Set Your Inner Deities and Demons Free
Shobhan Som interviews Ramkinkar Baij [Translation: HUG] Shobhan: Kinkarda—how does one learn painting and artistry? Ramkinkar: First, you must learn how to observe. Your eyes and mind must be open and agile. This exquisite and brimming world of rupa wishes to witness her maya’s pratirupa through you. That pratirupa is your painting or sketch. The basic ways of artistry are line, tone, colour and texture. You create form with the help of these tools. These are like the alphabets of art—a, b, c, d. When spectators look at an art object, they perceive rupa, mediated through these elements. The sense of line, tone, colour and texture are present right within nature. The way to learn painting is to relate your power of observation to these basic alphabetical tools. If you are able to see correctly, then you will also be able to show it so. Shobhan: The students of art school learn artistry by observing live models sitting at close quarters. You do not make such models sit in your class. But ask students to create from life itself. Ramkinkar: Placing an inert human being in front of you and life itself are not the same thing. You cannot find life in self-conscious and tentative possibilities. Life is dynamic. Life resides in naturalness. One has to see the ease with which life moves; your job is to catch a glimpse of that, feel how the life force throbs. As an artist dynamism should propel you. If you cannot, if you make mistakes, watch life again and once again. Try to analyze where the error is being committed. Draw again, create one more time. Painting cannot be a copy of anatomy. Copying inert life in toto makes no art object, no sculpture. Shobhan: In your classes on sculpting clay-model busts, instead of providing us with a common model, you have asked us to observe each other and sculpt the busts. Why this? Ramkinkar: In case of creating human busts, one has to feel and observe the subject from every angle, in the round, not in relief. You all, my students, have for years in the past not only seen each other’s physical features, but have known each other deeply too. In such art one not only needs to respect the rules of verisimilitude but must bring forth and reveal the inner traits of an individual. Not just frontally; you have to capture the person from every angle. In the atelier, as you place the clay on the whirling-couch and move about, you can see each other from every side. And as you look at each other, the inner deities and demons of the other will become sharper and clearer by the very touch of your fingers on the clay. You will know your subject deeply, begin to feel his presence. Such dynamic, intimate observation and detailing is impossible if an inert model is placed in front of you. Shobhan: There are issues of measurement and estimation. Can we use calipers? Ramkinkar: Minimize the use of calipers as much as possible. Get a sense of the countenance and profile of the subject. The physical tool will give you accuracy but art is not about accuracy. Use your eyes for calculating proportion. Do use machines only when there is any scope for doubt. Or else do not. Your eyes need to be trained into this sense of assessment. Another thing, if you observe carefully you shall see that the two eyes of a human are not exactly the same. The face is slightly asymmetrical. This is most evident if you look at the two sides of the nose, cheeks and ears. Whenever you indulge in the art of portraiture, give special attention to this aspect. (He looks at a scroll painting being mounted badly and yells with a start). What is that, how…? Shobhan: Why Kinkarda? Ramkinkar: Eh, you have dressed the princess with a gamchha! Mounting is an essential part of painting. Just like the dignity of the princess is diminished if clothed in a gamchha, so also one cannot present a picture in any which way. Even a good picture gets a raw deal if not mounted properly. The painting is incomplete until mounted. It is not about expensive mounting. Have you not seen those ornate, foreign frames? One is not sure whether to look at the painting or the frame! Good mountings reveal the painting, not curb its potential. Gaganbabu (Gaganendranath Tagore) revolutionized things by putting a premium on neat mountings once he watched the Japanese. The top of the painting and the two sides must have equal measurement and the bottom one and a half times to that—this is how cut-mounting works. Frame ought to be thin, with a certain economy, and stark. Mashtarmashai (Nandalal Bose) has conducted lot of experiments with mountings. Shobhan: What is abstract art? What is its objective? Ramkinkar: Some art puts a premium on description, others instead of mimesis, endeavor to capture the inner lyric of the subject matter. Just like in music. One cannot copy the rupa of music. One cannot copy a cuckoo and papiya in order to catch the musical sense of the season of spring. One must feel the season and set out to create the form of spring in music. That is how the ragas are shaped, or are set free actually. One is only then able to catch a glimpse of the aseem within our finitude. Abstract art is the harnessed music of our feelings about the great outdoors. There is a deeper symmetry in all successful abstract art. The rhythm of the lines shall sing aloud. Listen deeply to our classical music and feel the strains—you shall realize how abstraction plays out. And its objective will become clearer to you. Tradition and abstraction are not always at loggerheads. Shobhan: But when one of our students works on some abstract form, you smash and
There was a fine struggle for the beads! : Franz Boas, His Journals
