Visual Arts and I…musings of a rookie curator (part 2)

Should I clarify that my love for art, or my obsession with art, as may like to term it, is not an exercise in self-aggrandizement; since I can neither sketch nor paint, I can easily excuse people who think so. But more than that, as a student of science and later still worse, engineering, I have always found myself deficient in appreciating some more exquisite chattels of life, like visual art. I would visit museums and art galleries and while I wore an appreciative look deliberately, the truth was that I was mostly lost. I can, therefore, quite shamelessly say that all this is indeed a means to extract some vicarious pleasure out of the visual treasures created by others. I attribute my attempts at experimenting with art and artists and then writing books on my experiences with them to a wistful desire for getting rid of this deficiency. This deficiency also prompts me towards the endeavour to snoop peek into the minds of the artists not merely by looking at their art works but also by engaging them in discussions about their works.

At the same time, even the sense that one was instrumental in creation of extraordinary from the mundane is very stimulating, very heady. That is another reason I pursue this madness. A very redeeming feature has been that I discovered that the world around me was full of people pursuing some madness or the other. My tryst in the insane world of visual arts was not happenstance; this must be my calling and I could not ignore it.

Let me recall the poet, Sultan Akhtar for these befitting lines:

Fursat mein raha karte hain fursat se zyada

  masroof hain ham log zaroorat se zyada
  tanha main hirasan nahin is kar-e-junoon mein
  sahra hai pareshan miri vahshat se zyada

(We have all the freedom, even more than leisure and we are needlessly busy and occupied. I am not the only one harassed by this frenzy of madness, the wilderness around me is more agitated than my frenzy.)

You are, by now, quite familiar with I taking recourse to the hackneyed declaration that IR had always been an accidental engine for generation of art, reflecting the unique heritage and multi-cultural ethos of our country. I keep parroting it because I had gained immense comfort in the fact that I was instrumental in starting the art movement, Safar (Support And Appreciation For Art & Railways). I told myself that I would continue this effort wherever my railway job took me. After the initial experiments in Bangalore division, wherever, however, was Berlin, Germany where I was stationed for three years as the Railway Advisor in the Embassy of India. A strange new place for me where I made many artist friends but their understanding of Indian contemporary art was limited, with obvious gaps, and a novice like me could hardly bridge that. Three years in Berlin, apart from regular work and chores, was a series of bewildering  and even mystifying visits to some of the finest art museums in Europe; I could, however, hardly hop into a journey of understanding western art with these artist friends as that would be even more foreign to me, the maxim that art knew no barriers, notwithstanding. If appreciation and promotion of art was my calling, then I had to keep in touch with the nitty-gritty. I had plans to hold a workshop of Indian Contemporary artists spank in the main concourse of the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station); the plan did not materialize due to certain reasons, one of them being the prohibitive expense involved in arranging the travel and accommodation of artists from India. It remained pipe-dream but I did manage to do the next best thing possible: we held exhibition of Indian Railways and its rich heritage at seven stations of Deutsche Bahn (German Railways), including Frankfurt, Berlin Süd, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Dresden etc. 

Pictures from exhibitions at main stations of German Railways

At any rate, I was flustered enough with inaction in my ordained pastime and natural ennui, itching to be back in India so I could revert to my chosen aberration. I was back, after three years in Germany, in the somewhat familiar environs of Indian Railways. Not quite the hustle and bustle of railway stations and trains but almost there. I took over as the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Rail Wheel Factory in Bangalore.

Let me recall my first day in the factory. What a day! Little did I know that making of a wheel was hard-core engineering only at one plane, it could be so much more on imaginative levels and planes. There I was, in the middle of red hot steel, carbon dust and screeching conveyors. Golden yellow red spray escaped from a furnace or a ladle brimming with metal lava, like the flourish of sparks rising on Diwali night or a shower of coloured flecks descending in Holi. But the workers went about their job as if it were some harmless intrusion in whatever they were doing at the time. As the days passed, a visit every day to the factory opened up new spectacles; even as I was learning to be careful without being alarmed, I was, all the time, drinking in these captivating scenes, these delectable extravaganza, and these mesmerizing moments.

I would talk to the officers there about the mesmerizing effect the process of wheel-making had on me and they would wonder if there were wheels within wheels. It was not so facile a comprehension yet that naked dance of molten metal and workers dressed in astronaut-like suits, giving form to the sheer beauty of a wheel set can indeed be a subject of creative art.

