TIMELESS, ETERNAL AND ANTIDESTINY

In this special feature JohnyML contextualizes the works of the Paris based senior painter Akkitham Narayanan. The author argues that Neo Tantricism is no longer a ‘much maligned monster’ in the field of aesthetic production.

In his dearly protected seclusion Akkitham Narayanan creates paintings. His creations are abstract in character, reflecting a deeper understanding of the nature and its varied colours and moods.  Perhaps, for any artist who has been working diligently on the same philosophy and style for nearly three and half decades, the language that he uses become a second nature. Akkitham’s paintings appear to be effortlessly done with a sense of musical rhythm. The forms and colours that come repeatedly in his works remind the viewer of the chanting of a hymn, reverberating with the essence of life spirit. Akkitham would readily agree with these observations for he does not dispute the fact that his works are ‘abstractions’ and they do have a lot to do with the memories of a ritual-ridden life that included the chanting of Vedic hymns.

Abstraction in Indian contemporary scene of aesthetic production is a severely contested area. The problematic of Indian abstract art language originates in the location of definition itself. As each style of abstract language has its roots in a very precise figurative language, it always gets genealogically connected with its parent language only to be historically placed as a ‘derivative’. Though, for the artists, visual language is a tool for expressing certain ideas in certain ways, this tag of being a ‘derivative’ always places abstract art in a field of dispute. However, those artists who prefer to work in an abstract language overcome this dispute by claiming unbridled freedom of expression provided by their chosen language against the so called ‘figurative’ language.

When Akkitham Narayanan entered the field of art as a student in Madras College of Art, under the efficient tutelage of the noted painter K.C.S.Panicker during 1960s, Indian art scene was going through a period of chaos. Modernism had already become a very strong presence and Expressionism was the guiding philosophy and language for many of the artists. Thick contours and violent strokes that defined Expressionism facilitated the artists to deal with their existential angst. The euphoria generated out of the nation building projects of the post-independent was fizzling out slowly that there was an urgent need for finding a new artistic language to express the changing scenario.

Art historically speaking, the narrative possibilities opened up by the Expressionist language had become a stumbling block by the sixties of the last century. Even in the West, post World War II scenario had brought in a sense of losing faith in everything. Figurative narratives that helped the artists of the first half of the twentieth century to give vent their angst had become conventional by then. The lack of faith in human establishments and their conventions made the artists to look for something else that could have transcended their materialistic insecurities. An alternative for the occidental homo-centric materialistic meta-narratives took the artists and philosophers to the oriental ways of thinking. Figurative narratives were collapsed to pave way for colour field abstractions and action based paintings.

K.C.S.Panicker was to notice this change for the first time in India. His sojourns in the West helped him to understand how the artists abandoned the figurative narratives to embrace the abstract and the philosophical in their art. Meanwhile, it was difficult for him to follow the bandwagon of his western counterparts. As mentioned elsewhere, Modernism was deemed to be a western import and there were searches for an efficient alternative to replace the ‘modern- western’ by Panicker’s contemporary thinkers like M.Govindan. At this stage, it was easy to pit ‘the oriental tradition’ (in other words the ‘indigenous’) against the ‘modern-western’ as a discursive alternative. By using the blanket terms like ‘oriental’, ‘traditional’ and ‘indigenous’ without much discretion, Panicker could launch his own style, which later on came to be known as the ‘Neo-Tantric’ art language.

Though the phrase ‘Neo-Tantricism’ functions as a terminological qualification for the art of K.C.S.Panicker, he did not subscribe too much to the visual basics of Tantricism. When he shifted his allegiance from the figurative narratives to the neo-trantric style, his idea was to extract and present a new set of visual codes or alphabets for his protégés. Driven by a spirit for gaining the ‘indigenous’, Panicker did his ‘Words and Symbols’ (c.1965) series and that set the target and direction for many of his students including Akkitham Narayanan.

Historians have noted that it was the publication of Ajit Mukherjee’s seminal work ‘The Art of Tantra’ that generated the interest in Tantric Art amongst art lovers in general and Indian artists in particular. However, Akkitham Narayanan disputes this argument, “Ajit Mukherjee’s work came out in 1970 whereas Panicker had started working on his Words and Symbols Series in 1965 itself. We, as his students, were keenly watching his works and got a lot of inspiration from his new style.” For an art student like Akkitham who was trying to catch hold of the spirit and rhythm of his contemporary times, Panicker’s new series was something revelatory. Akkitham has talked about this influence in many of his interviews.

Had Panicker chosen to work with flat colours, ritualistic diagrams, undecipherable inscriptions from palm leaf documents and symbolic representations of flora and fauna in his paintings, Akkitham’s intention was not to follow the footsteps of his master so closely. Observing Panicker’s adoption of many a religious symbolism into the scheme of his pictorial language, Akkitham realized the limitation and possibilities of the intended ‘indigenous art lingua’. Akkitham wanted to take off from where Panicker decided to leave. Recognizing the fact that the palpable religious symbolism could degenerate into another convention, which could help the proliferation of ‘ritualism’ in art, Akkitham consciously chose a path where the religious symbolism could demystify itself and become a part of the high-modern abstract language that defied regional and ritualistic boundaries.

