When cityscapes merge with consciousness

Visual arts have clear markers that set the artistic period when an artist lived and worked

I remember my mother used to call it scenery and we had a couple of typical “sceneries” hung in the house — mostly picture perfect realistic scenes of the mountains and waterfalls amidst some foliage. Some were painted by an uncle who used to call it a landscape and others by some students of my mother. But just as the arrival of the camera changed how realistic images were perceived and treated, the fashion of the ubiquitous scenery or even the more respectable “landscape” too abated in a big way. Or perhaps it persists at the village and mofussil town level or survives as truck art.

Over the years, a clear trend that has made its presence felt is the cityscape. And it is emerged as the frontrunner as trends go of artists across the board — in some cases as microcosms of urban reality or as larger panoramic impressions of how an artist relates to his visual reality. Like music is an indication of an era and one’s age profile, visual arts too have clear markers like this that set the artistic period when an artist lived and worked. What were the images that crowded his reality through which he perceived and shared his art all find outlets that define the period and persona both.

Perhaps since the creation of contemporary art is largely an urban activity hence its reference points and metaphors are urban — after all it is all about finding your idiom and genre then dictates it external indicators. Among the artists I can immediately recall whose occupation falls in this genre. Jaideep Mehrotra who traces the skyline of Mumbai and juxtaposes it with shadows and light in an arresting interplay of sanchari (fleeting) and sthai (fixed) imagery. Sangeeta Singh and Ritu Kamath have both experimented with such urban imagery in a very feminine response to the fleeting images that rush past as we sit ensconced in our cocoons.

Of late my own work has been touched by this imagery of the city scape. Except in my own pre-occupation there is a certain magical albeit romantic element that finds place and in a way it transcends time for one of my works is set in the Ashok vatika of Ravana that is as contemporary to me as the New Delhi of New York skyline. In a way it is like you are where your art takes you.

The trigger point of these musings was the recently concluded Somenath Maity exhibition Journeys Within, whose work has always made me wonder about the poetry reposed in architecture, hidden within its structural edifices, wonders Tripat Kalra, the founder director of Gallerie Nvya under whose auspices the show was held. “Is there such a thing as architectural poetry Can it be captured in art Can it be expressed through it The answers are uncertain, but Somenath’s work raises the questions in its synthesis of the beautiful and the mysterious, the architectural and the aesthetic, the concrete and the intangible,” says Tripat.

For Somenath’s cityscapes are aesthetic, luminous, and captivating. They are solitary and surreal too. They provide a visual extravagance, but unfurl some secrecy and you wish to almost enter and explore the innards. This has been possible mainly due to Somenath’s masterly use of light in his colours. He has succeeded in producing the inherent light of every colour he has used. French painter Paul Cezanne had said that ‘light is something that cannot be produced, but must be represented by something else — by colour.’

Somenath’s colours represent mesmerising variations, layers and hues of light and create an all-encompassing ambience of character. In a number of his canvases we see a cosmic and stylised firmament with various hues, clusters of stars and an occasional half moon, all leading up to a dramatic grand dream. The lights of the city at night were one of the first images Somenath came across as a boy from village. It’s no wonder that they remained with him and became a part of his consciousness and creations. Since then, he has been listening and talking to the city, walking round it, dreaming and lamenting with it and finding a world with every footstep. He dreams the city in lines, colours and lights, and creates poetry.

In fact, it is peculiar of Bengali artists including Paresh Maity, Sudip Roy, Sanjay Bhattacharya to mention a few, who have worked with almost hauntingly poignant urban imagery that lingers in one’s mindscape long after the city merges with your consciousness

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com