Visionary Antiquities

Unbridled energy and passion run through the drawings of Jyothi Basu. They look like supreme poetic utterances with a difference. JohnyML travels through pages of the Sketch Book of Jyothi Basu and comes out with some interesting observations.

“Greed, Avarice, Desire, Blindness, Attack, Darkness, Slavery, impurity, Contempt, Dick, The Universe,….A.aaaa…aaa…===”

Don’t worry. That was my effort to translate one of the drawings of Jyothi Basu in English language. Malayalam words for the abovementioned English words are written with charcoal on a drawing paper. The circular flow of the rhythmic Dravidian alphabets would look like interesting designs. For some people, it might even look like the totemic inscriptions from the Mayan and Inca cultures. But as I share the same linguistic culture with the artist Jyothi Basu, I am able to decipher them. Jyothi Basu cancels these words out with diagonal lines that lean leftwards.

I am now caught in the web of imagination. Greed, Avarice, Desire, Blindness etc etc getting canceled out by the lines that lean leftwards. Is it automatic writing/drawing or a conscious act controlled by a sub-conscious guilt? Artists who were once a part of the Radical Group must be having an answer. They will look at me and say: “F….k off. You don’t understand art.” May be, who knows. Even John Berger and Ernst Fischer would not have ever claimed that they understood art completely.

‘Visionary Antiquities’, a solo exhibition of Jyothi Basu at the Nature Morte Gallery in Delhi gives me an occasion to look at the drawings of his works in a renewed context. Perhaps, I liked his drawings better than those psychedelic paintings with malformed coconut trees standing in a row, masquerading as ethereal presences. I stood in front of a drawing and read, “Kathu Sookshichoru’ (Something that someone protected so dearly). Soon came the reprimand from another artist who was standing next me: “Don’t see works of art in parts. See them as a whole.”  I agreed.

Seeing the drawings of Jyothi Basu as a whole, I am reminded of nothing but poetry; poetry that fired both mine and Jyothi Basu’s imaginations at some point of time. Jyothi Basu’s drawings are sheer poetry. They are created with a sense of supreme poetic utterance. Supreme poetic utterance, as believed commonly comes from the perfection of feeling and perfection of expression. But for me supreme poetic utterance comes out of supreme division of the self; a self that lives here and now and a self that lives elsewhere and everywhere. Then you belong and detach at the same time. You can have greed, avarice and blindness in one go and at the same moment you can feel piety, humility and purity of vision.

What did you say? Schizophrenia? I never did want to say that. The world seen in Jyothi Basu’s drawings is a divided one; divided with a diagonal line of the unknown. It could be a bridge or a chasm. Poetry gurgles down there. Look at them. They the aerial views of a visionary world, where architectural forms copulate with each other like snakes in heat. When the heat is on and the passion makes them blind, they look like the Swastik symbols. Yes, passion blinds and absolute passion blinds absolutely, as Lord Acton said.

Like a beam of dream that submerges in the darkness of death, Jyothi Basu’s drawings submerge in memory. They do not die down. Like a smile on the lips of a sleeping beauty they come back and persist. Jyothi Basu is good at drawing beautiful women. He is equally adept in portraying himself as a saint, a troubled saint, whose legs are tied by the tears of a mother. He says like the poet, “Mother, do not call me back. Do not tie my legs with tears, Close the door and go back.” Then he takes his own baggage of memories, where there is a picture perfect frame of a man and woman in their bedroom, complete with a curtain that moves in the gentle breeze. ‘Dhe”, the sound of an explosion. That comes back again and again. A normal narrative film edited in an avantgard style.

Picture perfect frames are inconsistent in supreme poetic utterances. When the artist passes from one page to the other there is a storm that catches him unaware. He is not there. The artist has gone to wait for the snakes they copulate in the thickets near the spring. They copulate, frantically, fanatically and fatally. Then the memories copulate with memory, clearing and distorting visions at the same time. Who can catch all those things in black lines? Only the artist. He multiplies himself in saintly postures. He smiles and drowns himself in the smile.

Then come five fishes. They see the saintly body lying under the water glowing. They come to peck at him. Final deliverance. He gets up and runs like beings with one eye for a head. Primary alphabets come to him again and again. Do you want to cheat that man who comes back from the streets and removes his mask while standing in front of a mirror? Who is that man? You …you …. Then the protagonist falls on to the bed of thorns. He shrieks. “Ayyooooo’. A phallic tower replaces his identity. An identity in confirmation and crisis.

The sketch book, which is produced to complement the exhibition is a precious book of poems; visual poems. These poems say: “Ullathu Parayanmallo’ (One has to utter the facts). Jyothi Basu wants to say the facts; the facts of his mental journeys. His ecstasies that an art historian cannot comprehend. His ecstasies that come out as music from a non-existing musical instrument. His ecstasies that an assumed racial supremacy imparts to him.

The lizard that sits at the roof is the only final witness to all supreme poetic utterances. Could it be a death by hanging or by fire? Or a liquor induced blackout? A young woman looks at you from behind the door. Another woman crouches on the bed, while the final act is played out in the next room. World looks like a colour flash light in a discotheque. Jyothi Basu’s train whistles through between Apu and Ganesh Gaitonde.