The recent exhibition of Mr Jatin Das at the Capital's Art Today was refreshing as the artist has freed his female nudes from the oversized breasts that characterise certain periods of the imperial art of India that were chosen by revivalists as the Hindu body. This type of anatomy, which probably highlights the capacity of the woman as a fertile feeder of progeny, has recently been ridiculed by a young Rajasthan artist who had made an etching in which the now cow and Gopi of Krishna merge into one another. Mr Das too seems to be growing out of this old obsession of his.Mr Das' recent drawings of women, while they do reflect bosomy figures, as in Kairali Women, refuse to characterise them under one prototype. There are women with different clothes, bodies and cultural attributes that allow one to get closer to his creative self through appreciating the different concrete perceptions his final images materialise out of.
One travels with him in the Gulf states, Africa and India and emerges with a series of abstractions. There are grid-like figures linked to each other like two plates of steel on a hinge. There are forms like a bow and resonating bowstring, as in his Kalaripatee series. There are figures that people only the outer edges of an abstract space as in Coffee Together, slowly creeping out of their allotted space. Moreover, this time he has gone beyond his usual bi-chromatic drawings, using colour contrasts with the same finesse as he does in his portraits in oils. This exhibition once more reaffirms Mr Das' capacity to use the brush as few artists can, but we are not left with the feeling that all this is mere five finger exercises. There are events and narratives to relate to, and more than that, feelings. We can slowly see a new Jatin Das growing out of the shell of the old one this time.
-Suneet Chopra
Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
