(I) 

      He was there, when I joined the College of Fine Arts at Chitrakala Parishath as an art student, in 1985. Though he was in his late 70s, he was still there when I completed my B.F.A, in 1990. He was yet there when I got in as an art history tutor, for the first time, at the same institution, in 1992. He was already in his mid 80s, in the early 1990s. It was already thirty years (1963) since he had retired, for the first time—among the several subsequent retirements as artist, as tutor and the like, from various institutes, concerned with visual education. Yet he did not hesitate to call the new breed of art critics–that did not exclude me–as “those who criticize by (merely) reading books”! (a) Art criticism, (b) visual audience-ship and hence (c) an artistic discourse as a discipline was conspicuously rendered ‘poor’, in the art circle around him, which was constituted by no less than the ‘royal’ court painters.  

      In fact his opinionated-mindset has been embarrassingly documented by his official biographer, the art critic, S.N.Chandrashekar—regarding a comment he made about Pablo Picasso’s works, obviously in a near-sighted tone. The relevant point is that the critic did not fail to ‘document’ Y. Subramanyaraju’s (YSR) comment about a contemporary legend; and the artist in question did not ‘hesitate’ to voice his opinion in a pronounced platform.*1*  

      The kind of prejudice that YSR carried, controlled the hand with which he painted. His pictorial prejudice–in no mean sense–was about equating the private notion of ‘domestic institution’ (family) and a public notion of ‘administrative aristocratic policy’ with certain Hindu ‘mythical’ sequences. YSR’s well known work is a part of a set of six panels he painted for (and now laid within) the Mysore palace, called “Lord Rama Worshipping Arms in front of Goddess Chamundeshwari”*2*. It is a coronation scene of the mythical Goddess whom the Mysore kings held in high esteem, considered her as their mother, and incidentally, as a result, claimed their pharaoh-like godly-hood for themselves. Very simply stating, through the commission of such paintings, there was a barter trade of favours, between being a god and being a king.  

      It is one of those six artworks that mark an ‘occasion’ and/or an ‘excuse’ similar to that excuse, that religiously devout Indian people wait for, to go on a religious/ritualistic holiday, to celebrate and/or to succumb to supernatural powers. This was much so with the history of Mysore palace and meaningfully connected with the notion of a ‘temple god’. This work in particular is analogous to the definition of a ‘temple’ in essence, due to the following reasons:

      (a) The work contains meticulously and ritualistically renderings and the same ‘meticulousness’ was/is applied in the rituals followed by the Mysore palace kings, during, say, Mysore Dasara procession.

      

      (b) The work has adopted a contemporary understanding of iconography, and attempts at ‘creating’ private iconographies, as a result. Chamundeshwari, the Goddess, is currently identified with the Statehood of Mysore court, among popular imagination. She was specifically worshipped as the Goddess of the household (‘manedevate’) by the Mysore kings. YSR, pictorially positions this Goddess as the one worshipped by the legendary Rama himself, thus ‘suggesting’ an act of ‘simulacra’ between the Lord Rama and the Mysore kinghood. The king is not Rama, nor is it the other way round, but both mutually are ‘originals without the ability to reproduce or be reproduced’—the definition of simulacra, according to Jean Baudrillard.  

      It is also true that YSR used the features of his sons among the cupids. Here is a new definition of Lord-ship by the artist. The Goddess, Rama, King and YSR himself act as lords—call it as author/ship (ref: Barthes, Roland)—and the question of property-ship is addressed in the background of the synchronization between the definitions of family, lordship, sponsors and art (itself as an application for the achievement of a sense of social security), by the artist, the king and Lord Rama himself.

      

      (c) The panel attempts to advertise the proximity between the Kings and Gods, the Goddess as mother to a (Mysore) king who bear the character of the monogamy lord Sri Rama and the like.

