ARTICLE: N.S.Harsha’s works
(the article is originally published by “Art Etc” quarterly magazine, published by Emami Chisel and edited by Amit Mukhopadhyay, Kolkatta (2009)
(I)
Harsha’s artworks, in general, are about being painterly, no matter which media he is operating upon—the old and/or/with the new. Painting itself is the subject matter herein, though this sounds like a cliché. It means something beyond the general, usual definition of itself: ‘Painting’ means—for him–a certain tool to ‘re-live’ and ‘realise’ (a) nostalgia and (b) homage, from within. Before I explain about what these two meaningfully hint at–and what do they mean to him (nostalgia and homage)–let me make it clear that nostalgia and homage are two ‘acts’ or devices that Harsha relies upon, in order to strengthen the discourse of the institution of lower-upper-middle-peripheral class (called as ‘lump’ class from now onwards) Indian family, through his paintings.*1*
The first thing that strikes to me, while thinking about Harsha’s drawings (i.e. artworks) is this ‘lump’ class he belonged to and hails from. In this class, particularly in south India, it is customary for people to travel and visit en-mass to religious places like Dharmasthala (western Karnataka), Tirupathi (Andhra Pradesh), Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu) and Shabarimale (Kerala). It is a religious pleasure trip or a pleasurable religious trip! It also indicates the middle class sensibility of commixing more than one life experience ‘together’, so that they feel a sense of fulfillment, at a cheaper price*2* Harsha’s self-referential contemplation on painterliness, in order to evoke nostalgia and homage, shares a stark simulacra with this middle class theory to equalize ‘ritualistic pleasure’ with ‘religious visits’.
And this subject of his, i.e.—painterliness and not painting!—recurring in his works as a second layer of meaning, no matter what subjects he primarily painted or has titled, contains a specific address to it (with due apologies to John Berger, who addressed landscapes as having specific address, in another context).
His drawing recall populist imageries around him, like Indian comic and Indian classic/tradition of linear depiction: in an unusual way. It is not a visible similarity with, say, the likes of Lepakshi, Vijayanagara, classical Chinese, Indian miniature drawings that is recalled, though the semblance is obviously closer. But it is the cultural sanctity that ‘lump’ class has availed to this painterly depiction, to prevail and metamorphose only gradually over the centuries. This gradualness and its visual mechanism is that what has been internalized. Lines lead to cultural memory and line itself is the entity that refutes its presence (as lines) and indulges into playing other roles, mainly as a catalyst for cultural discourse.
His works, apart from being mutually independent and dealing with various and varied themes, as the cliché goes, constantly address the same painterliness that was around Harsha, since his childhood days and yet is prevalent, as a visual-periphery, outside the bounds and norms of mainstream art. When Harsha paints/draws he reminds more than represents. Reflecting on the past is the method he follows, in the way he draws, no matter what he is depicting. The circularity, circumspection and insularity are a few major ‘route maps’ through which he re-en‘acts’ (in the form of nostalgia and homage) his painterly preoccupation. And through ‘nostalgia’ and ‘homage’ he is addressing the ‘lump’ Indian domestic class which was not only not being addressed in mainstream visual culture, but was also considered to have been a taboo, sacrilege, since it was a class of cliché, ill fed with popular films, soaps and the like.*3* The refusal of the addressed/addressal of a taboo itself is the actual intention/aim behind Harsha’s works. If they appear as moral stories (“We Come, We Eat, We Sleep” work could empirically remind us of Gauguin’s work “Where do we come from….”). The irony about it is also inevitably present. A ‘straightforward statement’ and a ‘satire’ refute to co-exist, in his work.
In a way, (a) the family as ‘the’ theme in Kannada films and literature, in the past; (b) the historic appropriation of the genre of landscape are the two methodologies that Harsha seems to have been influenced by, in a strange, indirect way. This is revealed by the way he depicts family. The family, as a basic unit of democracy is initially traceless in his works as a form and theme. However if one considers his works like “what is Good behaviour Mother?” he seems to bring in the ethics that was taught as good behavior in education to kids, through moral stories. This seemingly-ness, in his works, is finer than the term ambiguity. The stories were there (also) to endorse the perceived structures of what Indian family means. Did the lump class create the moral panchatantra stories or is it the other way round?—is yet another ‘seemingly-ness’ that he constantly caters to, through his works. Considerably, the radicals, avant garde, prisoners, dwellers of asylums and other factions of the outcast society don’t find much space in either of these two ‘seem’ing categories. This:
(i) the basis of such structuring that can outcast several social factions; and
(ii) what it means to address them through the convention of the media of painterliness–are the two important streams through which Harsha operates, in order to negate the difference between adhering to a visual tradition and subjecting it into a tongue-in-cheek visual criticism.
