This is the second part of the interview. In case you haven't read the first please click HERE.
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Tom Vattakuzhy in his Studio
Deepa: How did “Lessons of Life”
happen?
Tom Vattakuzhy: I am over fifty now. I have seen many lives - how
they lived, how they died and what they left behind. The impetus for these
works comes from reflective thoughts on my own lived experiences, the lives I
have come to see around and the values we uphold. We all know and are certain
that there is a full stop and we are getting closer to it day by day. Yet, we
tend to become aggressively materialistic. We engage in all sorts of vicious
vices to win the rat race as though the bliss of life rests on all such things
and our life is eternal. I am reminded of Mitch
Albom’s ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’.
In that, dying Morrie says we all are striving to learn how to live but the
biggest learning in life is not how to live, but how to die. Once you know how
to die you would know how to live. I
think it carries a message for almost all of us to muse on.
Lessons of life
Oil on Canvas, 160 x 64 cm
Deepa: The play of light is captivating and dramatic in your works. What
makes it interesting, however, is that the light seems otherworldly and doesn’t
seem from this part of the world. Why is light such an important aspect in your
works? What made you the “The Seeker of
Light”?
Tom Vattakuzhy: I think there is a
natural yearning for light in all of us. Haven’t you noticed young children
enchanted with light? Look at their toys—they are mostly with flickering light.
I think we are wired that way; there is a predilection towards the light. In my
childhood days I dreaded darkness, even the darkness under my cot in the early mornings.
I used to lie on my bed up till the beam of morning light dropping through the
window reached the floor near the cot so that I could jump onto the light and
run off to my mother, busy with morning-chores in the kitchen. I remember
getting past the deadpan stillness of my solitary noondays watching the
patterns of light on the house-courtyard. I have several memories of that kind
to recount, memories of different hues and shades; funny it may appear though.
Anyway, coming to your question, I think what we need more today is light. True
that our modern science and technology has advanced to such a dimension that
even midnight can be turned to look like dazzling midday. But, in the
course of this progress, we are losing the light – the light within us; our interiors
are getting shadier and murkier. If you look around and see what the
ever-growing consumer culture does to our social values, cultural values,
religious values, etc and see where we are heading to, you will understand it
without having me to elaborate on it. So the light I use in my works is not a
physical light, at least I am trying to make it so and I don’t know how far I
am able to, it is up to the people to judge better.
With the painting ‘The Seeker of Light’ I have certain
experiences that brought me to paint it. But I am afraid that would
intercept your perceptions on it. You would tend to read my story in it rather
than making it your own or linking it with your feelings or experiences. As I
said earlier, what we need is the waves, not the stone that caused it.
The Seeker of Light
Oil on Canvas, 122 x 90 cm
Deepa: One of your paintings
that portrayed Mata Hari and which resonated with da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” became quite
controversial. What is your thought about that painting? How did you come to paint that with an
allusion to “The Last Supper”?
Tom Vattakuzhy: It was a very unfortunate episode in my life. I was
really shocked at the way the scandal brewed and the extent to which it flared
up. This was a work I did for a drama that focused on the last days of Mata
Hari’s life and her death. She was a Dutch exotic dancer sentenced to death on
charges of espionage during the 1st World War. Paulo Coelho also has
written a novel on her titled ‘The Spy’.
Incidentally, it was also published in India around the same time. But I could
read it only after I did the painting.
Anyhow, the drama I illustrated carried an allusion to the passion of
Christ. A discerning reader could see through the veiled layer in its use of
biblical language and the sequential development of the events. I had a
discussion with its author over his inspirations and thoughts about it even
before painting it. I also had done a little research on her and came to the
impression that she was essentially a victimized woman. I read about her
troubled childhood, the sexual assaults on her, her torturous married life and
the death of her child and so on. The survival instinct in her was perhaps so
strong that she climbed up in life by hook or crook and became popular as a
dancer. What touched me most was her unabated longing for true love. She agreed
to work even as a spy; for the permission to enter the enemy-country to be with
her injured lover. But even he betrayed her leaving her broken-hearted. So, it
was with this brief understanding of her that I began to paint it. There was a
flash of thought across my mind that the setting of the drama and the setting
of the painting ‘The Last Supper’ is
one and the same – a nunnery. The Christ of da Vinci at the most emotional and
dramatic moment of his life – the moment of his last meal with his disciples
with the impending betrayal and his death on the cross took over my thoughts. I
felt it corresponded well, in some essential respect, with the mood and spirit
of the drama. So I painted her last meal with an allusion to da Vinci’s
painting as a gentle, compassionate and humanistic expression that I could
possibly think of to paint a woman who underwent a lot of sufferings at the
hands of a patriarchal society. To my line of thinking, I do not see Christ as
a picture. Nor do I seek him in a picture. I seek him in essence. I seek him in
every human being. My Christ has no
gender, caste or race. He is there in everyone. When my mind fills with
compassion, love and humanistic emotions I feel a Christ in me. I look at da
Vinci’s Painting as a painting, as a work of art, not as an idol for worship. I
haven’t either heard or seen anyone going to the museum to kneel down and pray
or worship there.
