An intimate encounter – Uma Nair, THE HINDU

To step into “Between Sight and Insight: Glimpses of Benode Behari Mukherjee” at both the Vadehra Galleries in Delhi is to be invited into the mapping of an inspirational odyssey that presents one of the greatest artists and educators in our country. Small piquant, large and medium, the drawings, watercolours and mixed media with a few collages thrown in reflect the consummate ease he had with tempera, watercolour, crayon, felt tip pen and Chinese ink on paper; a treat for tired eyes are the etchings, lithographs and paper collages. Sensitivity stems when you read the notes and know he struggled with his eyesight.

Benode Behari Mukherjee (1904–80) was a leading modernist artist and educator at Kala Bhavan Santiniketan and known also as the teacher of Satyajit Ray, K G Subramanyan and Somnath Hore.

Curator Siva Kumar arranges the show with astute vision, his meticulous curation merges with an aesthetic unravelling in which you move from image to image enjoying the strokes that move from tradition to modernity in narrative, space and mood. Benode Behari figured in Siva Kumar’s curated show at NGMA in 1997 called “The Making of Contextual Modernism”.

When asked how it felt to be curating another show 22 years hence, Siva Kumar states, “Benode Behari was one of the four artists I had included in ‘Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism.’ There he was presented as part of a group of four artists (the others being Nandalal, Ramkinkar and Rabindranath Tagore) who together shaped a distant approach to modernism. They were not a group by stylistic affinity but by commitment to a common set of values, which included response to their immediate environment and lived reality.”

This was followed by the ‘Benode Behari Mukherjee: A Centenary Retrospective’, also at NGMA, which he co-curated with Gulam Mohammed Sheikh in 2006. “Here we looked at his work against a wider background but also in greater detail and comprehensiveness. The present exhibition at Vadehra Gallery is the third. It’s smaller in scale than the centenary retrospective but also more intimate, less intimidating. Benode Behari was an artist who worked quietly and very thoughtfully. He doesn’t foreground himself but is always present behind the simple things from the everyday world – a small bridge, a stretch of arid landscape or a flower – he paints.”

Packing in an entire oeuvre of a lifetime into nine rooms at Vadehras is by no means easy. Siva Kumar explains, “Taking advantage of the many relatively small rooms (nine in all) the Vadehra Gallery offers, I tried to set up intimate encounters with Benode Behari’s works from different phases. The idea was not to overwhelm the viewer physically but allow an intimate engagement with the works. I hope this is useful because his works, small and carefully constructed as they are, are most rewarding when looked at and absorbed in an unhurried manner.”

Siva Kumar refreshes art lovers with succinct notes that examine Behari’s rich and varied work from a social and historical perspective, as he situates it within Indian, Nepalese and Japanese identities and insignias all woven into his travels.

“As a curator setting up such an encounter between the artist and his viewers has been my effort. I have also tried to keep the wall texts to a non intrusive minimum for the same reason.”

Minute details

Art lovers can view the evolution through a series of self-portraits; a selection of intimate sketches of flora that reveal the significance of minute details in his vocabulary, speaking not only of how he saw the world due to his limited eyesight but focusing on the significance of linear form in his understanding of space; his landscapes, preparatory drawings and paintings, which lend themselves to analysis by anyone wanting to engage with his unique understanding of space.

The show gives primacy to art’s functions while respecting the need to soothe the eye and inspire the spirit. Benode Behari faced difficulties with his eyesight throughout his life, but continued his artistic work even after going blind, considering this “a new state of being, ” and therein lies the lesson in learning for each one of us. In the solitude of Santiniketan, when he lost his vision he taught art history for 12 years from 1957 till 1969. As Mark Antony in Julius Caesar says: Whence cometh such another!