      

      In certain ways, these six panels in general and this one in particular formulate a code of conduct to the praja (the ‘audience’ or the ‘subject’)—that can also be read as a certain kind of ‘audience-ship’*3*. Every temple, like this work, is a ‘frozen metaphysical moment’ of that history of some mundane gains: they are built to mark the occasion of winning a war, saving a catastrophe, a child being adopted or born and similar such occasion. This kind of work was possible by YSR because his vocation as an artist was a religious journey into the temple, due to the following reasons. He was:

(1) A family man, with a large family,

(2) A sincere apolitical adherent to his sponsors (the non-aggressive, colonial-friendly Mysore palace authorities) and

(3) Had taken several of his sons as models for the cupids, depicted in semi-western Victorian style, who adorn the painting as angels to the Gods. This is what I mean when I say his lifestyle–as this work alone might be able to exemplify–in no mean sense, was about construing a negotiative meeting point between: the domestic institution (family), an administrative aristocratic setup and the notion of Hindu mythology. 

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            (II) 

In a video interview about YSR by R.M.Hadapad, the interviewer poses this intelligent, teasing, very tongue-in-cheek question. “You were an active artist during the independence movement. What was your commitment, as an artist, towards that movement? What was your contribution towards Indian independence movement?” The answer reflected the socio-political circumstance to which the artist was prey to. “During those times of political independence movement, we the artist community would whole heartedly pray to God that India regains its freedom from the clutches of the British and the rest of the Europeans”. A court painter who lived throughout the shift between modernity and post modernity, between colonial and post-colonial and de-colonising circumstances—YSR was a traditionalist in attitude, conformist by practice and practiced art differently; and defined art as something that was a Confucius mode of lifestyle.  

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            (III) 

Y. Subramanya Raju the artist was an ideal family person. He had several male children and many of them—that doesn’t exclude a grand daughter and two grand sons—are artists themselves. His compositions have something to do severely with this notion of colonial and post-colonial sense of the institution of ‘family’. By family, I mean the actual domestic and the artistic sense of narratology, with too many decorative figures being the order of composition, in order to endorse the sponsoring aristocracy. Raju is a product of aristocracy and democracy and shared feudal notion of artistic secrets. He was born into that, genetically speaking. And he seemed to endorse that as well. What could be very relevant about his lifetime achievement is this very thing—he endorsed that to which he was born into*4*. His works reflect this in certain ways. Equating “the aristocratic status of Gods and godly appearances to his family (sons) who served as models (in one of his painting) under the aegis of the palatial (and then), sponsorship” was what his works are relevant, today, perhaps, for us. He was a court painter before independence and a revivalist-tutor in academic institution of visual arts (at Chitrakala Parishath) after independence, which implies that he perceived the latter to be a continuation of the former as far as they facilitated him to operate as an artist of dual interest—as an individualist-academic and as an individualist-Mysore traditional painter. 

* 

The best of Y.Subramanya Raju’s art works are mostly within the Mysore Palace while most of his works, perhaps, are outside. It is a divide between the aristocratic and the democratic setup for visual arts within which his works are positioned. Another artist whose works are spread between the two seemingly contradictory political set up, is K. Venkatappa. But the latter defined what it does mean to be a spectator to (specifically) ‘his’ works, thus problematising this divide. Or, to put it in another way, Subramanya Raju’s works are ‘located’ within the courtly premise, in spirit. “as well as in essence” is an incomplete sentence, that I would refuse to add to the previous sentence, for, he worked in various ‘genres’ of image-making while possessing a style of his ‘own style’! This seems an empiricist’s contradiction. In other words, what the art community generally considers—as a style not deviant from genres—is diffused by his works.  

      He painted in various genres of art like still life, portrait, landscape, mythological narratives and Mysore traditional painterly style. Many of his co-artists did paint similarly in genres that were specific to that age of aristocratic sponsorship. Claims have that K.Venkatappa excelled in Mysore tradition of painting. Yet, the specific point about Y.S.Raju is that, he retained a style in all these genres of painting. Someone retaining his style of representation while painting Mysore tradition is unheard of among the artist crowd and (hence) indicates a representational-sacrilege! 

