Deepak Bhattacharya

Deepak Bhattacharya, art historian and teacher at Santiniketan passed away on 23rd June 2007. HA Anil Kumar, Bangalore based art historian, a friend and student of Late Deepak Bhattacharya recalls his memories and pays tribute to the departed friend.

Deepak Bhattacharya

An SMS saying that “Deepak da (Bhattacharya) passed due to a massive heart attack” was followed by the news that it was after “taking an art history class at Kala Bhavana” made me realize that it was not a joke only after a prolonged, blank moment. Given a chance--on an altogether impossible kind of situation--Deepak himself would have made pun, fun and read something meaningful out of the first sentence of this paragraph. The last time I met him was just two months ago, considering the fact that the before-last time I had met him was fifteen years ago, in 1992!

The first time I had met him was to introduce myself as a fresh student of art history, at Kala Bhavana. The second time I met him, I was astounded at the amount of silence he retained and maintained (till the very last) in that very vocal symposium, marking the occasion of one of his favorite--Ram Kinker Baij Centenary, organized by Anshuman Das Gupta. The pronounced silence by this otherwise vocal art historian and teacher spoke a language that I could not easily comprehend. Interestingly, I remember not having met him anywhere outside Santiniketan.

Thus, the Deepak I knew was a person(ality) attached to that place in more than one way. His job as a teacher of art history at Gulbarga (Karnataka) had tired him and his wife Chandrima in various ways. They were not strategists to play or counter the mean minded, unwanted politics that one sees quite often in institutions. One of the simplest reasons was that there was a permanent assurance of a temporary-job-forever at Gulbarga, for him.

He was the best vocal critic of contemporary art practices. Call him a classic formal reader of imagery; he was over-protective about it, at times. He had curtness in his voice (like, ‘this-is-it-ish’ kind) that would make his argument sound more authentic. I always wished to see how he could trans-literate it into written words, within which I was curious to see as to what he would alternatively place in his writings, in the place of that authentic, high pitched compelling voice of his. Deepak almost had an opinion about every kind of art though his specilisation was about Indian Company art. I specifically remember a couple of incidents that can help me understand him as a rare art historian whose attempt to inculcate the oral tradition (as a teacher) into the very subject. This need not make us any more emotional about his personality, for he was neither unnecessarily emotional nor partisan. He would call a spade a spade.

“Baroda art school is pseudo-professional while Kala Bhavana is amateurish”. This was the way he had summed up what others refuse to even acknowledge, as a subject for an intriguing dialogue, regarding the historicisation of art history in two differently positioned art institutions. However, the difference is always felt but never spoken about. Deepak, for me, was the one who could ‘speak’ that while others would ‘feel’ but would refuse to elaborate upon. In fact, his kind of thinking reminds me of Chaarwaka, the Cynic-Existentialist philosopher. Yet, while he did what others did not, and yet, did not do what he should have had done— ‘write’ in the way he spoke, and more of that kind. May be he was arriving towards that, before his life came to an abrupt halt.

I was a first year M.F.A student of Art History at Kala Bhavana, without any serious background of art history, from Bangalore, when I first met him. He already had an M.F.A, had taught at Gulbarga for a while in an institution run by V.G.Andani and had come back to Kala Bhavana for good and forever. Just like the way he had come back to the place as a professional, it seems, earlier, he had returned as a prodigal son from Baroda, as a M.F.A student-in the making, to Kala Bhavana. He was a true Gaul from the village called Santiniketan.

When I first met him, he was simultaneously eating and speaking about art—two things he could intermingle frequently and spontaneously. “What are you reading right now?” he asked me. He even told me that I should start writing as soon as I complete my Masters, for, there might be a competition and rush of writers on art in the future. His prediction has come true now. Ironically, he himself did not seem to follow his own advice. I did not read Deepak outside ‘Nandan’ annual magazines published from the department of art history, Kala Bhavana. Now I realize how two art historians with a strong sense of nativity were trying to camouflage each other’s deepest concerns.

He gave a lot of advice and assurances at that moment, by taking off my phobia about reading and writing art history in English, and reading and writing Indian English art history. He made me feel that art history was as spontaneous as the weather change and load-shedding at Santiniketan. This is another instance of Deepak’s Chaarwaaka-nyaaya.

The second and the last time I met him was a couple of months ago, in February this year (2007), and after 16 years, two decades and a century. Actually the difference in between our meeting physically seemed like sixteen years, the way we had started thinking might have differed by decades and a century. There was a lot he spoke through his silence about the debate which was intricately entangled with the alternative issue of the rift between art history and cultural study during the Ramkinker Centenary symposium, during the leisure hours.

At one point, during the more leisurely, outdoor discussion, I was keen to know about his published version of his research. “I have heard that this Calcutta-based art historian pays the publisher to get her own books published. Why should I spend from my pocket to publish my research?” he said. He was as unpretentious as ever and something more. The urban art history within which I functioned seemed alien to him. He was a Fulbright Fellow. Though I had met him only twice and hardly read him, his presence as an empiricist marks him clearly and differently from those art historians of his age (in their mid 40s) who studied in Baroda and/or Santiniketan and are not hard to be traced, though they are spread around various parts of the country.

This is what he had termed as (perhaps) amateurish and pseudo-professional, two decades ago. I would like to repeat that Deepak’s ability to teach was that of an empiricist. Empiricists have this rare gift to think instantly (termed as the talent for ‘ekasandhigraahi’) and also have the talent not to pursue it further on to a theoretic dimension, particularly in written formats. This is the reason that I don’t remember much of his writings, and don’t remember his writings beyond the Nandan issues, and that too while his juniors and super-juniors like Anshuman Das Gupta and Sanjay Mallik (respectively) managed to get published beyond Nandan. Deepak, the empiricist, was a tutor who belongs to an oral tradition of visual (art) criticism, like J.Swaminathan, R.M.Hadapad—who are partially represented and that too posthumously for what they were.

Deepak becomes relevant to me for a few reasons: He is nearest to me by profession, age and the one with a rustic (thought not ‘rural’) attitude set within an institutionalized art historical practice. His students might remember him as a free-thinker and a destroyer of fantasies in the name of visual cultural discourses. It is a difficult proposition to portray his form of unpredictability. Despite his ‘this-is-the-end-of-my-argument’ attitude, there was warmth in the way he saw through your argument. The end of every dialogue with him would end with a cream of certain insightful attitudes set within you that you might not have realized till then. While watching an Amitabh movie (in 1992, in Bichitra theatre, Bolpur), out of the blue, he made this comment, which should be able to give a fair picture of the personality of Deepak. I thought that he was going to react like a high-brow critic, discarding the film at one go. By the end of the movie Amitabh kills the villain in front of all his ex-college policemen. Yet no body pinpoints at him as a culprit, when enquired by higher authorities. “This is social justice. Only popular movies can show such scenes. Art film-makers don’t dare show this. Their sponsorship from NFDC would be at risk. Hence popular film makers in India are more sincere. They make films that they sincerely ‘feel’ compared to art movies that try to take off the entire feel from their movies. I really feel for our Indian art movie makers”.

I miss the warmth in your talk, Deepak da.