April 19, 1999

The master of colour brings to the capital a major exhibition of his oils inspired by Sufi poetry and Pahadi folk songs.

By S Kalidas

Two days before the Khalsa tercentenary celebrations open at Anandpur Sahib, Manjit Bawa -- easily the most celebrated Sikh painter of our times -- presents a magnificent series of his recent oils in the capital's Lalit Kala Akademi courtesy Gallery Espace. Only, Bawa, 58, is not amused by the connection: "The timing is just a coincidence. This travelling exhibition has already been shown in Mumbai and Calcutta and will proceed from Delhi to Bangalore. Besides, I feel that by going gaga over the tercentenary of the militant Khalsa panth (sect) there is an implicit denial of the much older tradition of Sikhism which is essentially a very pacifist, syncretic and mystical faith. Nanak was not a Khalsa." Point taken.

And while he may have been born a Sikh, Bawa, like the faith itself, is a man of too many hues and nuances to be typecast as a "Sikh artist". In his works Hindu myths, Sufi legends, street performers, animals, saints and farmers, family and friends all make their appearances as if in cameo roles. Just as in his highly dynamic and multi-faceted persona he carries the actor, the cook, the craftsman, the musician, the activist, the painter -- all with an incredible lightness that his friend, critic Madan Gopal Singh calls sahaja (responding naturally and spontaneously to any phenomena, person or thing).

No wonder then that Bawa's art at one level is arrestingly direct and brilliantly simple. Usually an uncluttered canvas with just a figure or two against a flat field of a single, strong colour -- Indian yellow, emerald green, deep red or magenta pink. The figures could be a lion, a goat, some unnamed goddess, a chivalrous hero or a nayika (heroine) holding a parrot. The drama is heightened by the iconic poses of his figures and occasionally the sardonic humour in the juxtaposing of his characters. There is also a muted element of melancholy perhaps, but it never degenerates into sentimentality.

Despite Bawa's many social and political commitments and interventions, he does not seek to make any social comment directly in his works. "Art is not journalism," he maintains. Rather, in the manner of our miniature painters, he falls back on the age old Indian aesthetic tradition of the rasa siddhanta -- the principle of rasa (essence of an aesthetic experience). Bawa's endeavour, as in our classical arts, is to move his audience by creating an ambience which leads the viewer to experience both adbhuta (wonder) and ananda (joy).

Music has always been an inalienable part of Bawa's life. At the time of their marriage, his wife Sharada was training to be a classical sitar player. Bawa learnt to play the tabla to accompany her. While Sharada no longer plays the sitar, Bawa can still surprise professional musicians by picking up the tablas and providing a lively beat. Sarod player Biswajit Roy Chowdhury remembers: "He would drop in during my practice sessions and play with me for hours. What he lacked in technique he made up with sheer zest." Many a time in his Dalhousie studio he sends for the local folk singers and plays their Pahadi love songs on his bamboo flute late into the night. Passionate about Sufi poetry, he often teams up with Singh to enthral friends with the songs of Baba Farid, Waris Shah, Shah Husain, Bulle Shah and others. A great admirer and later, a friend of the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, he has a huge collection of Sufi music from both sides of Wagah.

Just as a musician uses the purity of the note, swara, and the dynamics of rhythm, laya, Bawa orchestrates his canvases with the magic of pure colour and the gestural drama of his "emblematic images", as Singh puts it. Moreover, he does so not with the burden of art history or aesthetic theory weighing on his mind, but with an intuitive and innate sense of form that marks out a true artist from a merely trained draughtsman.

With his canvases commanding the highest prices in the art market today (Rs 2.5-10 lakh) and buyers literally having to queue up at his studio door, Bawa is the hottest commodity in the gallery circuit. Even the present show is being organised by not one but three different galleries: Sakshi Gallery (Mumbai and Bangalore), Gallery Espace (Delhi) and Impresario (Calcutta). But Bawa is the first to separate market success from great art. "The two are not necessarily connected. There have been several people who sell extremely well but are mediocre artists. So I do not view my market worth as a measure of my artistic arrival." Besides, he maintains that given the rather small market for art in India, the professional gallery system is yet to evolve here. "Nor has our media been able to create a space for serious art criticism in India," he laments.

Bawa's art does not fit the "poco-pomo" (postcolonial, postmodern) popcorn imported by those who first got colonised and then felt the need to deschool themselves. But while he may not be a suave articulator spouting the trendy jargon of the day, there is little in world art -- sorry, the global scene -- that he is unaware of. "Having journeyed overland to England way back in '64 and worked there for several years, I have no global ambitions anymore," he says. And for an earthy Punjabi boy who learnt counting while taking care of devotees' shoes in the local gurdwara, he hasn't fared too badly in elitist corridors of the cocktail circuit either, thank you.

© Living Media India Ltd