  

Are the vibes we experience just an outcrop of idle empathy or are we looking at some quarry cum bonanza for visual artists? Metal is indeed very popular with artists for use as a medium of their creativity. But can there be many who would find inspiration in our industrial processes? To an observant viewer, the process of scrap steel turning to red hot molt and then solidifying to a hardy wheel, is indeed bewitching. This transformation of raging red liquid into a benign cold grey round mover is handled by the workers in a seemingly sedate manner, making the whole exercise so magical. I always felt like staring at this magic for hours on end. Even as these thoughts engulfed me, they also invoked great happiness. Elated and ecstatic, I thought, “Am I not blessed to be in the midst of such a celebration of human endeavour?”

Wheels in the making at the factory

And the wheel-makers

I reverted, pretty soon after the initial wonder-struck days, to the old friend and guide, Dr. M.S.Murthy, the famous Bangalore artist. As I took him around the foundry, he agreed with me that casting a wheel is an inspiring phenomenon. But he added a new dimension as well. In his own inimitable way he observed something interesting. “The way you guys are chock-a-block with wheels and the way you arrange them! It’s a pleasing installation art for me,” he commented. My mind was made. I had to act……Art must imitate life once again.

Wheels and wheels…installation art?

I began floating the seemingly bizarre idea among the diehard officers, supervisors and staff of the factory. They soon rolled up in greater numbers and with greater fervour than I would have ever imagined. Not knowing what was in store, these art enthusiasts were encouraged to give shape to their creative ideas. They came alive with a checklist of various possibilities and potentialities. And slowly, the face of the factory started to change from a drab jungle of metal and scrap to a large manicured terrace garden with exciting images and visuals, encompassing many facets of mural art and sculpture.

  

Wall murals sprang up in the factory premises in no time

“The great artist is the simplifier”, once said Vincent Van Gogh. We had to simplify the quest for pleasure, not complicate it. With the help of these enthusiastic factory worker, some of them artists themselves but not many, our message was finding great acceptance and appreciation. Art and heavy engineering-the mind dismisses it aside, thinking they are incongruous, but the living colours and images, sculpture and artwork, became proofs that they can gel.

 

I am tempted to quote these famous lines of the poet, Majrooh Sultanpuri, 

 

Main akela ha chala tha janib-e-manzil magar

log  saath  aate  gaye  aur  karvan banta gaya

(I began my journey towards the destination all alone but people kept joining me and a caravan got made)

It was all about a play between your eyes, your mind and your soul. "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” (Mathew 6:22). Helena said, albeit in jealousy, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” The factory personnel were encouraged to think that it shouldn’t matter what an artwork looked like and that they would do good to enjoy them for the thought enshrined in them.

Metal sculptures were created by RWF staff and some professional artists

In addition to the wall and plate murals, metal sculptures and installations done by the RWF club members and other staff, we also engaged NGOs and professional artists to supplement and complement these efforts. An art camp was also organized in some top artists of Karnataka participated with Sri Syed Kirmani, the famous cricketer and a jovial, genial soul, as the chief guest. These professional artists took the expression of making of wheels to another level of creativity.

Art camp inside the factory premises

An art gallery was opened in the foyer of the factory administrative building, the first such venture in any factory of Indian Railways. Today, a visit to this gallery is in the nature of sine qua non today for anyone coming to Rail wheel factory for the first time.

The RWF art gallery and art club members

My second journey with visual art among wheels in Rail Wheel Factory had taken off splendidly. It continued magnificently in this dyed-in-the-wool industrial setting, which had hitherto no familiarity with art and artists. No déjà vu. It certainly felt a lot different from what I had witnessed earlier. And as this dream run with visual art continued with great response, I had to record this historic experiment. So was born this coffee-table book titled “Reinventing The Wheel, Another Bangalore saga”, with a painting by Sri B.G.Gujarappa on the, capturing the essence. What exactly was I trying in a factory which manufactures wheels for railroads? Was I not basically reinventing the wheel? Hence the title.

The book cover and its launch by Sri Suresh Prabhu, the then Minister of Railways

As my term was about to end at Rail Wheel factory and I was slated to join the Integral Coach factory at Chennai, I looked back at my days in Bangalore, Berlin and Bangalore again remembered the poet Abdul Hameed Adam,

Afsana  chahte  the wo afsana ban gaya

main  husn-e-ittifaq se diwana ban gaya

mauj-e-hawa  se  zulf  jo  lahra gayi  tiri

mera shuoor lahzish-e-mastana ban gaya

(Don’t take it literally but what it means is that I was looking for a narration through beauty of coincidence I had become mad to make up a story. In a gush of wind as your hair wafted around, my consciousness assumed the nature of drunken stagger.)

(to be continued…)