Dancing with the Muse
Letter to
Chhoti:
Life, my
life, is strange. It seems to offer me
choices but leaves me with none.
17/3/2010
10:02
a.m.
Post
modernism has been described as a series
of quotes; its architecture and its
various forms of art are parasitical and
often procreate a systematic,
transgressive and to that end, a bastard
aesthetic. History is freely, and in
most cases, jocularly, quoted from. In
the present series of paintings,
Mrityunjay Mondal has made a huge
backward flip into the dark, oneirous
passages of time and has surfaced with
triumph like a deep sea diver who has
returned with precious (albeit, stolen)
gems.
In a strange
and wonderful fashion, Mrityunjay has
created a veritable dance-form through
his paintings in this exhibition. He
steps out of his own time and space and
ouevre, holds out his arms to a Matisse
or a Picasso or a Henry Moore at whim,
draws his own rhythmic stance,
pirouettes, hardens his position by
injecting his debate into a known
painting, experiments with form and its
function and there is a point in each of
the works when a certain poise is
reached --- a high point as in dance and
in music --- after which everything
seems to gather around the critical
enquiry of "the real". It is almost
existential in that, the artist seems to
comment on his own position and his
pivotal role in art history on the one
hand, and on the other, his
transgression into the past.
Mrityunjay
Mondal oscillates between
self-reflexivity and the problematic of
deconstructing his legacy as an artist.
These paintings seem almost like copies
of the originals until closer
examination not only reveals the
artist's mercurial input but also a
valid questioning of history --- of a
past and its logical future. They quote
freely and then seem to endorse the
verdict of the paraestheticians: that
art is continuously displaced,
revitalised, transgressed, opened and
closed at will. Painting, sculpture and
all the plastic and performing arts are
illegitimate in themselves; it takes a
certain amount of critical debate within
an artist's psyche (however light it may
be) to undo the given and to yank it out
methodically from its straitjacket of
history. Mondal has attempted just that
with intimacy and with a certain amount
of theoretical distance between himself
and the masters' works.
A boundary
is a fascinating thing. As has been
proved in these works, it can at once,
separate and link. The contiguity
offered by such boundaries, creates
transparent bonds and allows time and
history to ping pong with ease and with
aplomb. Contradictions are
strategically created within the walls
of a work of art and then with equal
ease, they are demystified and
systematically explored.
Michel
Foucalt's analyses of self-reflexivity
in art once led the critic David Carroll
to posit that "through the entire
process of representation (in art
and)...the episteme of (the Classic
period)...painting can be said to
represent Representation itself."
Spaces open and close even in Mondal's
representation of figures and images.
Self-representation, in the final
analysis, then, is not limited to a mere
mirroring of familiar images.
There are
mirrors within mirrors. Quotes of
quotes. Space and time are turned inside
out and the belly of the so-called
quoted masterpiece is quite untainted by
the excesses it has suffered. Self
conscious conjuring of images and an
almost archaeological approach in
delayering art creates simultaneity as
well as paradox.
Mrityunjay
Mondal is the voyeur, the participant,
the intruder, the player and above all,
he is the artist who wields his brush
like a telescope.
Guess
what? I'm writing a catalogue text for
an artist and i have removed a line from
my sms to you. In the text, it goes
under the heading: "Letter to Chhoti."
17/3/2010
11:51
a.m.
Shame on
you! You sold out Chhoti??!
17/3/2010
12:10
p.m.
NEVER.
My Chhoti is all mine. But love, my
darling princess, has a way of leaking
out. My writing is culled out, syllable
by syllable, from a strange past. My
complex relationships are perplexing
even to intimate friends at times. No
one really knows who is what, when they
read me, little one. But that is the
whole point! It is like music. So
intangible that no one really knows why
they enjoy it so much. But they do.
They do. They do not have to decipher
the chhoti chhoti notes for savoring
them. There! Now that's good enough to
quote from, too!
17/3/2010
12:37
p.m.
Anahite
Contractor