Among the Innuit of Baffin Island 1883 In the summer of 1883 Franz Boas travelled from Germany to Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island, aboard the sailing vessel Germania whose main objective was to evacuate the personnel of the German station of the First International Polar Year from Kingua Fiord. Boas planned to spend a year as a participatory observer, living and travelling with and studying the Inuit of this part of Baffin Island. This detailed study summarizes and evaluates Boas’ preparations, his fieldwork, and the subsequent period of data analysis and evaluation. The fieldwork may be divided into two phases: Over the winter of 1883–1884 Boas confined himself to Cumberland Sound and during this phase he was considerably dependent on the American and Scottish whalers wintering at Kekerten. During the second phase, in the spring and summer of 1884, Boas crossed the Cumberland Peninsula and visited numerous Inuit communities along the Davis Strait coast; during this period he was much more dependent on his own resources. Below—a selection from his journal entries of late 1883. ___________________________ [Notebook] 2 Oct, 1883 [Tuesday] Calm in the morning; at 8.30 the Eskimos towed the ship out of the harbour; afterwards there was a good northerly breeze. Overcast; east shore clear. Soon afterwards we had a very strong north wind and high seas which probably make it impossible to pick up the oil; very cold. [FB/MK] (…) Listen Marie, if you want to be proud of me about it [his research] because the people in Hamburg praised me as I was leaving, you have no real cause to be. It was quite natural that they should flatter me ostentatiously on the last day. Don’t be afraid, I know what such talk signifies, so I remain your sensible Franz. And even after what I later read about myself in the newspaper, [which was more laudatory] than I would prefer, I shall still be writing sensibly; I know too that the Berliner Tageblatt will be tooting its own horn. The only yardstick of what one does is the acknowledgment that one has done one’s duty, whether the success is great or small. Believe me, no idle gossip will ever turn my head. I have my eye firmly on my goal and know what I have to do and what work is worthwhile. You know, I don’t even think much of the fine expressions about devotion to science. Anyone who goes out to investigate something has his own good personal reasons, whether it be the pure desire for knowledge, the desire for adventure, or whatever. And you know what it was in my case: the desire to establish an independent existence – even before I knew that my beloved loves me again – and scientific interest. I do not know what would have been more difficult for me, to go or to stay. (…) Since the weather is no better, and since there is no prospect of a change in the weather, the captain has decided to take us to Middleaktuk, and then to return home. If it is better on the morning of the 4th he wants to take the oil with him. In the morning I finished my letters; I could see only extensive, heavy ice masses to the north, lying immediately west of Middleaktuk I. An ice field about 15-20′ high; we are passing a piece that has broken off. Three last cheers and the final parting from Europe for this year. 21 Oct, 1883. This morning we had to repitch the tent entirely, because the wind had reduced it to total disarray. The roof lay on the ground and everything was full of ice and snow. For 3 days we unfortunates have had no dry gloves left, so this morning I hit on the bright idea of using stockings as gloves; this works quite magnificently. (…) Due to the shortage of firewood I have had to reduce our meals to one, at noon, when we have coffee and bread with frozen meat, or soup, bread and butter. In the morning and evening there is only bread and meat. We had been working all morning to be able to have lunch and now the hot soup pot has appeared in our tent, and with it all the Eskimos, each with his tin cup in hand. 23 October [Tuesday] I began to work out my observations. After long contemplation the barometer was mounted near the table. I gave Nachojaschi and Yankee bread, powder and tobacco; I also gave N.[achojaschi] another knife since he had lost his. In the afternoon they asked me to go and see a sick woman. She had pneumonia and was very sick, with a high fever. I wanted to put warm, wet poultices on her chest, but realized that it was impossible, because she was continually sitting with her chest and abdomen bare, catching the full draught from the door. So I could do nothing but give her some opium for her cough and quinine for her fever. 24 [October, Wednesday] I have had Wilhelm make a box for the thermometer. I am continuing to work up my data from Pagnirtu. My things are gradually getting finished; thus my stockings, curletang [I. qulittaq = outer coat] and pants are ready. Mutch’s kuni [Inuk woman] is complaining of a sore ear. The sick woman appears to be slightly better, but I prefer not to give her anything more, since I still cannot help her. 26[October, Friday] In the morning Mutch made a coffin for the dead woman, who has not yet been buried. Itu did not come to make coffee for Mutch this morning, because his son was very scared over the woman’s death. The occupants of the hut have abandoned her. One woman immediately tore her skin pants off and ran outside when she realized that she was dead. She had died unnoticed by anyone. [FB/parents, sisters] (…) When you get these letters from me, you will
The Matter of History: Himalayan Mountaineering, its Archives & some Inexcusable Gaps
