Nov 16, 1998

The artist's works which depict the Mahishasura theme are his most evolved yet.

By S Kalidas

Last week when all of Delhi was agog about the nine paintings put up by Tyeb Mehta at the Vadehra Art Gallery, London was revelling in the discovery of a dozen canvases by Francis Bacon in a framer's attic. The coincidence may be just that, but it does lead one to recall the deep influence the British master has had on Mehta, especially in his early years. Even today in his handling of the face or the body, Mehta resorts to the technique of macabre distortion that is reminiscent of the Baconian use of the palette knife and brush.

However, like most of his contemporaries from the Progressive Artists' Group who adopted the pictorial language of European art through the 1950s and '60s, Mehta too turned to "Indian" themes and subjects through the '70s and '80s.

So while S.H. Raza contemplated the Tantric Bindu from the solace of his studio in the south of France and Akbar Padamsee returned from Paris to study Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy that inspired his monochromatic metascapes, Mehta found the eternal in the complex and layered images and concepts of the much-maligned Hindu mythology as his future muse. Through the '90s, the period from which these nine canvases on display have been culled, his imagination has been captured by the myth of the Devi -- as Durga, Kali, Mahishasura Mardini.

In his journey as a painter, Mehta added two vital elements to the Baconian distorted figure: the flat planes of colour and the diagonal. The use of flat planes of colour to conjure space and the diagonal division of it are both devices that existed in the Indian miniature tradition. However, Mehta's use of these is not in the manner that derives from the miniatures as some others have used in contemporary Indian painting.

In fact, in Mehta's canvases they remind one more of the use that Henri Matisse made of flat colours especially in his paper cuts. The third element that is patently Mehta is the freeze frame. Having trained as a film editor and made one experimental film, Koodal (1970), Mehta applies the "freeze frame" technique from that medium to arrest the anarchy of movement in his canvases.

Mehta's pictorial language, thus, is another Prakrit or Esperanto that springs from the confluence of cultural contradictions, comprising what critic Ranjit Hoskote calls our "national modernity". The term, like all interesting phrases, is obviously an oxymoron. And in keeping with that ambivalence of spirit, despite the implied metaphor invoking all that is horrific, grotesque, painful and agonising, the overall impact of Mehta's canvases depicting the gory slaughter of the demonic bull Mahishasura is not revolting in the least.

It is, if anything, pleasantly cool and even calming. Quite like the paradox of the Mahisha myth itself where the "other" is also the "self" and where the Devi could not have existed without a blood-adversary in Mahisha. Also, curiously, here the violence results not in an anguished lament but in a celebration.

© Living Media India Ltd