Any work of art — abstract or real, old or contemporary, small or large — ultimately needs to have transcendental qualities. It’s a dictum Jogen Chowdhury, one of India’s most dynamic and multi-faceted modern artists, swears by. His works, spanning over six decades and exploring the enchantment of the everyday, are all intimations of transcendence. Not too long ago, while curating Chowdhury’s retrospective show “Reverie and Reality”, held at Emami Art, Kolkata Centre for Creativity, between September 20 to December 7, 2019, Ranjit Hoskote wrote how the artist “invites us to speculate about the inner lives of his protagonists: the concupiscent or estranged couple, the tonsured monk, the dreaming boy, the aging libertine and the courtesan whose limbs have lost their tautness.” 

In a note to mark his solo exhibition, “An Unfinished Poem”, which opened at Art Exposure in Kolkata on December 18, 2020 and will be on till February 6, Chowdhury, who turns 82 on February 15, reiterates the same: the need for the works of art to have a transcendental quality. Made over various periods of time and employing different subjects, styles and mediums, these works show how Chowdhury continues to be deeply engaged with the manner of living, the minutiae of his milieu, the general “drama of life” unfolding around him: intimate portraitures, paintings/drawings of man, plant and animal life. With some of it made during the lockdown, these works seem to reiterate another avowed aspect of Chowdhury’s art practice — how the “distortion of the painted figure and posture is a deliberate ploy to show the complexity that exists within a man and in his relationship with the environment and the world,” as art critic, curator, collector and author Ina Puri underlines in an incisive essay that features in the catalogue for the show. “The recurrent theme of gruesome wounds and mangled limbs portray his agony yet again in the vividly painted images of severed fingers or that of a nude body with a gash across its torso. Disturbing yet riveting, these images are a powerful comment on the recent history of our country, visual narratives that lastingly sear the imagination of the viewer,” she writes.

One of the subjects that have repeatedly occurred in Chowdhury’s paintings, he writes in the catalogue, is the man-woman relationship and the innumerable components surrounding it. “I am fascinated with the complexity, the sensitivity and dramatic element it offers,” writes the artist, who strives to make his works intense, sensitive and ‘living’ in the sense that it contains the “elemental qualities” of a work of art. “The pictures depicting faces of men and women reveal weariness as if the lovers of yesterday are long past their prime and their romance is now like a dried flower discovered between pages of a book of poems. The spirit of an invisible city lurks in the background, unseen but present, the brutal smoke-spewing factories, perhaps, the crowded metropolis heaving with multitudes of people trying to go through the motions of life, in the hope of a better tomorrow,” writes Ina Puri in the essay. For Chowdhury, who lives and works out of New Delhi, Santiniketan and Kolkata, it is important that everyday objects should be made artistic. “This is necessary for the growth of an understanding of art among the public — and people can be exposed to art through them. An object of use, like a bed, a light stand, pots, spoons, textiles, available in most households, may have artistic form, colour, line, etc and can give pleasure to the person who uses and looks at it,” he writes.

A new show ‘Proximate Paths’ to be held at Akara Art, Mumbai, from January 14 till February 28, 2021, will look at Jogen Chowdhury’s introspective self-portraits and satirical renderings of Bengal’s middle class, contrasting his style with another leading figure from the generation of figurative painters, Bhupen Khakhar, who found inspiration in the street, creating portraits of barbers, tailors and watch repairers. The show will explore how the two artists were drawn into a “larger movement towards politically engaged forms of narrative figuration”.

In a new book, The Afterlife of Silence: Still Lifes of Jogen Chowdhury (Niyogi Books, 2020), Anuradha Ghosh, associate professor of English at Dinabandhu Andrews Colllege, Kolkata, takes a deep look into Chowdhury’s still lifes. Ghosh writes elegantly on the arc of Chowdhury’s still-life works and how he is “principally concerned with the indoor world, the drama of the interior and the domestic.”

In this interview, Chowdhury talks about his early life, moving away from abstract art and finding his own vocabulary, his choice of form and content, why he made painting in ink, watercolour and pastel as his forte, the unmistakable sensual and scruptural feel to his works, and much more. Excerpts from the interview:

Nawaid Anjum: You are part of a generation of artists — along with Bhupen Khakhar, Gieve Patel, Nalini Malani, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Nilima Sheikh, Sudhir Patwardhan and Vivan Sundaram — that shaped contemporary Indian art, having emerged on the art scene in a newly sovereign nation and in a world coming to terms with post-modernism and post-coloniality. Most of these artists tended to approach their human subject by primarily focusing on the regional and the allegorical. How do you see your art being deeply enmeshed in, and informed by, the socio-cultural strands and elements of the time?

