Artist Chandra Bhattacharjee is an ideologue of muted colours
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men... Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion...Chandra Bhattacharjee’s ongoing exhibition ‘Night Forest’ at Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi, is so TS Eliot. Scorched forests, smoke rising from the earth, devastated plains, interplay of shadow and light; it is art with the spectral quality reminiscent of film negatives. The canvases evoke pastoral distance, a whimsical rural India whose starkness is softened by muted colours in an almost monosyllabic palette. Bhattacharjee’s common quotient with MF Husain is that both began their careers as billboard artists. The comparison ends there.
Husain’s work is celebratorily iconoclastic while Bhattacharjee says people often complain that his works are too dark. “But then that was my reality when I started out. If I was surrounded by dark shades, how could I envision beautiful and happy colours?” he asks.
His work is influenced by the tribal art of West Bengal and Bihar, which use austere shades taken from their natural surroundings. It defined the spirit of Bhattacharjee’s palette.‘Night Forest’ is decidedly different from his earlier work, which interpreted human faces—introspective men with closed eyes, a smiling village girl with a white flower blooming in her hair, which makes a statement of joy amid darkness.
“I was interested in studying expressions of people when I was starting out as an artist. I am from a village, where people are open books. But in cities, they are different. They hide their true feelings. So you have to look for the emotions in their eyes and interpret their subtle gestures for the actual meaning.”
If poverty and deprivation bring iron into an artist’s soul, then don’t look further than Bhattacharjee’s. “I worked a regular job and then came home bone-tired but headed to the Art College with my set of colours and brushes. This seemed to go on forever, a robotic routine with no time to think. So how could happiness find any space in my work? How could I find bright colours for my palette?”
The Kolkata-based artist realised that everyday life is his true muse. It meant wooing the grey, dreary work life of a smoky city, a broken lamp post and a jumble of wires. “My favourite subject became the labourer. There was no scope for colour. And bit by bit what colours I started out with fell away till my canvas was filled with just a few shades,” he says. Photography influenced his artistic oeuvre; Bhattacharjee is mulling a photography exhibition next.
Bhattacharjee was recently chosen as the inaugural resident artist at Studio Arnawaz in Cholamandal Artists Village, Chennai, for a week. The work that emerged culminated in ‘Night Forest’. He elaborates, “Time spent there was a wonderful process of coming together and exchanging notes with other artists.”
Elaborating on the interaction and developing Indian contemporary art, Bhattacharjee rues that unlike South Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, Malaysia and even Pakistan, India is yet to find its own voice and is still looking towards the West for inspiration—an observation modern Indian artists may not agree with.
“Of course, many of our artists have left an indelible mark on the global art world, but more needs to be done. Our true potential must be fully explored,” he says. The ‘Night Forest’ exhibition has gone online till further notice as per government directives in light of Covid-19.