Satish Gujral

Q.There was a time when your paintings drew heavily from history. However, in recent years your style has undergone several changes.
Yes. My recent works have been the result of a continuous search for my roots. Even the themes have been taken from myths, folklore and history, in addition to the lives of people around me. For instance, I have used images from mythology and set them in current realities.Like in...

Q.There was a time when your paintings drew heavily from history. However, in recent years your style has undergone several changes.
Yes. My recent works have been the result of a continuous search for my roots. Even the themes have been taken from myths, folklore and history, in addition to the lives of people around me. For instance, I have used images from mythology and set them in current realities.Like in my work 'Sita's Agnipareeksha', which captures the essence of the story from the epic, and at the same time reminds us of sufferings like dowry deaths that women are subjected to. 'Draupadi's Disrobing' is also about rape and other atrocities perpetrated on women. I have been attempting a style change for the last five years, and in my works, form and style have uniformly come together. But that doesn't mean I don't draw from history any more. In one of my recent paintings, I have gone back to the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, and tried to understand the factors that lay behind the unrest. One of my largest paintings is about the tyrannies of the colonial rulers set against the miseries suffered by the subjects. Then there is one of my favorite works, 'Shatranj ke Khiladi', which is about indifferent rulers lost in the enjoyment of their decadence, oblivious to the miseries and fate of their subjects.Some of my recent works also capture people in their daily lives --- people flying kites, Rajasthani men and women against the desert backdrop.

Q.Going back, you have spent years, from the time you were nine, in complete silence, when you could not hear a thing. What was that time like? How did it affect your creativity?
The silence I lived in was maddening. Yet, it is a world, inspite of its unreality; and I had come to terms with the fact that it was 'my' world, wherein; I spent my childhood, youth, and middle years. I could see, but I had to guess what I saw. It is a state not far from insanity - if you live consistently with silence, your illusions become your reality. Now that I know both worlds, it is dreadful. Every night, when I switch off my receiver, those moments of silence before sleep are death-like. I tap a teacup with a spoon as soon as I wake up; to make sure I can still hear. There are times when people ask me, "because of your disability your artistic life must have been a lot more creative or smoother". No field is a cakewalk. As an artist, like everybody else, I had to submit to myself every time for judgment. No judgment is final. Every artist is constantly being judged. The moment he shows weakness he is thrown out. Of course, I would not like to use my physical predicament to ask for any credit, nor is it justified. A physical disadvantage may invoke some social sympathy, but it cannot get you a place in the creative world. Subconsciously, I have clung on to my speech, however distorted and oddly pitched, hoping for a technological miracle by which I could hear. Two years ago, I started going to qawaalis, even though I was stone deaf. I have to admit, that it was not the sound element but the visual element of music that pulled me. Like the motions, a singer goes through while rendering a qawaali.

Q.There is a debate about whether the use of intellect is higher than the use of emotions while painting. How do you react to this?
There is an attempt to intellectualize the problems and processes some contemporary artists go through. I would like to steer clear of those, for never in my long career as an artist have I allowed my intellect to take over my emotional perceptions. I strongly believe in plastic arts being expressive only of artists' feelings and not his ideas. The tools and materials that an artist uses to give form to his feelings are also very important in the art process. They are not only a vehicle, but also an effective part of the process the artist goes through in his act of execution. Like language, the material the artist uses, work as a live part of the total organism of an expression.

Q.What about individual style of an artist, how important is that?
Next to materials, the style is to a form, what clothing is to a body. Form determines style just as the shape and texture of clothing dictate the body, and not the other way round. Form is the visible shape of an experience that you may as well call the content. The ultimate shape of form in determined by the medium in which it seeks to materialise itself.

Q.In the past, you have criticised M. F. Husain, and his style of work or art.
I must admit that Husain is an artist of great talent. Neverthless, it is unfortunate that he chose to waste away his talent for publicity. This does not diminish my admiration for the significance of his role in the development of contemporary Indian art. In fact, whenever I think about Husain, I rather feel sorry for him. Such sorrow comes when you witness a tragedy, and a tragedy is always of a great man. A man having merit, but either not getting his due or wasting it away. Ordinary people do not suffer a tragedy, as there is nothing about them to justify their plight. One thing you must remember: artists, in their physical desires, are no different from other people. They too would like to have worldly comforts, money, fame and everything. But the test is how much an artist is willing to sacrifice to get these things. Art is the greatest gift that nature can bestow on a human being. It makes humble people equal to kings. I consider it tragic, even insensible, on an artist's part to waste away this for physical returns. What persuaded Husain to take this path of self-destruction is difficult to explain. You cannot say that it is because he had a past of life in poverty. Most artists come from deprived sections of society. There is no answer to how one may work and other may not.

Q.Who have your inspirations been?
Usually, each artist has a role model. Someone who has achieved in formulating things in the way he himself would like to do. In my case, it has never been one person, because I have always made very rapid changes in my moods and techniques of expression. In every different mood, I had a different role model. In my earliest days, my role model was the Mexican artist Orozco.

Q.Your style has undergone several changes over the years --- your murals and collages from earlier years are markedly different from your later use of burnt wood.
The idea of artists having a continuous style has its origins in the commercialization of creativity. A style becomes a brand that has to be protected and the artist succumbs to these demands and mortgages his ability to explore new possibilities

Q.What changes have you seen in your style and your works over the years?
For the past few years, I have been trying to reestablish the lost link with the Indian kalam, or old Indian styles. I seem to be looking more towards our tradition of miniature painting. There is emphasis on details, on decorative elements, on realism and exquisite craftsmanship in these works. One of the causalities of modern art has been craftsmanship.

Q.You have also combined art and architecture. What has the experience been like?
You know architects today have stopped using the features of our great monuments of the past: the domes, the arches, and the decorative details. These have been shunned like plague, because of which modern architecture is without any identity. I have tried to violate these rules by using domes and arches in my buildings. Of course, architects have made fun of my work.

Q.You have worked with so many mediums. Which do you find the most fulfilling?
It depends on my moods. I have never sat down to think about what I like the most. I enjoy sculptures, though it is a much more difficult proposition to sell a sculpture. As against ten paintings I can sell, I find it difficult to sell even one sculpture.I have always been rejected whenever I worked with different and unconventional mediums. Like when I did collages in early 60s. People thought that it was a joke, cutting papers and fitting them on a board and calling it a painting. Or when I took to ceramics. People thought, how could an artist do ceramics? I was mocked at.

Q.Why then did you return to painting in the last ten years?
Let me give you an example. Earlier, when people did not know much about agricultural practices, they would till the land until it was exhausted, then they moved to virgin land. After a few years, they returned to the first land when it was rejuvenated. I have been coming back to painting periodically, to find it has become more fertile. There had been a gap of almost two decades when I was experimenting. You recharge after a gap and it is life, the secret energy.

Interview by Deepali Nandwani