Let me revise the premise within which I would like to place Harsha’s body of works, till now: He subjects his creative output in one direction: equating the fate and art of painting –into a contemporary postcolonial situation. This has been performed from within the premise of a bourgeoisie class-experience, which has been devoid of visual artistic representation, due to the politics of mainstream visual arts. So much for the lack of sensation it has caused on a wider scale. Call it as a local tale or a Subaltern project (depends on which side of it would you back up), he does this to empower a certain sense of nostalgia and homage to Indian middle class’s sense of leisure, through representational devices. In the due course he equates the bourgeoisie definition of religiosity with that of his own artistic practice. The methodology he enacts defies unique authorship and involves circularity, circumspection and insularity as the ‘route maps’.
(II)
Harsha’s works—in a sweeping survey—are coloured drawings, in essence. This, he deliberately continues even while being preoccupied with installations, assemblages or performances in various countries and contexts of curatorial practices. The reason I would not using the phrase, “When he draws” instead of “When the integral details of drawings are being rendered” is due to the cultural circumstance around his time and space, that has availed the opportunity for multiple authorship or sorts, in the place of singular ownership which, I presume, Harsha would not disagree with, when this autonomy/authorship/ownership is equated with the tyranny of aristocracy, monopoly and such other preoccupations, to which the Kannada culture was, by and large, subject to—in the pre-independence rule of Mysore State as well as in the act of the domination of literature in (mainly) the post-independence era of the definition of Kannada culture. For instance, the folk traditions of drawing (Kinnale Kale, leather puppetry etc) that were outside the clutches of the power-structure of feudalism were essentially products of multiple-authorship.
This remote association between ‘multiple’ (instead of singular) with that of ‘being democratic’ is also one of the clue to confirm the connectivity that he ‘draws’ mutually between (i) family, as a basic unit of democracy, (ii) the nostalgia which brings in varied memory of that institution (instead of a singular, specific one) and (iii) the act of homage which is a medieval methodology adopted to break one’s singularist, separation from the society, in an attempt to be a social hero.
The notion of drawing does a multi-tasking of being (a) a line, (b) and something other than, (as well as) the opposite of itself: a line—a catalyst for nostalgia. The drawings resemble a gamut of representational tradition which is predominantly linear. But what is seen is not what it is empowered with.
His drawings, first of all, encroach and hence create a space that is of meta-human scale. Herein the primal, common sensible understanding of a drawing as a small, tiny, mini(ature) preliminary essence of something (b) final, (b) beyond and (c) after itself, re-positions into that very ‘other’ dimension to which it moves. This is a visual reminiscent of Franz Fanon’s notion of ‘spontaneity’. Thus his drawings attempt two things, simultaneously. To discard itself and to endorse itself as the other that it finally construes. The lines tend to play the role of its lord—the painterliness. Lower middle class family was the unit that has been discarded in twentieth century Karnataka paintings by and large while this very institution forms the basic unit of the biggest democratic country. In other words, due to the way he paints, our artist is rather re-democratising visual arts by bringing in the basic unit of such political structure. And things outside the institution of democracy and domestic-family, like say, Marxism, Occidentalist prejudices of self-referentiality, Foucault’s notion about institutions like madhouse, prison and sea journey *4*–were, more or less, the major things that were endorsed as subjects for dialogue throughout Indian high visual Modernism, in the name of Avant Garde!
Thus the drawing–as a basic unit of representation–becomes an engrossing web/net for Harsha. It is a desi-net within which he tends to resurface, recapture or subaltern(ate). Insularity, circumspection and circularity are the three acts which form the shape formed by this net. Harsha’s drawings (pre)tend to behave as a net, rather than as a mark on a surface. A mark is a representation on the pictorial surface while a net engrosses marks. When a mark refutes to distinguish itself from its surrounding, it turns to be a net. Harsha’s background and his works—coloured drawings and painterly in attitude—get connected as follows*5*:
(III)
Harsha’s childhood was in the 70s, at Mysore. Dasara exhibition was the annual event that exhibited colonial-realistic works in the visual tradition that was a combination of the Bombay J.J.School academicism admixed with Ravi Varman School from the Mysore palace, which resulted in an eccentric reality of its own kind and projected/prevailed itself as the contemporary visual trend of Mysore province. It tends to happen even now in various schools in the rural schools of thought, in and around Mysore, wherein innocence of the contemporary is well sustained. Comics, particularly the Indian ones like Chandaamaama, Amar Chitra Katha, then, along with the newly arrived Eastman coloured movies in touring talkies and the attested popular actor’s calendars printed at Shivakashi formed the first layer of visual representations that engrossed Harsha and his generation of future artists. What transpired between this influence and the later formal academics at art schools at Mysore and Baroda, to him, was where his painterliness and linearity emerges from, as a construed discourse of discomfort.