      This could be his life achievement, as an artist. In fact this divide between style and genre is also a ‘reactionary response’ to the palatial tradition of image making, from within which he hails. 

A brief biodata about himself, a set of visuals that are going to be projected from now onwards*5*, based on the projection of the strength, is what is going to remain ‘as’ Y.S.Raju. However, the politics of such a projection seem to be too ambiguous. The current design of art history till date has been confined to a set of artists, as against another group. The history of Karnataka art has been a set of sensitive artists as against that set of artists. However, this is the statement of the privileged. The sour grape has it that, this history is that of the privileged, and there is a cross section which is constituted by a set of producing agencies. For Y.S.Raju, the first of them was the Mysore palace while he outlived its cultural operation and participated in various other such agencies’ activities.  

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              (IV) 

Let us come back to the question of the differentiation between the genre and style in painting that our artist succeeded in breaking through. His long life was not the only reason for this. The advantage of those longitive artists who lived in twentieth century had to compulsorily be witness to varying styles, redefinition of the term avant-garde and genres; and the birth of the new media art. Writing about that itself began to claim more proximity to philosophy and archaeology rather than journalism, specifically in Karnataka. However, among the art community, the overwhelming presence of the contextual formalism reigned, by and large, in its various avatars. Raju was witness to all of them, participated in some of them and finally, decided that serving religiosity in an unorthodoxic fashion—by painting Hindu religions and myths, with a tinge of autobiographical references and a personalized Victorian representational devices—i.e., through visual articulation, was a gentleman’s reaction to the palace art in certain ways. 

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              (V) 

       His behavior—claimed to be royal, dignified, disciplined—belonged to the courtly decorum. It was a combination—not so very odd—between Victorianism and courtly system, always ‘behind and beyond’ one’s own times. His body of artworks represents every negotiative attitude that the Mysore palace authority held towards the British Raj. Raju’s works ‘evoke’ a renewed relation between colonization, colonized and colonizer, beyond the simplistic attitude one has towards colonization as (merely) a bad impact (ref: Ashis Nandi’s book “The Intimate Enemy”).  

      All said and done, the future of YSR, the artist, his courtly and non-courtly lifestyle, his artworks and finally the neglect that all these have been subject to, demands newer epistemological parameters within the set confines of art discourse in general and art writings in particular. Scores of artists of relevance like Roerichs, R.S.Naidu, S.S.Kukke, Rumale Chennabasavaiah, N.Hanumaiah have been neglected by ignorance and ignored by the politics of forgetfulness. Often, one hears that some of them, most of them and, often, even all of them were not of much relevance as artists. But this preconception, believe me, must have emerged out of the politics of ideological groups that has become the pan-Indian art history, till date, in epistemological centers. The artists, beginning with Y.Subramanya Raju, need not be tested within the notion of artist-as-cultural-hero. But he (and the like) could be positioned within the major themes of Kannada/Karnataka culture that loomed large in the twentieth century, like say the notion of institutionalization of family, aristocracy and colonial life, which also means that YSR lead a life to disprove the populist notion that the construct of family and the construct a pictorial frame do not gel well.// 
 

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FOOT NOTE: 

*1* Every now and then, Raju would unveil a blotch of ink(ed) paper, show it around and pronounce that, “even I can make Modern Art”. His standpoint was crystal clear about what ‘modern and modernity in art’ meant to him and perhaps, to his generation—despite the famously acknowledged differentiation between the ‘modern’ and ‘modernity’ by Clement Greenberg (proposed in 1932), that was circulated even in the metropolis like Bombay, where YSR studied art for a while (in J.J.School of Art).  

