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ART

Manu Parekh’s Banaras: Eternity Watches Time; Edited by Tanuj Berry, Mapin Publishing/Lund Humphries, Rs. 2000.

Rilke described the Expressionist as “that inner man become explosive, who pours the lava of his boiling mood over all things”. This dramatic definition fits Manu Parekh perfectly as seen in the magnificent perspectives of Banaras presented in this book. To call them views, as some of the contributors have done, is misleading since the city is seen in highly subjective forms from a single standpoint — across the river.

Here is a mysterious place at once real and unreal. The familiar landmarks are there: temples and shrines adorned with garlands where lights gleam from within, and steps that lead the viewer’s eye to the river’s edge where boats bob on the surface; but everything is distorted, atilt, in a jostling turmoil of movement though there is no living presence in these crowded landscapes. The painter uses thick slashes of strong colour squeezed directly from the tube, modulated by the midnight blue river and the black trees with slender trunks and undefined foliage that punctuate the surface of the canvas. There are also strange shapes that tease the mind. In “Evening at Banaras”, one of the most eclectic works, Parekh borrows freely from Tagore and from the Italian sketches of Leonardo da Vinci, adapting the latter skilfully to the Indian setting.

The artist never painted in situ, never made notes or sketches, but carried away impressions that were internalised before he put paint to canvas. Emerging from deep down in his subconscious these landscapes have an elemental power which comes from their size and flamboyance, and from the concentration on natural elements. Parekh, who was once an actor, saw a landscape “as the biggest drama and stage show without actors”. The human element draws our attention by its very absence in the boats, the shrines hung with bunting, the ghats, the umbrellas at the riverside and the steps; and there is life and movement in the rippling water, the billowing sails and those amazingly evocative trees. Sexual symbols are used too, though sparingly. The aura of divinity is felt everywhere, in the sacred spaces of mosques and temples, in the offerings of the devout, and in the eternal river which has embraced the dead from time immemorial and washed away human sin.

At MOMA in New York, Parekh saw a Monet painting next to one by Jackson Pollock, and the juxtaposition startled him into a realisation that their techniques could be combined for his Banaras series. With these resources and some of his own such as metallic studwork he creates amazing images in his triptychs, of wispy detritus floating under water, or a tenuous landscape as if viewed through a rain-washed windshield, or blurred effects in one panel leading to a serene, sun-streaked sky in the next.

Banaras in these 14 paintings is depicted in various moods and at different times, giving Parekh the opportunity to create fascinating plays of light and colour. The painter’s volcanic energy appears to lead him on from one painting to the next in a quest for the essence of the ungraspable city and, at another level, to discover himself. Each painting is analysed in a series of fine essays. I would not hesitate to call those by Jeet Thayil and Meera Menezes brilliant. They offer seminal insights and show what differentiates great art from that which is merely good.

A unique format has been designed to do justice to paintings that sometimes extend horizontally to 15 feet or more. Initially each one is shown in miniature to give a sense of the whole, then broken into component parts for detailed observation. Finally the entire painting reappears in a sumptuous four-page foldout measuring 44 inches. In all there are 139 superb illustrations from photographs by Ram Rahman.

Alas, this outstanding book has no Index, which means that serious readers and harassed reviewers have to trawl through it page by page for references to Pollock, Picasso, Tagore et al. Editors must provide this essential adjunct.

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