Jogen Chowdhury: My early life was much different than my other artist friends with whom I participated in the ‘Place for People’ show in 1981. When I was only nine years old, our family arrived in Calcutta from East Pakistan in 1948 as refugee leaving our ancestral home and finally settled in a refugee colony in south Calcutta. The social and political turmoil, the Left movements and, finally, the financial problem made our life difficult. However, side by side, we were busy with cultural and literary activities, dramas and Durga pujas and various social activities organized by newly settled enthusiastic people almost in all the refugee colonies. I was the organizer of a literary and cultural group and published our first literary journal of 16 pages called Nandimukh in Bengali in 1961. I graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, in 1960 and got a job in Howrah Zilla School with a salary of Rs 125. I continued my art practice in my tiny studio of 10x10 feet, doing drawings on newsprints and paintings on pasteboards and I was quite happy. Calcutta was overcrowded with people and having regular political strikes, processions and meetings during those days, along with annual Durga pujas, film festivals, cultural and musical programmes, art exhibitions in Academy of Fine Arts, etc. Since my childhood, I was a keen observer of people, their gestures and facial expressions. I could feel their agony and happiness. My relationship with people and my environment/ambiance was deep and became part of my artworks.

Nawaid Anjum: In your work, you have defied trends and broken away from the prevailing conventions of the time, chiselling your own distinctive style, and forming a unique vocabulary of your own. For instance, at a time when most Indian artists were exploring the abstract, you chose to do figurative works. What has been your underlying quest behind this conscious choice?

Jogen Chowdhury: It is true that during the 1960s/1970s many of our major artists were fond of doing abstract art, thinking that it was ‘Modern’ and the ultimate expression of art. In fact, they followed the development of Western art flatly, ignoring creative possibilities that could happen with local elements and spirit of our society which should have been particularly interesting and significant. I always felt that India is rich enough for any creative person. The country has many complex and multifarious elements like past art and culture, folk arts, cultural and religious diversities, poverty, corruption — which can inspire a creative person to find new visual spirit and images.

I believe that abstraction exist also in ‘real’ forms, in the human figures or any other object. I do not paint realistically but distort enough to make it acceptable to me in respect of form, colour, tone, lines etc. and ultimately a sense of infiniteness, spirituality or magic quality need to be brought to so-called real form to bring the work to a ‘transcendental’ stage. It happens to the artists when they are creatively engaged and in a stage of trance. It happens to all creative people like poets, dancer, musicians and also artists and painters.

I think people and image-making were always major parts of our visual art, and it will continue to stay so in the future too. Of course, it will not be the same as now in future and be created through various new media, techniques and styles.

Nawaid Anjum: As an artist your forte has been painting in ink, watercolour and pastel. In your line drawings, you have explored the soft curves and angularities of contorted bodies, using ink combined with pastels. In such works, you construct volume by modulating light and shade. Your use of the technique of crosshatching in your ink and pastel works, which allows you to develop an illusion of middle tonalities, has become the most discernible feature of your style. How did you arrive at this style? To what an extent was this influenced by the European tradition, especially since you went to study at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1967? Does form drive the content of your works? How do you look at the relationship between form and content?

Jogen Chowdhury: It is true, from the beginning of my art practice, I realized that I have the ability to see and feel an object or human figure with its volume and modulation, probably that is my inborn capacity. It helped me to draw or paint with volume and modulation of a figure or any visual object. I develop crosshatchings when I was in the upper class of art college. I started giving shades with crosshatchings while doing pen & ink works. It started in a very casual manner and, finally, this technique is being used by me creatively to make paintings on paper, along with pastels and watercolours. I seriously took it as a technique since 1968/69 when I executed my series of paintings in pen and ink on paper called ‘Reminiscences of Dream’ in Madras. Since then I have executed hundreds of works in this technique and have made some major artworks like Tiger in the Moonlit Night, Life –II, Man 1980, Her Silver Throne, Wounded, and many more.

During my stay in Europe/Paris during 1965-1968, I had chances to visit a number of art galleries, museums and churches inEngland, Holland, Germany, Italy and France and I could also see numerous past and contemporary European arts which were most educating for me, besides our classroom teaching. I was appreciative of all great artworks but not overwhelmed; it rather helped me to ascertain my position as an Individual artist who was in quest of a personal language of expression in art. When I returned to India in 1968, for about a year in Madras, I was not able to do any artwork. During that period, I wrote a long article in Bengali on what I should do as a young artist.

