CATALOG: Line in a Circle

 

(catalog writing for an exhibition of drawings by Karnataka artists, in memory of K.K.Hebbar)

 

The ‘line drawings’ in this show make a rare visual saga. It is ‘rare’ as well as a ‘saga’ because this is the only ‘media’ (drawing) with two ingredients (the name line and the act of drawing) that have been able to ‘connect’ and bring together people from mutually unbelievably deviant artistic preoccupations. So varied are the media and working methods of the participants that each artist might out rightly disagree with the other’s preoccupation as being artistic! The creators of these drawings usually work in a vast range: new media, mixed media, oil paints, illustrations, graphics, sculpture, photography etc., wherein the width of the term ‘etc.,’ is lengthier than the media mentioned in this very sentence!

 

It should be interesting to note that a modest media like ‘drawing’ (“the poor cousin of oil painting” as Geeta Kapoor terms it) has been able to ‘dissolve’ such mammoth ideological differences existing between the outlooks of all these artists and ‘draw’ them under the same banner, named after itself. One should not forget the historic humiliation that drawings and lines have undergone under the aegis of easel paintings’ existence; and even after the departure of the latter’s impact. In an attempt to erase off each other’s impact, the tradition of ‘easel paint’ and the ‘new media’ redefined the very meaning (and hence the experience) of ‘drawing’ and ‘line drawing’!  It should not come as a shock to realize that there are drawings without lines and lines that don’t necessarily make a drawing. What I am trying to point out is that these drawings have very less for sight and contain more of a ‘sense’ of sight (consider Satish Shollapur, Suresh Jayaram and Anuradha Nalapat’s drawings).

 

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These drawings are the creations of artists positioned in different generations of attitudes (for instance, place A.M. Prakash’s ‘drawing’ next to M.Shanthamani’s ‘work’), but placed in the same geographic locality. The show itself is exciting for the reason that it narrates the common meeting ‘point’–through ‘lines’–of mutually varied and alien practice that is broadly categorized as ‘the’ Art produced in Karnataka State, today.

 

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No more is “a line a mere collection of un-countable points” as the idealists would define. Such a ‘definition’ insults the variation in experiences brought about by specific regional, ethnic and gender experiences. That was the definition of the Indian Modernists, but very few of them in the show have remained to be so (however drawings by R.Raja, J.M.S. Mani, M.G.Doddamani, Jesu Rawal, Dimpy Menon and V. Vallish tend to becomes easily accessible to such definitions, though they pledge to differ mutually as well as from that very definition, to certain extent!) The fact that there is hardly any drawing that is non-figurative, in the show, is evidence to the fact that lines produced in Karnataka is no more ‘innocent’ to be considered as objects of mere aesthetic contemplation. Interestingly, this is a show mainly meant to celebrate the birthday of an artist (K.K.Hebbar) whose lines were metaphorically termed as “dancing lines”!

 

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 The character of the metaphorical line of this show moves in a circle: Devoid of abstraction (which means these drawings are not erased off from their context of socio-cultural phenomena), it doesn’t mean that these drawings adhere to sheer figuration. On the contrary, the drawings behave as ‘vertical invaders’ into each other’s boundaries of experiences. In other words, these drawings—produced mainly by colourless lines—act as a sort of intervention into each artist’s artistic conditioning of the ‘hands’ rather than as an ‘extension’ of their main visual preoccupation (Lalitha Shankar and Surekha’s works ‘intervene’ while G. Jayakumar and Chandranath Acharya’s drawing ‘expand’ their respective, regular artistic gestures).

 

There is a sense in the fact that all the drawings’ ‘formal’ appearances seem to belong to the same visual family. Even the lines vary in apperance but acquire characteristics with unassuming meanings and meaningful experiences. Consider at least four ‘definitions’ that the lines and the resultant drawings acquire, that is specific to the visual culture in Karnataka:

 

(1) There are artists who have used lines and drawings to sculpt three-dimensional imagery wherein this very act of ‘self-modification’ of a drawn character–to depict a three-dimensional web–gains more ‘prominence’ than the resultant image itself! What we see is of less concern to us than observing how the seen is being produced, as far as lines are concerned. The sum of the lines, in such cases, means something ‘more’ and ‘more different’ than the finally acquired imagery (as it happens in the works of S.G.Vasudev, Ravi Kumar Kashi, Amaresh U.Bijjal, A.M.Prakash, amongst others).

 

(2) There are drawings in the show that are ‘depictions without lines’ that brings it close to the essence of that (painting) to which it was subordinate to, historically speaking (Yusuf Arakkal, Rekha Rao, Bharati Sagar and Sumana Chowdhury). This is a sort of new interpretation that can be drawn more from the ‘curatorial attitude’ of ‘defining’ this show rather than the actual ‘practice’ of drawing an image, usually without lines.

 

(3) Another category of lines/drawings produces something that is an imitation-in-itself, a kind of hyper reality. The coloured thread and thread-like material (respectively) in Surekha and Lalitha’s works, for instance, literally serve as ‘reflections’ of the ‘real’ lines that physically co-exist, on the same picture surface! This kind of combination is an anti-thesis to the art of collage, that too while the real and imagined lines together form a sort of collage. This is a mode of presenting the real and hyper-real together. * 

 

(4) A fourth category of lines refute ‘their own conventional meaning’ but borrow it (the definition) at certain points, in order to prove how they have deviated from them, in the first place! Ravi Kashi and Suresh Jayaram’s resultant thematic imagery, for instance, uses uniform, plain, basic forms of line but attempts to contain a whole concept of nature (Panchabhuta and Shadanga Sutra, respectively)—which actually is the premise of historic narrative paintings!

 

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Altogether, the four category of works in this show (the drawing’s ‘ability’ to draw attention to the act of drawing; drawings acquired without lines; lines that imitate themselves to produce a hyper-reality and line drawing that consumes its historic position to announce its freedom from such a binding), produced at the turn of the century in Karnataka, is a ‘mark’ made by artists who accept it as only a ‘part’ of their full fledged artistic preoccupation. If the notion of drawing/accumulation of lines is a part of a tradition of image-making that ‘behaved’ as “a view through the window” (Vasari), some of the participating artists have stayed out of it, as a mark of their self-conscious deviation from their earlier preoccupation as painters (includes sculptors).

 

For such artists, these works (by them) act as simulacra of the drawings they used to produce earlier. Now these very drawings by them are actually ‘marks’, ‘gestures’, and ‘signs’ etc., anything other than innocent Modernist drawings made up of ‘gesticulating’ lines. These drawings clone something

NOTE:

 

* Umberto Eco’s article “The City of Robots”(See: Eco’s ”Travels in Hyperreality”) refers, explains and problematises as to how the American cities like the Disney Land and Disney World evoke reality next to hyper reality. This serves as a right metaphor to compare those drawn lines with threads (for instance) that coexist and hence appear to be ‘imitated’,’ reflected’ and ‘synchronised’ with the former! //