Mata Hari
Deepa: It was
even withdrawn from the stands soon after being published. How would you like
to respond to that act? In this context what would you like to say about an
artist’s freedom of expression?
Tom Vattakuzhy: To
tell you the truth, it shouldn’t have been so because the withdrawal actually
amounted to endorsing that the painting was blasphemous. It was a countersign
of approval and in effect a promotion for such tendencies towards exercising a
dictatorial control over the freedom of expression. I wish media were an open
platform for voices from both the secular and religious sides to enable a
meaningful discourse. It is only through open discourses that we possibly come
to the truth and sort out differences. When I say it, we shouldn’t fail to
notice the flip side of it also. Despite its withdrawal on the day of its
release itself sensing the distant prospect of controversy, a month-long
wide-spread protest was carried out. It actually makes us dubious of its actual
motives. When we read this controversy owing to ‘the unflinching fervour of
faith’ in line with the series of incidents in the church in the subsequent
periods involving the churchmen themselves, I think, the true colour of their
‘zealous religious fervour’ is self-evident. Anyhow, I believe that at a time
when darkness comes all around us, media being one of the pillars of democracy,
they have a lot to do.
You
are well aware of the controversies in Kerala in the recent past. There were a
number of people attacked either for their writing or their speech or their
political views. M. T. Vasudevan Nair,
Kamal, S. Harish, Kureeppuzha
Sreekumar, Sunil P. Elayidam -
they were all subjected to the fury of intolerance either from the religious
side or from the political side. I don’t like to see it in terms of artists’
freedom of expression alone. This ever-growing intolerance towards dissenting
voices is a vice invading all realms of life. I remember a quote from George Orwell, “If liberty is to mean anything at all, it means the right to tell
people what they do not want to hear.” Consolidation of fascist tendencies
is a clear sign of our weakening democratic values and that is what we are
seeing more and more. Our society and social institutions including religion
are driven more and more towards amassing money and power. They want only
following and songs of praise, no dissenting voices and no questions. When the
ones we look up to also act like milk-and-water who will bell the cat is the
question for which we do not have a clear answer.
Deepa: Have you
worked on self-portraits? Does “The
Painting Studio of a Local Artist” allude to yourself?
Tom Vattakuzhy: I haven’t done any self-portraits as self-portraits. I haven’t felt
that way. But when I paint figures something of me comes through. People have
told me that the figures I paint have something of me remaining hidden
somewhere, something not so effable but perceivable. I say it could be my
soul. Art is often
autobiographical. So it is probable to have some traces of me, though unconsciously,
get transferred. I think art cannot be otherwise.
The Painting Studio of a Local Artist
Deepa: Your current work?
Tom Vattakuzhy: It is about Palm Sunday and it is in the
process of shaping up. I have just applied the first layer of colour.
Deepa: Do you get time to work on your own paintings other than the illustrations
that you are assigned to? Though there may not be any difference in the
approach of technique as you mentioned, do you feel emotionally different
towards them?
Tom Vattakuzhy: I was not engaged in it
on a day in and day out manner. I did not want that either. The one I worked
for of late was a monthly literary magazine. So there was no need to break my
neck for it. I used to get free time for my works in between. But once I was at
it, I had to work like a well-oiled machine to meet the deadline.
Deepa: You were a student of
the late Master KGS and you have even written an article on him “KGS ennavanmaram”. What do you think is
his influence on you? How have the days in Santhiniketan helped you to
mould/evolve you as an artist-person? What do you think is the role of
institutions in shaping the artists? What do you think is the difference in
Kalabhavan and the regular fine art colleges? If need be, what according to you
need to change to help improve the art culture in colleges?
Tom Vattakuzhy: I remember KGS as a committed artist and teacher.
