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The moving thin red line

K. Damodaran, muses on art, which he feels, has been sold to the cocktail circuit. His early creations are on show for the first time along with his abstract works at the Durbar Hall Art Gallery

ART AND THE MAN K. Damodaran fears that there is no proper assessment of art Photo: H. Vibhu

He could speak extempore on art much before he took up the brush. In 1957 before artist K. Damodaran moved to Madras College of Arts his young mind was already ripe with realism, cubism, surrealism, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Van Gogh and everything art. But his being was troubled by the economic discrepancies he saw all around. The differences were much too much to justify and a passion to express the unfairness was building up within him. Political theories, in his mind, were taking on the colours that would soon find artistic expression. So the young artist organised the first art show in his college that would also be a pulpit to lecture on art, politics, philosophy, and religion. And then he began to speak. "I used to keep lecturing on art and on Wordsworth too. I would speak on political theories, on Vaikkom Mohammed Basheer and relate philosophy, literature and art. In one such talk a gentleman from the audience came and told me, `art is not to explain. If you can do so then you better write, why paint?' Of course I took this as an insult," but what M.V. Devan told me then took 20 years for me to understand."

And so began an art journey that would soon have all art concepts translated into paint, into colours that were tinged with ruddy socialism; into shapes that were to depict the unfair reality of human life. Here was socialist blood, empathising with the teeming poverty outside his window, not with a sickle but with a brush in hand. And so it was not to be the usual story. And it has not been one as you look at the canvases on show at the Durbar Hall Art Gallery, which of course presents just a part of the picture.

Surprise

There is surprise at the show. There is no intimation of what's to come as the brochure is silent on it. So the drawings, graphics and the etchings done at the very start of his career are a wonderful surprise. And what a delight they are. Done on visiting cards, old newspapers, just any ordinary paper, with ink pen, fountain pen, in two, three, four, or ten minutes, they truly show the inherent talent of the artist. "These are on show for the first time. None of these have been given a second thought. This is a linear world." But this happy, early linear world was to change soon for K. Damodaran as personal tragedy struck. He then moved on to Delhi, to an art scene that was in the 70s budding and brotherly.

" The art scene in the capital was one unit. Krishna Khanna, Swaminathan, Shambhu Chowdhary, we were all together. In the mid eighties money began to flow into art. The struggling artists began to flourish and then we saw the segregation in the artist world. Today, this segmentation is complete. Art has been sold to the cocktail circuit. In the wake some artists have lost out just as some good art critics too. The role of the critic has been minimised. There is no proper assessment on art," says Damodaran, sorry that art was turning into a commodity. "Creative people like artists are always an asset to society but they must be genuine, like a genuine scientist. My canvas does not speak so much of social commitment but I live with it. Because of the market driven economy things in art have gone far beyond. I am very conscious of the fact that one-third of the Delhi population lives in slums. I always see beyond myself." And beyond himself he sees a society that's turned plump with power and pelf, an artist community that has changed colours over the years. But he blames none. "The real art conscious don't get blown away by the paraphernalia of the artist but measure only the art." And as he looks back, not in anger any more, but in equanimity, he recalls his days under K.C.S. Panicker. " I am against the Shantiniketan School or even the Baroda line for their non negotiable approach to art. In Madras, Panicker encouraged us on our own terms. He encouraged personal individual styles. It helped many of us evolve."

But Damodaran's evolution into abstract art was not a conscious progression. "I don't even know when the change came about," says Mr. Damodaran still ruminating. But yes, in the geometry of colours, in the sensitive use of hues, in shades that hide or express a sentiment in the canvases on show, the artist owes it all to art. " I am standing up today because of art," he says calmly for it is art that has made him look beyond an unfair life that troubled him immensely as a young man. Art has sustained the portrait of this artist, as a young man, and till now.

PRIYADARSSHINI SHARMA

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