His lines, reminiscent of, but different from the Asian calligraphic tradition, were interwoven into the artist’s understanding that everything worth being represented can occur through these lines. It implied that anything that these lines can depict is worth a visual representation! On a conceptual level, anything that he composes will be worthy of the institution of family and the institution of family is that premise that contains his world of experiences. The lines, or linearity to be more specific, as a net/web instead of a graph, forms the basic unit and becomes so familiar in his works, that they no more will to remain as visuals! They turn into shorthand ‘indicators’, not even to reveal or show but to makes ‘reminiscence’ of a given object of visuality. The way his images are drawn are already familiar, almost art historically. Forever, the way he represents them already follow traditions of depictions. In other words, Harsha tries to convince us that the visual world can be perceived even through the eye that is emotionally and nostalgically connected by the institutionalization of Indian democratic family structure, which has been held as a taboo in High Art.
(IV)
Consider his most popular works: “Come Give Us a Speech”*6* (2008), “We Come, We Eat, We Sleep” (2006) and the like. The images speak more about toil and manual labour rather than intelligence, indicating that they are two different aspects. Labour and intelligence were split as two opposites and the latter was considered as a shortcut for the former, in the middle class families, till recently. Harsha’s titles in the above-said and similar works acknowledge them, hence making a mark (a point) that he is operating from within the famil(iar)y belief, which bifurcates labour from intelligence. Incidentally, in another context, the word ‘work’ in artwork is more of labour than intelligence. The art school dialogue–around this artist during his educational days–about skill being more skillful than the handy skill further indicates this bifurcation and the social hierarchy that prevailed(s) all around the visual practices. Harsha feels committed to addressing this specific abstract aspect in his art‘practice’, though it would be difficult to evidentially prove it from any one of his ‘work’ of art.
The (a) wider scale, (b) repetitive figures and (c) monotony of recurrence of various familiar subject matters *7* persuade the viewer to stop looking so that other dimensions of the given imagery—like memory, personal associations and associations personalized, the act of triggering the desired visual, events and imagination–would be unveiled. In fact, while watching his works (watch out for the replacement of watch instead of looking); the physical labour is, yet, the compulsory part of some intelligent realization, that is yet to come, always in the future. For instance, our general understanding of two rows of people eating food is punctured at one point when one from first row is handing over a glass of water to another person from the other row. The perspective and one’s sense of gravity is served unreal, is squeezed and later normalcy is restored as if nothing happened elsewhere. The mundane and super-beings thus coexist*8*
Harsha’s overall works, recalled at once, is like recalling the nostalgic trips of the family-institution, to pay homage to deities in religious places. The fact that pleasure is commixed with religiosity, need to be stressed. His was a generation from whereon pleasure itself becomes a religion. It was a satirical re-definition of the notion of family, that has somehow been the product and result of colonial construct of family-institution whose measure of fundamental functions like religiosity, chastity etc are based on Victorian model. Also, he creates an arrested tension between the academics, family and high art. For, the notion of how visuals are laid on a given surface (I am consciously avoiding using the term composition, for, then it will be like speaking from within an academic institution) varies from those three vintage points. Also, the subcategories of these three points seem to have undergone changes in the past couple of decades, and in his works. The similarity between academics, family and high art, till recently, relied upon the concept of authorship/centralized thematic concern. (a) Perspective, (b) the landlord and (c) avant garde formed the core-essence of these units, (academics, family and high art) respectively. A mere glance at Harsha’s works reveals his conscious attempt to bring together all these three into a discourse of paradox that painterliness and the resultant experience of ‘family’ are subject to. Perspective is constantly made ambiguous in most of his works. The notion of family (also ‘in’ his works) includes those personalities who lived 30 years ago and those who lived 300 years ago, as if the difference didn’t matter. And the members of his ‘represented’-family need not always be genetically and biologically related. The time gap, so much held in relevance by the family (remember, “The same visual—movies, seen in 1970s–seen at varying space-time configurations, decided the character-assessment of a family person”*9*) is brought into his works similarly. This is how Harsha attempts to de-link the utopian premise of High Art and re-connect the lost essence of Indian lower-upper-middle-peripheral-class family–institution, through his works.////
FOOT NOTES:
*1* This is, art historically, a huge claim that I tend to make, for, it is a fact that the very addressal of the domestic ‘family’ as an institution that can be subject to visual criticism is in itself a taboo (or alien) as far as the Indian cultural preoccupation is generally concerned. But the family-institution dialect that I would like to associate with Harsha, is specifically that of the upper-lower-middle class, that was groomed under the imagination of power of the royalty of Mysore maharajas; and the resultant populist art forms (in the form of the likes of Kannada films, the Chandamaama and Amar Chitra Katha comics) that framed the initial years of Harsha and his generation of artists’ experience from the Southern part of the country.
