Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern and Contemporary Art | January 2008

126 Pyne’s Behulà by Dr. Mukund Lath Recently (in January 2000) I saw two new works by Ganesh Pyne, displayed with works by other painters at the CIMA gallery. I found something remarkably fresh in both the works. I remember the name of only one of them: Behulà . The other was perhaps called, Scare-crow , but I am not sure. The word occurs to me because the painting shows a scare-crow with a black (a memorably haunting black) inverted handi as its head. Standing beside the scare-crow and almost as large as it (as I remember) is an off-white owl (a laksmipenchà ). Both Behulà and the Scare-crow exemplify, to my mind, a new turn in Pyne’s approach. What struck me was the glimpse (as I thought) of a new spirit in his artistic vision. Especially in Behulà . It is Behulà on which I wish to record some of my responses. The painting is not before me. I saw it twice, which, perhaps, is not enough of an encounter for a true critical or reflective reaction’ and yet the impression of a new departure was profound enough to warrant an appraisal. It was in Behulà that I sensed the departure and so it is this work that I will speak about. Behulà is dominated by the portrait of a woman, the legendary Behulà sung in medieval Bengali myths and legends. It is the nature of the presence evoked by Pyne’s portrait of Behulà that I will talk about. What impresses most in that work is the emergence in Behulà of a person, an individual with a self and identity of her own as a human being. This is quite unlike Pyne’s earlier works. In Pyne’s earlier works, men and women are types or icons, or a powerful combination of both. I will not enlarge upon this point here. It will suffice for my purpose here to take a brief look at two of his earlier works both of which have a satirical or ironic intent. The two examples before me are: The Ivory-Merchant (a water-color), and the more ambitious, Woman Smelling Flower (a tempera). The first work was painted in the year 1981 and the second little earlier in 1977. They belong to a mature and fertile period of Pyne’s creativity, a period, which may be termed the middle – or even perhaps the ‘central’ – period of his career as a painter. In the first work, satire is the main intent; it plainly predominates, turning the figure of the merchant (after whom the painting is named) into a flat one-dimensional figure. Yet such is the force of image-making here that the figure comes forth not just a type but almost as an icon: a picture of greed and insensitivity born of ill-earned wealth. The second work is more complex, both technically as a painting and as an image. Looking at it purely as a painting we are affected by the layers of hidden depths reflected in the rich colour and texture of the surface. This imparts an added subterranean mystique, a disturbingly subliminal ethos to the figure of the woman which dominates the painting. The disconcerting, perturbing quality of the figure is due, certainly, to distortion, but mainly because it is embedded in the presence of Death. It is, astonishingly, a presence which has a myth- like calm and poise. A glow of the sap of life glimmering as though from within death itself – as in some other paintings of this period – creates an impelling paradox that uplifts the work from being a mere parable of death. And yet the god in command seems to be Yama: Mortality. This character is much more marked in Pyne’s works of a still earlier period (the mid-sixties), where the brooding sense of mortality is darker and almost unmitigated. The grimness of this earlier period has no touch of light or the quiet smile of life anywhere on the horizon. This seems to take shape in the middle period, which I would also like to call a more mature period: it is marked by an inclusive understanding that has the complexity and ripeness of a larger vision or wisdom.