India-Art
Jaipur, Jan 2014 Noted sculptor
K.S.Radhakrishnan has been spearheading a campaign to give legitimacy to open
air sculptures at public places in the last three decades. In 1986, one of Radhakrishnan’s
early public sculptures was installed in Bikaner. The artist re-connected with
the “venue” at the Jaipur Literature Festival - one of the largest free
literature gala in Asia – this week (Jan 18-21) to unveil a biographical
account of his art, “In the Open: The Sculptures of K.S. Radhakrishnan”
(published by Ojas Art). The volume chronicles the life and art of the sculptor
– his artistic journeys, inspirations, practices and contexts of his art.
Several of his sculptures were on display at the festival this week.
Born in Kottayam in
1956, Radhakrishnan went to Shantiniketan in 1993-1994 for formal training in
arts at the Kala Bhavan where he was inpsired by the idyllic locales and the lives of the ethnic communities around the university, Visva Bharti. It offered him space to express his response to the human struggle for survival and freedom to live life in synergy with natural environs.
“I have this intention
of making more open air sculptures. My teacher at Shantiniketan – Ramkinkar
Baij – made one of the earliest open air sculptures in 1936-1937. They were the
first breathing sculptures with life of their own,” Radhakrishnan said. The
artist, a native of Kerala but trained in the art movements of the Bengal school
at Shantiniketan combines Ramkinkar’s abstract figures with ethnic body
languages - belonging to the ancient races inhabiting remote regions of
the country, including south India. His sculptures
seem to be suspended in space - flying and breathing at the same time.
“They are the
sculptures that start with clay. The movement takes on a kind of scale but at
the same time – the forms do not stay with you. They fly in open space to
escape the suffocation of confines. I suppose sculptures are to be seen,” he
said.
In India, “people don’t
see too many sculptures in public sphere because they are understood to be
monumental”. “A space is usually allocated for contemporary sculpture and to
start with, you need a public sponsorship. Open sculptures in public places are
still trying to find the right space,” Radhakrishnan said. Recalling a
commission for the New Delhi government, the sculptor said in 1996, “the Delhi government
had commissioned one of his sculptures for the garden of five senses.
“But it was not the
way an artist would approach the public space — I said it had to be my sculpture.
I managed to get what I wanted by donating the sculpture,” he said. Constrained resource and red tape often force
artists to limit their sphere of public engagements in art to mere showpieces —
sculptures which cost less money and are “visually attractive”. Art in public realm – open spaces— is yet to
open dialogue in the country on social issues linking society and communities
to aesthetic interventions and “raising awareness about causes ranging from
environment, gender, hygiene and even traffic”. Sculptures in public places
have been known to be defaced or vandalized across India — in mindless
backlashes over the efficacy “art” as spur for development in a nation of 1.2
billion where more than 40 per cent still subsist below poverty line with scant
appreciation for art.
However, author and
critic Johny ML tries to address this popular insularity to the solid arts observing
that “both the open air and public sculptures anticipate an audience that is
not strictly expected to be seen within an aesthetic context”. The viewer for a
public sculpture vary in character,
perspective, educational qualification, gender purpose and intention. The author points out the thin distinction
between open air sculptures and public sculptures. An open air sculpture can be
installed in the open — but at the same time they need not be necessarily
public sculpture. While a public sculpture may be in the open, it may also be
in a corporate museum.
The book which begins
with a general introduction to sculptures as being as the “exterior façade of
art” — applying to broader spectrums of artistic movements and landscapes, it brings
in Radhakrishnan’s art practice in the context of landscapes, his training at
Shantiniketan, influences and “practices”. It takes up specific sculptural forms
that he created as the beginning of his career as an artist — and studies their
progression and evolution as he tries to work on the same themes later in life.
One such motif is the “Musui”
— the head of a Santhali boy whom Radhakrishnan had met as a student in
Shantiniketan. “Musui was a bit autistic. One day after his modeling session,
Radhakrishnan gave him Rs 2. He took it happily and went away, when he came
back, Musui was transformed into a new personality. He had tonsured his head
and had shaved off his sparse beard and moustache. The blissful smile was
intact on his face,” Johny ML writes. Radhakrishnan
was riveted by Musui’s new appearance – and made fresh models, including a
bust.
When Radhakrishnan
decided to leave Shantiniketan for Delhi, he sawed off the head of the Musui
sculpture and carried it to Delhi — he kept it in his study. In the 1990s, he
decided to create another study of the character called Musui — an
icon for his sculptural progress. All his ensuing sculptures, the “Maiya”
series, “Conch Shells” and the “Woman with Violin”, the “Musui” makes its
imperceptible presence even as female protagonist. “Towards the end of 1990s,
we see Musui taking centrestage in Radhakrishnan’s sculptural outputs,” the
author said. The Musui continued to dominate his figurative terrain even when
the artist experimented with “combination figures and multiple human forms
within a single sculpture” later— compositions in which all the figures with many
arms, legs and torso in one frame seemed to be in flight at impossible angles
from a vertical perch or standing like flexible “reeds” in desolation .
K.S. Radhakrishnan understood
that the “interchanging nature of public sculptures and open air sculptures”.
For him, the polemic became a solution in itself when he started off with open
air sculptures — inspired by Ramkinkar Baij’s iconic “Santhal Family” at Visva Bharati
in Shantiniketan. He recognized the fact that a free standing sculpture negotiated
“both an idea and space within a solid form”.
The artist says “a
sculpture made of enduring material like marble, bronze, steel, granite should
be for public viewing rather than private viewing,” the artist observes in the
book. But as a sculptor in a country like India, where art is yet to become a sustainable
vocation, Radhakrishnan realizes the importance of patronage and the rationale
for “keeping sculptures within the confines of private collections”.
-Madhsuree Chatterjee
www.artsinfocus.webs.com
(a news portal for arts/literature/culture articles, news, views, features and essays)
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