Amrita Dhar _______________ The Flour and the Porters One summer morning a few years ago I was walking hurriedly across a stretch of Hyde Park in London. I was returning to the Royal Geographical Society for another greedy day with the lantern slides from Eric Shipton’s photographs—and I was running out of time. I would be leaving the country soon, and there was no way I would quite finish looking through the contents of even all of these boxes. I knew that the Royal Geographical Society’s cache of Shipton photographs and documents was by no means exhaustive, but they had slides from some of his most delicious wanderings. Last week, I had spent hours devouring the ones from Kashmir and Garhwal, and there were whole boxes promising others from Sinkiang and the Karakoram. The slides were dusty and out of order within their boxes, the cataloguing was a bit primitive (for instance, captions were inconsistent, and for photographs that Shipton appeared in, there was usually no way of knowing who the photographer had been), and the viewing apparatus was adequate but less than ideal (a flat back-lit board on which you could place the slides, and then you could magnify-by-glass or squint your way through them). But even so, the places and the people jumped out at me. I had stood right there, on the Ganges watershed, looking at Kamet in the distance as I held my breath in the cold air. And I had looked from just there on the Gangotri Glacier, craning my neck a bit to see Shivling. And wow, is that the view from Aghil Pass? No wonder everyone waxes eloquent about it! And what an unreal landscape of ice pinnacles on the Kyagar Glacier. And I had seen this photograph of Pasang, Kusang, and Ang Tharkay somewhere in print. But look at this one with Shipton and Ang Tharkay together—what smiles. And so on. On the way back that evening, it struck me, although without surprise, that I had indeed failed to look through all the photographs I wanted to. I should never have been able to in the limited time I had at my disposal anyway, and to compound it all, I had been distracted by a box of documents. The box was a curious collection of things—from a letter written by a very young schoolboy Eric to his mother from Beaumont House, to a VHS with a recording of Shipton on This Day Tonight by Australian Broadcasting Corporation Television on 31 October 1972, and donated to the Royal Geographical Society by Jane Allen in 2012. I had stopped at a few typescripts and drafts, and at a few letters. Short essays—‘Hunger’, ‘The Cave’, ‘The Long Walk’ typed up and annotated/edited by hand—and a longhand manuscript of That Untravelled World. And letters written to Shipton in 1952 following the curious chapter of his being selected for leadership of the British Everest expedition of 1953, and then having to stand down. Thus John Hunt: ‘I want you [Shipton] to know that I am conscious of filling your place most inadequately’ (in a letter dated 13 September 1952).Or one R.Varvill telling the now unemployed ‘Dear Shipton’ not to wait very hopefully for a job from the Colonial Office: ‘The Tonga job which, incidentally is called “Consul and Agent, Tonga”, will not become vacant until well into 1954; and there is no saying, whether the present incumbent might have his term extended’ (in a letter dated 25 November 1952). Or planning papers for Everest 1953—papers that lay out intentions of a clear departure from the Shipton style of carefree mountain travel—copied to Shipton by the infinitely more dogged John Hunt. ‘The ultimate aim of the expedition, as defined by the Sponsoring Authority, is the ascent of Everest during 1953 by a member or members of the party. This aim may appear self-evident, but it is of vital importance that it should be borne constantly in mind, both during the preparatory phase and, later, in the field. All planning and preparation must lead us methodically towards the equivalent of that aim’ (‘Memorandum on Everest 1953’). And so on. Despite having read Shipton’s own writings, I had not been prepared to so be confronted by these sharp flashes of an intense, lonely, joyous, and restless life. Although I should have learnt my lesson by now, for had I not had exactly this experience while sitting down last week in Magdalene College, Cambridge, with the letters, notebooks, and postcards of Dorothy Pilley, an extraordinary British climber who was active in the early twentieth century in the mountains of England, Scotland, and Wales? Scholars of autobiography have long pointed out how much gets left behind or deliberately excluded or forgotten from a life in the creation of a life’s narrative. This evening I was realizing anew the truth of these observations. Just as Pilley’s Climbing Days (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1935) by no means encompassed everything her climbing days were about, Shipton’s several volumes of travelogue and autobiography too left gaps both in biography and in social history that only sound archival research can fill. I therefore found myself thinking with greater urgency of the need for scholarship, history, and good biography.[1] As a scholar who had long found top-down or peak-centric or genius-ridden or exception-oriented mountaineering narratives to be problematic, inadequate, and even dishonest, I was also, perhaps predictably, thinking of the less visible mountain lives surrounding Shipton’s. By this, I don’t mean Bill Tilman. Tilman’s superlative travels and magnificent books (now collected in the anthology of The Seven Mountain-Travel Books) have their own galaxy of pleasures, intrigues, and problems. I also don’t mean Diana Shipton. Although The Antique Land (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1950) is a delightful read and a heartily recommended volume for any library focused on mountain travel. I was also not thinking just of Ang Tharkay, Pasang, and Kusang, the three Sherpa mountaineers whose athletic expertise and overall versatility had an immense
Malayaj, A Letter: The Poet of Habit & the Poet of Collision