Developing on the Neo-Tantric language initiated by K.C.S.Panicker seemed to be a natural choice for Akkitham Naryanan. Elaborating a bit on his personal history at this stage is necessary for understanding his art further. Akkitham Narayanan was born in Akithethu Mana, a traditional Brahmin family that was involved in conducting Vedic rituals. The elders in the Mana had conducted more than ten Yagas (mega rituals). Akkitham Narayanan’s childhood was mostly spent in ritualistic education. He remembers that each of his action was a choreographed ritual towards the fulfillment of a greater cause. He received a ritualistic and religious education till the age of eleven for attending an English school was considered to be a sin in those days! In his ritualistically choreographed and intellectually troubled boyhood days taught him to look at things in a different way. He found his elder brother and the famous poet Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri enthralling the intellectual scenario of Kerala with his powerful poems. He found a warrior of revolution and a protector of tradition in his brother. The polarities in life and ideology had made the young Akkitham to think about them deeply. When he joined the art college in Madras, he was a skeptic, still caught in the web of a ritualistic past and an unquenchable thirst for breaking free from all what had been binding.

Akkitham Narayanan, like many other students of his time, started off his artistic career in doing several figurative works in tune with the prevalent Modernist pattern. Existential issues goaded him to work on the themes like ‘City by Night’, ‘Landscapes’ etc. In an attempt to place human beings as the heroes of life, he went through a phase of Expressionism and Cubism. The atmosphere of the Madras College of Art and Craft was conducive enough to forget his skepticism for a while. However, the doubts came back to him when he saw his mentor and teacher, K.C.S.Panicker embarking on a new journey with the Neo-Tantric style.

Developing an indigenous art became a pivotal issue for Akkitham Narayanan while he was staying in Delhi during mid 60s. He could have even abandoned art altogether for the ideological confusions that ensued the debates on ‘indigenous art’. In an interview with the noted painter and ideologue of the Cholamandal Artists’ Village, M.V.Devan, Akkitham talks about the confusion of that period: “I have been witness, a witness goaded by doubts, to the arguments and counter arguments that raged all over the country. Debates everywhere, in the college campus, Akademi studios, Cholamandal Artists’ Village, Kodambakkam, Thambaram, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bombay, Calcutta, Kochi, Calicut and Trivandrum. Quite often the diamond sharp razors of truth pierced through the darkness of ignorance. At times, there were explosions, spitting volumes of smoke, but the sound and the fury only served to lead people astray.”

The heat of debates should have been quite captivating also. By late 60s Akkitham Narayanan found himself in Paris, equipped with a scholarship to study art there. The Parisian experience seemed to have resolved his doubts about developing an indigenous art. “On arrival in Paris, I had the occasion to see and experience directly the art forms of Europe, which made me more conscious about India. For a time I was in a chaotic situation. Then I happened to see an exhibition by the German painter Wols. His works inspired me to do some watercolours. Though they were abstract in nature, I introduced some symbolic elements like Sun, Moon, Lotus, Waves, Flames etc apart from some scriptures in Malayalam. I knew the where these images came from; my childhood memories, the paintings of K.C.S.Panicker and a general awareness about Tantric art,” Akkitham remembers.

The decision to settle down in Paris with his Japanese Pianist wife Sachiko had made a lot of difference in Akkitham’s perceptions. His canvases became more and more refined. Irrespective of the medium, he experimented with colours and formal rhythms. Collapsing the figures into minimal forms, he naturally arrived at the field of geometric patterns, forms and shapes. Triangles, squares and circles, like individual instruments in a musical ensemble, started falling in place. Suggestions of the elemental aspects like fire, water, air, earth and ether started playing hide and seek in constructive designs of geometrical forms. The colours looked quite Indian and the feeling of the paintings was purely oriental. Art lovers around him recognized these aspects in his works and thus the indigenous art of Akkitham was born.

Creative experiments that spread across almost four decades have refined the visual linguistics of Akkitham Naryanan considerably. Despite the conscious blocking of visual narratives from within the frame, a closer look at Akkitham’s works reveals that they are geometrical constructions, rather than ‘formless’ abstractions. One could easily approach the works from a ritualistic point of view for they remind the viewer of Vedic and Tantric ritualistic elements. At the same time one could take off from there and could generate a counter-narrative to view them in a new light. Akkitham himself has said once that his works are inspired by traditional Kerala architecture. His colours come from the mural paintings that had inspired the artist in him during his childhood days.

Calling the paintings of Akkitham as ‘Geometrical Abstractions’ or ‘Neo-Tantric Paintings’ may help the onlooker to understand the apparent formal values present in them. However, these paintings have something more to offer than mere formal values. Akkitham’s works evoke the sense of a threshold; a way that opens towards and closes from various possibilities. The metaphysical and spiritual interpretations can be taken along till they merge with a purely non-religious and aesthetical plane. Similarly, the formal interpretations could collapse into the metaphorical and metaphysical realm. Akkitham Narayanan does not dispel both these possibilities. He says, “I would like to move from here and do something totally different, where formal, aesthetical and spiritual values can merge into one.” Akkitham believes that his works function against the fatal destiny and art, whether it is figurative or abstract, for him, is ‘timeless, eternal and anti-destiny.’ To borrow the words of M.V.Devan, Akkitham’s works are “all abstract pictures where space contains time and time contains space in perfect unison.”

(courtesy Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi)