FLESH AND BONES Artist Vasundhara Tewari
Dr. Jai Maharaj
By Amit Sengupta
Agenda
The Pioneer
November 11, 1998
When I walk from across my house to the bus stop, it is not a happy
experience. I feel threatened. This city has become uncanny.
Especially for women. And why this city alone? Entire society seems
to be hurling itself towards insensitivity; women can feel it
instinctively and clearly, because they are constantly turned into
objects of this aggression. I am against aggression. My work is
totally against aggression. I celebrate strength, but to be
vulnerable is also my essential identity."
For painter Vasundhara Tewari, the male world of control, violence
and repression, is not incidental. It is there as a priori, as a
blunt factuality which is constantly shifting, and yet not losing
its cold, aggressive process; of the purdah which is also the idea
of being walled; of the ghungat, which is a veil of iron; of
language and gestures designed to desecrate.
There are multiple forms of substances and rituals which turn
metallic, like a frozen body, immortalised in its condemnation.
That is why she uses the aesthetic to liberate the self, the
figure, the body, skin, hands and hair, the raw and sublime secret
zones which are not secret anymore, the expressed layers, which are
forever secret. It is a bold celebration of the female nude as self
identity, almost magical, and beautiful. Like luminescent water, or
eyes, or yesterday's fragrance mixed with the body, which stays.
"I have never tried to clothe her. At the same time, I did not make
her pretty, delicate. I am trying to reach her inner experience.
Her real being, which is suppressed. This is not possible in an
exhibitionist nude, or in the image of a pin-up girl. The
difference comes naturally, I don't have to work on this
difference. It comes naturally.
. . I had to learn not to imbibe and express these norms which
stifled me, as I became self-conscious. I think we lose grip of
ourselves if we become too cerebral. A painting must come from the
gut. The mind comes later. Thinking dilutes the intensity of
experience. It can stifle your forms."
It is the search for the beautiful which rebels. Beauty is not
without character or nuance. It contains many worlds, of unfreedoms
and possibilities of freedom. Vasundhara's female nudes, in their
many images, make this idea of the beautiful possible. As
affirmation of life.
She was one of the first woman painters in the country who was
young but quietly rebellious. She simultaneously broke through the
obscene iron curtain of the objectified female erotic and the
conservative figure of the female body, and liberated it into the
expanse which forever melts into new thresholds, becoming resolute
and vulnerable at the same time.
Says Vasundhara, "If I draw and create with my mind, it will lead
to inferior art. It should come from within me. Even from that
within of which I am not aware of. If I concentrate too much on
rationality, I will lose my intensity, my spontaneity, my ecstacy
of making and unmaking figures. If it is nothing but cerebral art,
then by the time I finish it, it will become totally phony. Devoid
of sensitivity and feeling."
Since the time she has been drawing with the pencil, and in the
early ‘80s, she has experimented with the female nude in mixed
media. She has used acrylic, watercolour and charcoal, pastel, cut-
outs, conte, coal, stencils. Since then she has broken more
barriers. "What could one say, especially a woman, when she is
young. If you say you want to be a painter, it is considered
blasphemy. You can become a doctor, a teacher, but how can you
become a painter? When you grow up as a girl, there is tremendous
pressure to conform and be a social being. The spirit is caged. I
did not care for the social being. I wanted my space, so any
censorship will also be mine. I stood my ground. I knew that to
discover things within myself, I have to draw and imagine by
myself. This is my private world, my exclusive space. This will
remain with me. From here I will take flight.
. . Painting was my path. Looking at something never interested
me. My form is intrinsically related to me. Creativity is such a
hit and miss thing. It's like playing cricket. It is also a way of
life, that is so precious that you are willing to risk your life.
You are willing to be a nothing, a nobody. But being a nobody is
itself a great challenge, a motivating force. It is the hunger for
progress, for success and comfort that can soften you and take you
neither here nor there. Survival against the stream strengthens
your spirit.
. . When I made the woman, I never did it like the woman as
woman, but the woman as the human form, as the liberating spirit.
Woman in the nude is as she is, totally confident. I really don't
expect everybody to understand her. I am not doing abstract art, I
am doing figures, flowers, forms. I also used the flower because
one always uses things in nature, forms and images with which you
subconsciously relate to. In literature and in art, the woman's
form is very docile. So it was logical for me to use a female body
rather than a man's body.
. . In our temple sculptures, there are different layers of the
female body. Layers and curves are accentuated. But there is
character, their bodies have poise, dignity. I believe in the
beauty of the form, the form of the body, flesh and bones."
Sorry to interrupt, but what if the nude is attacked, in its image,
as it has happened so many times in the past, also in recent past?
"I am terribly afraid of fundamentalism of any kind. Our social
system has become deeply disturbing. The whole thing of repression
is hateful. Powerful and corrupt men have distorted everything,
made everything vulgar. And we are accepting it.
. . It seems, now, we all have to make only horses, like Hussain.
Or maybe monkeys. This would be safer.
. . . But I will resist and protect my private space till the end.
My female form and image will still take flight, they will never be
able to cannot stop her."
Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the
educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Source - http://www.the-pioneer.com/
Jai Maharaj
Jyotishi, Vedic Astrologer
"A king, though endowed with little prowess,
starting on an expedition at the proper time, in
view of the good positions of the planets, achieves
greatness that is eulogised in the scriptures."
- Brhat Samhita, 104.60
http://www.flex.com/~jai
Om Shanti