By the time I joined he had retired and was continuing there as a professor
emeritus. He used to come every day to the campus. His favourite place was the
concrete bench under a large tree in front of the graphics department. He did
most of his teachings through his informal chatting with students. He loved to
talk. His idea of teaching was not focused on transferring the technical
skills, but on evolving our artistic sensibility and personal vision. He often
communicated it through metaphors or little stories. His concept of art can be
abridged to a tree that grows with its taproot embedded in our traditions, and
its cultural fabric and secondary roots spreading far and wide to the soils of
other cultures assimilating water and nutrients for it to grow. He never tried
to mould his students to be the secondary planets that orbit him but inspired
them to a larger world for them to learn from and gently suggested possible
avenues that better suit their proclivities. He always said that the creative
journey of an artist is a personal one and he should seek for ‘a personal
ladder, not a public escalator’. I think his teachings on art have contributed
to a great deal in laying the foundation to my perceptions of art. However, I must
say that by the time I joined much of its ideas had already been eroded. KGS was the only remaining model of that Modernist
movement. Many of the teachers of late generation did not seem to either
conform to or measure up to its ideals but maintained a sort of allegiance to
it. Many of them went after different priorities or aesthetical approach in
their art practice. But they all respected him and his presence gave us a sense
of stimulus or safety that children feel when their dad is at home. R Sivakumar, our art history teacher,
took a real interest in the detailed study of the Santiniketan initiative as an
alternative approach towards Modernism at the time when the East-west schism
was at rife in our cultural milieu. I remember I used to cut my scheduled
classes to attend his art history lessons for art history students. He is an
exemplary art historian. Students used to keep a row of tape recorders before
him to record his classes. Though Somnath Hore was retired by the time I
joined, I used to take my works to him for his advice. He was a very frail and
silent person who preferred to be away from the glare of any public attention.
The major body of his works was on human sufferings and wounds. I still
remember what he once told me, “Tom, you
have to unlearn all you learned to be an artist. After the unlearning process, something will be left in you as residue. That is what you have internally
absorbed, assimilated and has become you.
Begin anew from there.” And I think that holds true when we think of
art institutions in terms of its relevance or role in the shaping of an
artist; it leaves a residue in you that
you use as the essential nutrient for you to begin, to grow as an artist.
When I ponder over your question about how Kala Bhavana
stands different from other fine arts colleges, I don’t think there is anything
that makes Kala Bhavana remarkably different today. There may be little shifts
and changes here and there in the syllabus, but almost all the fine arts
colleges that I know, follow more or less the same Modernist pattern. Of
course, there may be differences in the quality of its deliverance and it is
dependent on the merit of its teaching faculty. But if we go back to its
initial times I think Kala Bhavana had a greater significance in terms of
setting up a new model towards art and its learning. This could be a rare
happening in the history where an art institution wielding the guiding beacon
had an impact, at least to a certain degree, in the course of its cultural
history. It set forth a teaching philosophy based on a triangular structure
with tradition, originality and nature and did not impose it breathing down the
necks of the students, but gave them the freedom to seek out their own ways through
their own personal initiation. And it did not seek out to produce professional
artists, as is perhaps understood today, and it did not also believe in the
making of Art with a capital A. Art was conceived as a kind of cultural
activism where the artist engages himself with the life of people and culture
around him and bringing art close to their life by making various kinds of
artifacts, toys, textiles, utensils, illustrations, public murals, public
sculptures, paintings etc. They also conducted fairs to reach out to people I
have heard stories of Nandalal even selling his works by the road to the
pedestrians at an affordable price. Their whole pursuit was to bring about a
new perception of art that would improve the quality of life.
Nandalal
Bose held the view that art is something that cannot be taught but learnt
by being sensitive to our cultural facts, traditions, living environments etc.
So the role of a teacher or an art institution was not to impart the technical
skills as it used to be in the earlier times but to sensitize them and to
provide them a learning environment for their personalized visual explorations.
This view holds true with the conceptual fabric of Modernism as it, by and
large, turned its back on the technical virtuosos and the self-expression
became the mainstay of a work of art. This shift in concern put the role of an
art teacher or the relevance of an art institution under a precarious situation.
It may have led many art colleges to stagger for the lack of a charismatic
pedagogical methodology and resourceful teachers. It led to an unhealthy
situation in many institutions where the teachers tend to shrivel up to a sort
of placidity and the students were left to stumble around – all in the name of
art being self-expression. This situation may have caused a rift between the
students and the teachers where they both become unhappy at each other. This
present scenario is getting further worsened with the winds of conceptual art
as being an extension of self-expression is gaining momentum and the very
purpose of an art institution itself in its existing fashion is in question. So
I think there are a lot of issues concerning the actual role or purpose or its
functioning that needs to be addressed and I am at loss for any quick fix
answer.
'Lessons of Life' - 3
Oil on Canvas, 122 x 90 cm
Deepa: What’s your take on
Conceptual art (of today)? Have you tried it? Would you like to?
