of the artist on art.

Subramanyan whose birth centenary was celebrated with a small but historical show of his last decade of works at Vadehras, was a scholar and writer of depth and gravitas. To the art world, he is known as Manida. He used to sign all his works as Mani. In one of his lectures at LKA, he wrote:

“ There are many things I consider fundamental to my art activity—emotions,  inspirations, the inner landscape of the heart, agonies, enthusiasms and such psychological minutiae,  that I do not feel comfortable talking about. This is not because I do not consider them significant but because I feel they are sullied and made smaller by analysis because what is often a whale of a force in the waters, emerges a poor little fish when pulled out. Creative activities have their mysteries and subconscious depths.”

To look at the last decade of Manida’s works curated by his close friend, student and scholar R.Siva Kumar, is to be invited into a bright but broken-up panorama of fragments filled with feminine fervour and hidden drama.

Colour and contour 

Whether monochrome or coloured split into fragments of vertical as well as horizontal little panels the balance of contours, the fragmented still lives with men and women look like a plethora. We are reminded of William Shakespeare’s sonnet when he wrote :

All the world’s a stage, 

and all the men and women merely players…

Here are men and women, lads and lasses all in animated flux forever in conversations. Imagery flows into the pages of the past they belong to literature as well as rituals, and the elaboration of communities. Within the fragments, we see a meeting of universal rhythms.

We recall Manida’s notes when he wrote:  “ It is paradoxically true that a man who is in meaningful company when he is in a small group is rather alone in the moving crowd of girls. What makes a work of art irresistible, I believe, is the welling up of sensibility from a specific environment carrying the salt of the soil as it were.”

Multiple memories

Indeed within the corollary of multiple references and conversations, we sense his nostalgia within the ambit of childhood memories. Within his drama of characters, we see a Cat Woman, we see girls with hair blowing, flowering shrubs, and blades of grass. There is an overlapping of character at places of metamorphosis as well as mobility. You also sense a heightened drama belonging both to theatre as well as classical and folk dances.

Mythic tenors creep in, his goddesses are curious and quaint, and with an air of seduction, they smile and slip into the scene as if they were there forever. In one of his many interviews, he said: “An uncoded myth should be more potent and challenging than a transparent one.”

The lithe, lean drawings belong to Manida’s mind’s theatre, his drawings between slivers of colour offer a many-sided dialogue. It’s uncanny how he takes a familiar object and almost gives it a new avatar which becomes a pursuit of a dialogue. In all the works in this exceptional suite of 80 works, we see a compulsive doodler who spent all his time dealing with single objects and their metamorphosis.  Manida valued simplifications that indicated an object’s relationship with space or things around interlinking and penetrating everything that undergoes the transmission in individuality.

Feminine identities

All women who visited this show at Vadehras must have gone away happy and smiling. He had a quirky way of representing women, and the feminine form was deeply related to his visual language. Within the frenzied lines and splotches of bright colours, we sense a wry way of seeing a woman. All women are animated or in the midst of something, and within the creation, you see a distinct tenderness. Whether he captures gentle emotions, or strong the appeal is instantaneous. Sometimes there is a richness of chemistry between man and woman sometimes a quietness. In the darker works, we can easily see a beautiful buoyancy that continues to haunt the viewer.

During a conversation with Siva Kumar in 2014, the pedagogue had said, “I am by nature a fabulist. I transform images, change their character, make them float, fly, perform, and tell a visual story. To that extent, my pictures are playful and spontaneous.”

Subramanyan’s women are often actors and observers, musing between being playful, perhaps mischievous, and sometimes sardonic. They are never still, never sedentary, they are cavorting or leaping, even making numerous gestures. He places them in garden settings, amongst flowers or birds,  or occasional domestic scenes within a room, as well as playful scenes. But in all, they own their bodies with pride and prestige. He was always narrating a tale within the plot of human drama.

As a curator, Siva Kumar presents the pictorial fables of Subramanyan. When women transform into multi-armed goddesses we think of Durga, Saraswati and others. His goddesses engage viewers in a direct, frontal gaze. However, some are not goddesses.

The works on the top floor are a series of teasing tones, the master’s fluid, calligraphic lithe lines are a delight to behold. Delightful, diabolic images showcase the artist’s fervent drawing skills.

Subramanyan’s handling of animal forms within the scenes reflects devotion along with a masterly skill. At Vadehras calligraphic, ink-laden brush drawings of animals include a goat, a cow, or a bird and each one is captivating. Subramanyan used brush, pen, ballpoint and marker pens with a variety of mediums such as ink, watercolour, gouache and crayon. The still lives with flowers are stellar for composite cohesiveness.

Viewers savour a modernist 

When you walk down the stairs, into Delhi’s sheets you know you have savoured the last decade of a princely modernist. Characters and dense colours wrap around your senses of scenarios that function as evocative visual allegories. Between playful and intense explorations we savour distinct scenes within a vast and enigmatic world laced with a proliferation of possible modernist meanings. And his words come back in clarity, clear and simple.

“ I never thought of modernism as a value or manner only as a new cultural situation, it superseded nothing as some people call so I consider most of its doctrinal stances and postulates to be limited. And ephemeral.”

The exhibition unveiled  KG Subramanyan as a master who embedded latent narratives about gender, desire, and emotional fluidity for viewers to uncover and decipher. Happy 100th Subramanyan Sir. As William Shakespeare said: Whence cometh such another!

IMAGES : VADEHRAS

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