I think ‘form’ and ‘content’ both are important parts of an artwork. In visual art, ‘form’ takes shape out of the visual objects, figures or structures, while “content”comes from the imaginative mind and experiences of the artist or the creator. For visual art, ‘form’ is essentially important for an artwork, it can be abstract or real, but should have ‘transcendental’ elements in it. But qualifying the validity of a ‘form’ or ‘space’ again depends on the able mind or intelligence of the artist or creator to measure it. In a valid abstract artwork, ‘form’ itself is content. 

Nawaid Anjum: Looking at your huge and impressive body of work, one sees how your style has constantly evolved and changed, both in terms of form and content. If, in your early works, which are dark and in which space is projected as a simple iconic presence, your later works are more personalised and deal with the everyday concerns, combining the ethos of traditional Bengali imagery with the urbane self-awareness of the contemporary painting. Do you see this evolution lying at the heart of your artistic practice? How do you look back at the distinct phases of your artistic journey?

Jogen Chowdhury: Just after I came out of/from my art college, I did a few drawings and paintings which were done being influenced by the prevailing, disturbed and decaying socio-political condition of Calcutta of the 1960s and made paintings entitled ‘Representative from the Hell’ or ‘Retired Horse’ etc. Since then I had a mind not to draw and paint anything like others.

When I was in Paris (1965), I made some striking large-size figure drawings of ‘Torso’ with black dry pastels on newsprints paper and few oil paintings too, which had certain semi-abstract physical expressive forms, with much hesitation, as I was not able to conceive anything else in the new environment.

While I was back in India in 1968 and staying in Madras, I was unable to do any work for almost a year. However, during that period, I wrote a long article on ‘What I should paint and why?’ During the next four years, I executed a series of more than thirty pen and ink and mixed media works on paper titled ‘Reminiscences of a Dream’, depicting my childhood memories of East Bengal-with lotus, snakes, fishes, in the first part and clothes, jacquard looms, creepers, apples etc., in the second part.

Like all other art enthusiasts, I too had a curious mind and interest to locate and sometimes collect various curious art objects, artefacts, traditional images, Chitpur woodcuts, Kalighat Pata Chitra, etc. I also enjoyed folk theatres (Jatra) of Bengal, where acting and dressing of men and women are melodramatic. I used to get inspired by such characters and their dressings. Even when I was in East Bengal, I saw such ‘Jatras’ in our village. Those memories were deep in my mind, including the water bodies, lotus, varieties of fishes in our pond and river. All of these became part of my artworks in due course of time.

In 1972, I went to Delhi and joined Rashtrapati Bhavan as its ‘Keeper Art’(Art Keeper?) for fifteen years and was close to the top political power of India. During this period character of my works automatically got changed to new areas related to politicians, statements on politics, emergency etc. and I made a number of satirical portraits of people and politicians. During this period, I executed several major artworks in pen and ink and pastels on paper like ‘Tiger in the Moonlit Night’, ‘Man in 1980’, ‘Life II’, ‘Man on Sofa’, ‘The Preacher’, ‘Man on the Floor’, ‘Man on the Mat’, etc. Works done in Delhi brought me recognition when I participated in ‘Pictorial Space’ (1976), ‘Place for People’ (1980), both curated by Geeta Kapur and also ‘New Contemporaries’ (1978/Bombay), curated by Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, and also several National and International exhibitions like Sao Paolo Biennale, Asian Art Exhibition (Fukuoka, Japan), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, DC), Oxford Museum, Festival of India (London), etc.

In 1987, I returned to Bengal and joined Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, as a Professor in the Department of Painting, where, again in the new environment, my work had certain changes. I did a group of oil paintings which were shown in the CIMA Gallery, Kolkata. During the last thirty-three years in Santiniketan, I executed a large number of pen and ink cross-hatch and pastel work, including many pastel drawings on paper and large canvases. During the span of more than thirty years, the theme of my paintings and drawings rolled/ ranged from the domestic satire of man-women couple series to the communal riots and killings in Gujrat to political killings in Bengal, and also includes the theme of torturing Iraqi prisoners (Abu Ghraib) by American soldiers. I think my ability to control over technique as well as my skill in drawing helps me to work freely.

Nawaid Anjum: There is an unmistakable sensual and scruptural feel to most of your works. What do you wish to achieve through this texture?