Tom Vattakuzhy: A few decades ago conceptual art was a remote and
distant phenomenon happening somewhere on earth, but today it has become a
reality. It has come to our doorstep as a new fashion or trend. This is a new
change - a change from art being an object, to art being an idea. From the time
art entered a new phase called Modernism, art began to be fractured into a
multitude of concurrent movements and gradually to undercut all its traditional
standards and values. This reductive or subtractive attitude in search of
perhaps, a greater or purer meaning swept art along the path of rebellion and
negation of all that went before them and finally to the very negation of art
itself. This trajectory of Modernism reminds me of a naughty boy opening all
the fleshy layers of an onion to see what is inside. I think it was a wrong
turn art took from the early 20th century onwards where it became an
affair of itself and got so embroiled in it that it failed to address the
issues of people and keep close to the pulse of life. This lineament of change
necessitated an orientation in art history to have access to the works of
many of its masters. When you look at literature or cinema for that matter,
they also went through the same phases of all the upheavals as we did. But they
could stand close to life and influence life whereas art became too
self-conscious of itself and embarked on a philosophical query of itself and
its self-worth and became an elitist affair. Coming to conceptual art, I do not
see it as a breakaway but an extension of Modernism. I remember reading
somewhere that the main contribution of art from its modern times to ours is
‘making Raphael into graffiti and graffiti into Raphael’. I think that is where
we stand now.
I do not believe that art is in a linear progression
from Lascaux to our times. All times have produced great art and if it still
inspires and moves us it has a quality that the passing times or changing
situations could not wipe out. My interest is to follow what my inner self
responds to. I do not want to climb the public escalator, just because so many
are climbing on. I prefer to rather step aside and listen to the little murmurs
from within and paint as a poet writes poetry or a musician plays music. The
music is what matters, not the instrument I used. The instrument is only a
vehicle for music, not music. I do not see any intrinsic value or special merit
attached to any medium. But I do acknowledge the fact that each medium has its
own intrinsic qualities which are not interchangeable. What you can do in one
may not be possible with another. It largely depends on the artist and what he
has got to convey. As with different tools serve different functions or
utilities, different mediums are also well suited for expressing different
concerns or ideas. What is achievable with painting may not be possible with
an installation or performance art and vice versa. It largely depends on how
sensibly an artist chooses his medium to suit what he has in mind. But
conceptual art did not come into existence as merely a potential medium of
artistic expression, as though it appears to be couched by many today. It began
as a reaction against the commoditization of art. It sought to dematerialize
art by rejecting any tangible form that can be made into a collector’s item and
so it is conceived in a way that it exists only in the minds of a viewer as an
idea or a concept, hence its name. It, in fact, effected in evaporating whatever
little of aesthetical values and notions of originality left over from its
predecessors and making it very democratic where anything goes. This is where
the crux of the matter lies. I doubt, how much realistic ground it holds today
and also how many of our artists honestly adhere to it. I leave it to the
artists themselves to ponder over. To come to think of the art market, it gets
hold of anything that yields a profit; even a pack of shit, if its uniqueness and
art historical importance can be put in place as a selling point. I am not to
fault them because it is only a profit-driven business as in other areas of
business. The point that many of the conceptual works that left any tangible
remnants are in the collections of whom it is fighting against is where it gets
defeated or challenged. Conceptual art has become a collector’s item for its
novelty and is being accommodated into the gallery space as just another way of
artistic expression. So, conceptual art that broke down the distinction between
art and every day could not be free of consumerism against which it is
fighting. It has been reduced to only a hypocritical style statement and
amounted to only burning down the house to smoke out the rat.
I don’t think anybody would disagree with the fact that
the ever-growing capitalistic traits have given rise to the consumer culture
that pervades all realms of life. And it has come to the proportion now that it
even dictates our life values, self-worth and personality. The amount of
material wealth and possessions one could accumulate has, by and large, turned to
be the touchstone of one’s happiness or success in life, and has become the
sole goal of life. It is not far to seek that it eats into all humanistic
values and breeds social vices like greed, envy, jealousy and so on. It is
needless to elaborate on this as we all know and experience it in our
day-to-day life. The pertinent question here is - what we artists can do to
curb it or at least to curtail its resultant self-erosion in the human
minds? Defacing art or letting to erode
all its virtues is not an answer – it is only suicidal.
Story Painting 2
Deepa: What
would be your advice to all the young artists’ out there?
Tom Vattakuzhy: My only advice is to keep the little fire in you burning. Don’t let
this fire flare up and burn you by chasing what is not in you. If you feel the
present art establishment does not inspire you don’t hesitate to go out of it.
Keep your eyes wide open and listen deep inward to the little voices within
rather than the maelstroms from elsewhere. There is no meaning to anything in
this world other than the meaning you give it.
Untitled-5
Oil on Canvas
You can reach Tom Vattakuzhy at tomvattakuzhy@yahoo.com
Thanks to Tom Vattakuzhy for taking his time out and all his support to help me put this interview together. My attempt through
these interviews are to provide insight and bring art closer to daily life
and common understanding by conversing with various artists about their process,
techniques, perceptions etc.
Hope you enjoyed this two-part interview. Please do leave your feedback here in the comments or you could mail me at mail.huesnshades@gmail.com
Image courtesy: Tom Vattakuzhy
This interview took place in person where I recorded our conversations (in our native tongue, Malayalam and English) and later I translated-transcribed and edited it.
