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 Picasso in the raw comes to town - Shanta Serbjeet Singh, New Delhi e-mail: shanta.serbjeetsingh@gmail.com November 15, 2009 A spanking new Spanish Cultural Centre, built on the site of an old kothi on Hanuman Road, in the very heart of Connaught Place, marked its opening with Spanish royalty and an exhibition of original Picasso prints from the famous Suite Vollard series. The 100 copper etchings in this suite were produced by Picasso in an old 19th century stone chateau he bought in 1930. It gave him enough space to play around with studios and workshops of all kinds, including a small engraving press. All this, including the first exhibition of his paintings in Paris in 1901, happened with the help of a dealer, Ambroise Vollard. The relationship continued until 1930 when Vollard died in a road accident. Perhaps an artist's most meaningful relationships are only of two kinds: the ones with the women in his life and the businessman who helps him sell his works. If you needed to fix how the artist-patron relationship works, you could well start with that between Picasso and Vollard, a close friend and admirer of the Malaga born painter. Strangely, women creative persons rarely talk about their love interests and the only Indian I can think of is Amrita Pritam and her companion for 31 years, the artist Imroz. The Vollard Suite was a fascinating mix of most of Picasso's favourite themes. You find the theme of the artist-sculptor turned into a minotaur, the half-animal half-man image that mirrored his innermost persona. And you will see variations of his lifelong obsession, to capture the relationship between the artist and his model. Here his model, always the nude is always his second wife, Marie Therese. He used an equally eclectic mix of techniques, from burin, etching, acquatint, wash to drypoint and even a combination of all of them. How a simple line, etched on a sheet of copper, could reflect the disfiguration and destruction of form and capture the expressionistic barbarity, the angst and passion of not only a man-woman relationship but also the gloom of the war clouds that were gathering over Europe, particularly Spain, and the inescapable signs of the rise of Hitler and fascism, is the miracle afforded by one man's artistic vision, one man's hand, that of Pablo Picasso. HOME ALONE Part I and II Home, for Kathak diva, Prerna Shrimali, as a young girl, was the Pink City. "When I left Jaipur in 1978," she says, "it was a place full of cultural dynamism - regular dance and drama classes, regular programs of good and important classical artists, drama festivals and summer camps...in fact it was a place of uninterrupted cultural activity. I have seen performances here by Pandit Birju Maharaj, Sitara Devi, Sonal Mansingh, Yamini Krishnamurthy, Rani Karna, Swapna Sundari ... I have heard Begum Akhtar, Mehdi Hasan, Girija Devi, Laxmi Shankar, Bhimsen Joshi, Pt. Ravi Shankar, Amjad Ali Khan Sahib, Samta Prasad ji, Zakir Hussain, Alla Rakha Khan Saheb, all here in Jaipur, and many times over. I am witness to several major Hindi theatre productions like Khamosh Adalat Jaari Hai, Sakharam Binder, Surya Ki Antim Kiran se Pehli Kiran Tak, Zoo Story, House of Barnada Alba, etc with artists like Om Shivpuri, Pinchoo Kapoor, H P Saxena, Dinesh Thakur and so many more.? And HOME ALONE Part II? After spending 31 long years in Delhi, I came back to my hometown Jaipur. I had imagined that it would be a great upheaval of my life, because in a way I grew up in Delhi, all along and all alone, far from my family. My artistic vision and aesthetics took shape in Delhi's cultural scene and developed with few strong and evolved friends and acquaintances. Jaipur city was equally famous for one very distinctive feature and that was a deep rooted love of folk traditions. One saw them reflected everywhere, especially schools and colleges. If any student had even a minimal interest in dance or music, he or she would know the steps of Rajasthani folk dance and some basic steps of Kathak. With all these memories, I came here in a mood of deep nostalgia. What I was met with was a cruel reality. All those streams of good music and dance have dried up. Bollywood has taken over and unfortunately people have more stake in imitation then faith in the original. Every newspaper is full of reports of Bollywood dancing, salsa, hip-hop, the works. Now even in schools, the children are supposed to do Bollywood dancing. There are reality TV style programmes of all kinds with kids taking part in fashion shows, salsa and "modern" dance competitions. As for the media, it is playing a sad role of encouraging all these negative trends. So, with all these harsh facts, I am in constant cultural shock, if I may say so. Even the face of Jaipur city has become a blur and the beautiful pink city has become a hub of shopping malls with mindless architecture which does not go with the original Jaipur architecture. The famous Jaipur Gharana of Kathak doesn't have a face here anymore. There are gurus with good content but they lack the required presentation values. Jaipur city is no longer representing Jaipur Gharana Kathak in any sense of this term." And where now? Says Prerna, "But whatever it is, it is my city and I want to make an effort, maybe a drop, to pull back at least some of its old colours of culture." Amen!  Shanta Serbjeet Singh, for twenty-five years, columnist, critic and media analyst for The Hindustan Times, The Economic Times and The Times of India, is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Sangeet Natak Akademi and Delhi Govt.'s Sahitya Kala Parishad for her contribution to the field of culture. She just finished her term as Vice Chairman of the SNA, is the founder-secretary of the World Culture Forum and continues as Chair of the UNESCO created NGO APPAN (The Asia-Pacific Performing Arts Network), a position to which she was appointed in 2001. Singh has authored several well-known publications such as 'Indian Dance: The Ultimate Metaphor' (published by Ravi Kumar (Paris), 'The 50th Milestone: A Feminine Critique' (Sterling Publishers, to mark India's fiftieth anniversary of Independence), 'Nanak, The Guru' (Oxford University Press) and 'America and You' (22 editions). |
