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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, September 18: An artist cannot be a baker, kneading the same round bread every day. Nothing better could express multi-dimensional artist Dashrath Patel. And nothing can prepare you for the vastness of his repertoire.
The spacious halls and the winding corridors of the colonial National Gallery of Modern Art today held a feast for the visual sense. Five decades of Dashrath Patel’s work, curated by Sadanand Menon. And just about every alphabet of Indian contemporary art could be found.
The well-curated exhibition of the 50 years of Dashrath’s work, was definitely, the event of evenings. The Capital’s cognoscenti made their presence felt in all their silk and finery, and the smooth-talking. There was not a single known art-collector or art-historian or high-brow socialite or artist who did not put in an appearance at today’s opening.
The 71-year-old artist in a sparkling white munda-vesti and pony-tailed white-hair, seemed quite immune to the waves of affable enthusiasm and the clicking cameras around him, what with other artists, like Jatin Das, canvassing for his show.
From ceramics, paintings, photography, design, posters to exquisitely woven carpets and multi-media collages — Dashrath has traversed it all. Putting his inimitable stamp on each genre of expression he has touched. An achievement that, perhaps, makes him the first fully-evolved multi-media artist of the country.
What touched the eyes and the mind most, was his evident submission to the forms and the languages of art he has chosen to work on. It is a kind of quiet romance, where there is no attempt to startle the subject with craftiness.
Whether it is a mere litho-poster or a dainty ceramic or a black-white photograph of the legendary Bharatanatyam dancer Bala Swaraswati or creative dancer Chandralekha (she was present filling up the exhibition hall with her laughter) the artist deals with every discipline with love.
“How does it matter with what the poetry is written?” he says, “A gold pen makes not poetry better, nor a pencil inferior. It is what you write. That is more important”.
Dashrath, who received his Padma Shri for excellence in design in 1981, was set on the course of a multi-dimensional exploration of the visual medium thanks to an early association with Harindranath Chattopadhyaya and Debi Prasad Roy Choudhury. An apprenticeship under the legendary Czech master ceramist Eckert got him interested in formal learning. And there are not many forms of visual art that he has not mastered.
An acknowledged innovator in disciplines like, industrial design, industrial ceramics, multi-screen projection, he is also a world-acclaimed photographer. The vast body of work is on display was proof.
“I was always into interlinking with other arts. An artist who can paint, should also sculpt, should have a feel for dance, music, photography. Only then can you capture the light and the colour and the sense of space, that make up India,” he explains.