Malayaj: A Letter _______________ 2-4-1971 To: Sri Rameshchandra Shah 3/2, Professor’s Colony Vidha Vihar Bhopal 462002 Dear Ramesh Bhai, Your letter has arrived “hale and hearty”. I am sending another letter to Jyotsna-ji along with this mail. The kind of uncivilized behavior that I had indulged in earlier by not writing to her may be remedied a little by this note. Dearest friend of mine, I did not yet receive the book, the survey of international literature. Perhaps it is lost in transit. I also could not detect ‘Kalpana’ in any of the stalls here and hence could not take a look at it. Pray, who has conducted the survey? And what were the main arguments? Actually, Hindi journals and magazines these days are so full of levity that it is impossible to nurture a literary ambience of response and counter-response, analytical survey and response to such reports. Much work is left undone just because there is no such clime and ambience. For instance, suppose you wish to write a good response to that light and frivolous report by Chandrakant Devtale in ‘Filhaal’, you have no avenue. Where will you send your piece? Isn’t that a problem? About Filhaal I fully trust your opinion. I could have written a piece in ‘Dinmaan’ about Filhaal but one can see that Sarveshwarji is extremely enamoured of Ashok with certain old baggage. That becomes apparent from his unfair characterization of that magazine in his recent comments. Let me now come to the content of your letter. I am happy that you took up my cue about the Agyeya versus Muktibodh issue. After having completed my writing, for a few days now I have been thinking about the accomplishments and personality of Agyeya. Much of that on the same lines as you have suggested too. True, the Hindi-wallahs have turned completely ingrate! You are perhaps not surprised that there is very little or no reaction to my essay. The mujahedeens of the Muktibodh camp must have underlined my name in the black register. One can howl and cry on this one too, just like Ashok has done in Filhaal about the departure of certain values. I am only reassured by the fact that there are still people like you around who understand the nuances of our material conditions. I am truly indebted to you for the valuable thoughts that you have on my writing. And the way you have been thinking about Agyeya’s prose and poesy—that adds a new dimension to Agyeya scholarship. My friend, please write about this issue in detailed fashion in the future. This your statement, for instance, is full of rare insight I feel: “After experiencing the movement of his sensibility in prose, he seemed to gain more breath. So when he came back to verse, that became somewhat more answering to his needs.” In these two sentences one may detect a new way of looking, a fresh method, in Agyeya scholarship. You have rightly pointed out to the historical necessity of Agyeya’s arrival on the literary scene, and the way he provided an intellectual direction to writing also was the demand of the times. Then you mention a certain sophistication in his diction—this is something I did not write about. So aptly put. My suggestion is that please do not let go of these thoughts about Agyeya in those 15 pages. Consider these pages as early notes for a fuller and larger work on the man and his writings. Particularly this issue about his prose-poetry demands a fuller and longer discussion. I have so far gone twice through the piece on the creative impulse of feelings. With love. So many things come to my mind. Where do I even begin? It is a living, throbbing piece; hence it has touched me so much at so many levels. There are a few things in my mind as an aside right now. Shamsher’s poetic persona is an enigmatic one. That is the reason everyone is so eager to gauge his work and style. Perhaps the personality of Shamsher, much like Nirala, is the most enigmatic and self-contradictory in the Hindi writing world. I feel that there is a difference between self-contradiction and inner-turmoil. One can see that there are many contradictory applications and theorems that Shamsher wants to connect in his writings. For instance, asti and nasti, that which is and that which is not. This I am painting with a broad brush but this can be explained with examples from his work. Is there such self-contradiction in Agyeya too? There are clashes about philosophies in his writings, no doubt. But that is not a battle between affirmation and negation. Rather, the problem of consistency is a characteristic of Agyeya, not of Shamsher. Your chief thesis about the poet-personality of Shamsher is that owing to his habitual character he was steadily moving towards equitability in aesthetic tone and consistency of a kind. This observation, I feel, is more germane to Agyeya. Whether Shamsher had progressed towards equitability of taste may be debatable but surely Agyeya had been moving towards such a goal with his intelligence and judgments. In this context, isn’t your comment that indulging in thought leads to clarity and a searching mentality not a simplified generality? I completely agree that Shamsher does not tackle his subject in its full complexity but rather chooses a safe corner of self enclosed mutinous art. But is that only because in his writings there is little clash between thought and feeling? There is a different kind of clash which takes him towards another kind of intricate and unsafe form of art: that is the collision between one end of feeling and the other end. The affirmative and the negative strains are part of the same stream of a felt-process. Not thought process but the two aspects of the felt-form. One has to read Shamsher’s surrealistic poems in order to appreciate this collision, where he altogether abandons the known linguistic