      In the other piece of newspaper-cutting that YSR carried around, in his pocket, Picasso had—according to the former– ‘confessed’ that “most of the things I did in the name of art is farce”. So, V.Raja Veer—his grandson and my class mate –would tell me about what his grandfather felt about it. “From now on, if someone says that Picasso is a great artist, show them this newspaper cutting and tell them that he himself has admitted that he is a dilettante!’ Obviously, I have mellowed down the ‘tone’ and ‘sarcasm’ in which the sentence was previously passed on by him, through his grandson. YSR himself hails from an artist/artisan family of painters (‘chitrakaars’) wherein it was a practice to pass on a mode of image-making to the male offshoots of their family. This practice included recitation of ‘sutras’ and appreciation, but criticism itself might have had been elusive. An actual introspective lamentation of a celebrity (Picasso) was articulated into a pronounced confession by YSR!  

*2*. These panels won him the accolade of being a ‘Palace Artist’. Read: the bilingual Monograph about the artist written and edited by S.N.Chandrashekar, (third edition, 2008), published by the Registrar, Karnataka Lalitkala Academy, Bangalore. All the six panels are regular in (a) composition, (b) regularity,(c) repetition, (D) following a set-rule of even that which is ‘creative’–is the similarity that connects these six works to the notion of ideal ‘subject/’praja’/follower’ of the royal court. The definition of being a palace artist is what made YSR paint the way he did, specifically as is evident in these six panel paintings.

      What happened within the pictorial space is also that which controlled the politics around that frame and this is true even the other way round, as well:  

(i) YSR hailed from a family of traditional painters or painters of a specific mode of pictorial understanding,  

(ii) He was being brought up in the tradition of court painters, wherein a submission to the authority was the ‘frame work’ from within which (alone) a creative venture was possible (remember Goya and his adventure with the palace authorities!).  

(iii) He also received a certain formula of picture-making from J.J.School of Arts–as the saying goes–wherein he was trained as an art student.  

      Yet, it must be perhaps from there that the rudiment of being a ‘strict/disciplined tutor’ was inherited by him. The above mentioned (at least) three modes of the methodology of image-making indicates YSR’s personality as a flexible one or a personality that treated teaching and making of art as a kind of employment–that notion of employment that most Indian sahibs became accustomed to– since Indian independence onwards, specifically in the government sectors.  

      This is a very relevant strategy that YSR adopted, with a large domestic family, as against the notion of avant garde which someone like K.Venkatappa, the bachelor, adopted, which finally cost him with the relatively comfort zone that was offered by being a part of the institution of the ‘court painters’. (Read: the book by K.V.Subramanyam, “Venkatappa: Ondu Punaraaavalokana” (Kannada). YSR considered the institution of family, palace and mythological depiction to be mutually complementary and, occasionally, one and the same.  

*3*.  ‘Praja’ is a significant term to those ‘Navodaya’ Karnataka artists who lived and worked through the transitional phase between India before and after political independence. Interestingly, the cultural/cultured difference between Navodaya and Navya in Kannada literature lies in the way they treat ‘family’ within their creative frame works. YSR’s paintings were for the domestic, god-fearing pupil who equated their visits to the palace galleries with that of their visits to the temple. (Read: Carol Duncan’s idea that visiting a museum as an act of ritual. Book: “Civilizing Rituals”).  

*4*. Once someone had asked YSR, “What is the difference between students’ watercolour and the professional ones?” The answer was, “It is same as the difference that lies between an art student and an artist”. The answer was conclusive yet non-explanatory. Also it was a general habit with the artists of Karnataka, the contemporaries of YSR, to withhold the making of paints, gesso etc as a family trade secret. Often YSR would comment thus, “Everything should not be taught, some of the core formula should be withheld”. YSR was an artist hailing from an artist-family, but broke that very tradition by educating himself (and later his children) in art schools. The notion of artist family was thus multiply ruptured.// 

*5* This will be in the form of the visuals about himself and his works shown within the exhibitions, their catalogues and the commemorative volume (this one) of this centenarian etc. The politics of public projection of a fine artist seem to terminate at the setting up of a Museum rather than begin from there, as the historicity of the museums dedicated to the works of artists like K.Venkatappa, K.K.Hebbar, S.S.Kukke proves (all in Bangalore). However, YSR is yet to be confined even into that institution of museumisation. ///