Jogen Chowdhury: In fact, sensuality or sculptural feeling gets infused with my works naturally. Sensuality and sculptural feeling is a part of human feeling and exist since prehistoric time and part of our great tradition of art in every culture. Texture, of course, helps to bring the volume and modulation of a body or object to a sensitive and intense stage.

Nawaid Anjum: In the time of the pandemic when most of us have been forced to look within, the introverted quality of your works resonate more with the conditions we are all in. At a time, when the world was looking out (India, for instance, looked to the West), what made you inclined towards portraying people in moments of repose, capturing them in their private moments, and giving us a peek inside their soul — their anxieties and dilemmas, their moments of agony and ecstasy?

Jogen Chowdhury: Artworks based on images of people and objects are a powerful mode of expression of any culture. I do not think it will ever be stopped. They, however, are renewed and become creative. My works have introverted quality with intense feelings. When I paint or draw, I also establish a relationship with them. As a social being, it becomes natural. It serves multiple purposes. One way, I am creatively engaged and, at the same time, I reaffirm my relations with people. While I paint or draw, I feel close to them and feel all the anxieties, dilemmas, agonies or happiness they have deep in their souls.

Nawaid Anjum: Curating your retrospective show, Reverie and Reality, Ranjit Hoskote termed you a fabulist, a storyteller. Do you set out to tell a story in each of your work, giving them a milieu and a context?

Jogen Chowdhury: I think the major part of my works is not ‘narrative’. So I do not think I am just a ‘fabulist’. If one looks at my works, one will find that my works are of varieties of characters and natures. Sometimes, they are expressionistic, sometimes poetical and lyrical, sometimes with images of fantasy, sometimes organic with severely distorted images, sometimes decorative and floral and sometimes abstract and sensual. They are complex, critical, and sensitive, containing deep social messages. They have visual and formal content with structure and gesture. Elementally, they are ‘transcendental’.

Nawaid Anjum: The Afterlife of Silence by Anuradha Ghosh gives us a sense of how your art is permeated by the universe of your ideas and ideals. It takes a close look at the essentials of the European tradition of still life painting and argues that your works, while sharing certain common concerns of the European tradition, also differ significantly from it, and are firmly rooted in your indigenous situatedness. What was your thought process behind your still life paintings and how crucial was their setting?

Jogen Chowdhury: My still life paintings have no bindings of reality. They are free from any discipline of light and shade or even structure and colour. I just created them playfully while enjoying the visual and formal beauty in them.

Nawaid Anjum: The book also has a section that deals with the distinctive ways in which your still lifes negotiate with desire — and its obverse, dread — and manage to create autonomous symbolic systems, addressing the “nostalgia of inaccessibility”. How do you see the different shades of desire colour your palette?

Jogen Chowdhury: Yes, I created a couple of stilllife paintings which show mysteriously amalgamated part of the human body with half-cut bloody-crimson melon and breast of a woman where perhaps secret desire negotiates. It was the creation of my subconscious mind.

 

Nawaid Anjum: The generation that you are a part of confronted history through “a poetics and a politics of resistance, restless questioning, and bold expressive artistic statements”, as Hoskote writes. The Calcutta of your teenage years was politically charged, with artists openly taking political positions. How do you look at the changing political landscape in the country?

Jogen Chowdhury: The present political scenario is demoralizing, disturbing and uncertain. India’s policy of democracy and human rights are under threat. It is possible, in case the present government gets an absolute majority in the Parliament, it will change the Constitution and there will be unprecedented changes and happenings in India, which we can’t foresee at present. One thing is sure that the capitalists will consolidate further with the patronization of the present government. There will be no freedom of the press and for the public to express their views.

Nawaid Anjum: As a member of the Rajya Sabha, you saw politics from close quarters. What have been your learnings? You were working on the portraits of some politicians. How are they coming along?

Jogen Chowdhury: To be in Rajya Sabha is a great experience. I cannot describe all that I wanted to write. I could see and observe all the top national leaders in close proximity. The main purpose of the House is to create new laws and amend the old ones. However, the problem is that the party which is in majority, in any case, passes the bills as per their wish, whether it is right or wrong! 

Yes, I enjoyed doing small portrait sketching of the members who were sitting around me. There were so many national leaders and members whom I could sketch, like the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or the leader of the opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad or Smriti Irani and others who have attractive faces with interesting expression and posture. I think all these sketches could be considered as memorable documents.