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THE
ARTS: JATIN DAS
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| FREEZING
MOVEMENT IN WATER: (Above, far left) The works from the Kalaripayettu
series capture the grace of acrobatic martial artists; and (above)
engaging live studies of people the artist met on his various journeys:
'African Tribals', 'Two Kairali Women' and 'The Lady and the Common
(Cairo)' |
Colours
Of Water
An impressionistic
recorder of people around him, the painter puts on view his works on paper
By
S. Kalidas
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| Jatin
Das framed at the exhibition |
Like
the taut, athletic figures he conjures up on paper, painter Jatin Das
at 59 is an amazing bundle of raw nerves and effervescent energy. He is
always on the move, talking incessantly, pouring passion into every breath.
"I know I talk too much and I am crucified for it," he says,
reading your mind. Far from being martyred, he ends up being feted.
There is
something compelling about Jatin that draws you into his world before
you know it. He has the capacity to personalise even a public situation.
"Anything significant has to be a tete-a-tete. A conversation. A
personal declamation is the best political rhetoric," he tells you,
looking you squarely in the eyes. To make an impression, one has to compress
the world and a lifetime into a moment of experience. When that moment
is transferred to a surface, it can become art. Sometimes, good art too.
Currently,
a slice of Jatin's world and itinerant life is on view at Delhi's Art
Today gallery. Sponsored by Barrista, the coffee people, this is a carefully
culled selection from his vast oeuvre of over 5,000 works on paper done
over the past five years. These include watercolours, ink paintings and,
yes, some even where coffee substitutes for paint. These are works that
record his sojourns in Tanzania and Egypt on one hand and the tactile
acrobatic grace of the Kalaripayettu (martial art form of Kerala) practitioners
and Indian classical dancers on the other.
Jatin takes
his role as an impressionistic recorder of life around him seriously.
"See this bag?" he asks you pointing to the bag slung on his
shoulder. It is not a jhola any longer, but a rather well designed leather
satchel. "I always carry some pens, conte, a scratch pad," he
informs. "I am always jotting down studies." He leaves out the
miniature camera from his list, but he is an avid impromptu photographer
perpetually documenting what he comes across. A close friend of lensman
Raghu Rai, Jatin's collection of photographs could well be an archive
of India's art world on celluloid.
So at Art
Today, Masai warriors and Kalari performers share the wall space with
classy Egyptian women and nameless Bharatnatyam dancers. Jatin's watercolour
technique is engaging. He builds his body-mass in flat quick strokes and
then sculpts his figures out, as it were, with a thinner black (or some
darker hue) flowing brush lines. He tries to convey the spirit of each
place by choosing an appropriate texture, shade and feel of paper.
On the eve
of the opening of his show, Jatin displays a magical omnipresence. At
the gallery, he is directing the lighting: "Can't we have the ambient
light put off and only soft warm spots on the works?" He is also
with his son halfway across the city: "He has just returned from
the National Institute of Design (NID). I have to pick him up on my way
home." And he is also speaking about his loves (off the record),
his concerns and his works to INDIA TODAY.
"You
know what ails Indian art today? It is the fact that artists have stopped
talking to each other. No longer do friends drop in at each other's studios.
No longer do they speak their minds out. Gone is the camaraderie of the
1960s and '70s. "Now we only meet at cocktail parties and make polite
conversation," he laments. And he should know, for Das, has for long
been the quintessential PTP (page three person). When he is not painting
he is partying. And going by his immense popularity on the chi chi circuit,
it would seem he rarely paints after six on any evening.
But even
at parties Jatin is nothing if not passionate. With his sober-yet-stylish
attire, his graying shock of curly hair, a rakish beard and quicksilver
movements, the cameras can never miss him. For Jatin makes a good eyecatcher:
Gesticulating with arms outstretched-not unlike his figures who seem frozen
in a gestural moment-he is constantly either trying to sweep a woman off
her feet or discussing high art with an aesthete or arguing controversial
politics with a socialite. In that order, though sometimes attending to
all three at once. Yet, he makes sure his involvement is palpable to each,
if not all around. He is a man of many parts.
Active with
social causes (anti-communalism to cyclone relief) Jatin has adopted a
cyclone-ravaged village in his home state of Orissa where he is trying
to run a one-person non-governmental organisation. A poet with a volume
of published poems in English (no, don't go by his idiomatic malapropisms),
his portrait of Arvind Krishan Mehrotra is a memorable likeness. A great
enthusiast of our crafts traditions, he is an avid collector of pankhas
(hand fans) and is in the process of curating an exhibition of pankhas
collected over two decades from all over the world and is writing a book
on the subject. "Eventually, I want to set up a pankha museum,"
he daydreams. Hailing as he does from Mayurbhanj in Orissa, his sensitivity
to crafts and crafts persons is natural. "I steal their energies,"
he says in a panegyric.
The project
that has absorbed him at the moment, however, is an 80-ft canvas-on-board
mural for Parliament House where he images our civilisational journey
from Mohenjodaro to Mahatma Gandhi. But that is yet another story.
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