*2* In Kannada the popular proverb “swamikaarya swakaarya eradara siddhi” (both official and personal jobs done together) means the same and indicates an attitude of specifically the ‘lump’ class. Since this class feels a sense of securedness in finding pleasure within the ritualistic, it took a long time for the Fun worlds and Water worlds to arrive in Karnataka. Somehow a dual-intention and hyper reality that this kind of artificial worlds depict, don’t go hand in hand. (Ref: Umberto Eco’s “The City of Robots” for a comparative reference between this attitude and that of the American sense of hyper reality). These pleasure centers fail to cater to the old, or entertain only the young.
.*3* ‘Family’ was an institution that was addressed (only) in Kannada films and literature, by and large, all around this artist. It was only after the 1980s that the same institution (family) became (only) one of the many ‘genres’ of film making. Navya literature shifted over to individual existential experiences rather than a strong faith in the institution of family (U.R.Ananthamurthy, Shanthinath Desai, Poornachandra Tejaswi, P.Lankesh, Ramachandra Sharma and others). This history of dismissal of family as an all-engrossing theme, is inversely proportionate to the history of representation of landscapes in European painting. It is well known that landscape which was treated as ‘only’ a background element later became an independent unit of commentary upon Industrial Revolution, and hence became a genre since the Romantic period in European painting.
*4* Ref: Michel Foucault’s “The Archaeology of Knowledge” that he wrote in his late thirties. N.S.Harsha is in his late thirties, now.
*5* An interesting opening incident in an Kannada existential novel called “Shikari”(by Yeshwantha Chittala) similarly captures the psyche of Kannada cultural preoccupation, post 1980s. It is an outlook about the ‘web’ we have got into. Imagine a circle and a central point. Every point on the circle itself is the center of another circle. Any given point, if it happens to be the center of a circle is also on a circle which is around another central point. Harsha’s drawings will to recall, remind and resonate this attitude.
*6* & *7* Read: “Come Give us a Speech—N.S.Harsha” by H.A. Anil Kumar, page:41-51, Vol 5, No.4, Issue no 26, Arts & Deal art magazine, Editor: Siddhartha Tagore, New Delhi, 2008, for a detailed analysis of the work with the same title.
*8* in the areas in and around Mysore, every house used to have three calendars displayed, as if to camouflage the cracks on the walls. Mysore Maharaja (the king), Sir M.Visveswaraiah (the legendary Engineer who brought the first bulb and first motor to Bangalore) and Dr.Raj Kumar’s (the Legendary Kannada film superstar) calendars would co-exist, as in Harsha’s paintings that facilitated the co-existence of the mundane, spiritual, superhuman. The accommodative attitude in his works, time and again, emerges from the institution of ‘lump’ family. U.R.Ananthamurthy has written that in India, one’s family and relatives double up as ‘the’ social security that is usually provided by the governments in welfare societies, elsewhere.
*9* Chandamaama magazine was bought for kids and was endorsed by the elders, for the reason that even they felt it beneficiary for themselves. Children could watch a feature films only once in three months, strictly with permission from the elders, before the advent of feather films through television, in the mid 1980s. However, referring to semi-porno literature was more or less an accepted secret by the elders. Everyone knew about this ritual of key-hole watching, but none discussed it in the public. Watching the same film during morning shows, during school hours was meant to be only for spoilt brats, while watching the same film, with the family, in the afternoon or evening shows, during holidays, were considered as highly domestic. Thus the South Karnataka family-institution, by and large, defined a sense of divine parameter to visuality at a given period. This doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Watching and reading similar films and books ‘during’ varying times and days were held as a measure to gauge the ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ of the children! //