Arts_Illustrated_-_February-March_2016

DIGITAL COPY ON MAGZTER

A Ramachandran and TV Santosh

I

t’s not just TV Santosh. Ask any young Indian

artist and the reply would be that he or she had

been following the works of A Ramachandran

since turning the attention to art. ‘I saw his work the

first time when I was student in Thrissur in a magazine

which carried an article about his Yayati series. It was

such a refreshing and liberating experience, especially

when the whole art community in Kerala was still under

the spell of some kind of Neo-Tantric movement, and

believed that abstract, stylistic experiments as an ultimate

mode of modernist expression. We were on the way

to discovering the linguistic developments that took

place with Baroda narrative school and other figurative

movements.’ In a way, he says, Ramachandran’s Yayati

series was an eye opener that ‘opened up the possibilities

of various ways that one can look at one’s rich cultural

and mythological traditions, to be inspired and to

connect with the idea of contemporary’. It took a

long journey for Ramachandran to arrive at Yayati,

rejecting his earlier beliefs and discovering and arriving

at new resolves. The process, however, had begun early.

‘Every artist,’ Ramachandran says, ‘paints a Mona

Lisa in his lifetime. It took Leonardo da Vinci twelve

years to paint this great portrait, whereas I was barely

twelve when I painted my Mona Lisa.’ Yayati remains

his most memorable work. ‘What amazes me about

Ramachandran’s works,’ says Santosh, ‘is that they have

gone through several phases of changes. One of his

eklinji Fantasy, A. Ramachandran,

Oil On Canvas, 78" x 144", 2014.

Image Courtesy of Vadehra Art

Gallery and the Artist

(^52) / arts illustrated / feb 2016 - mar 2016 /IAF - Delhi Connecting Art