Durga Kainthola stages a stimulating, complex play between art, the symbolic and the immeasurable. The distinctiveness of these works lies in cohesion of images, simplicity of line and rendering of the pictorial. Throughout, concrete expression of her style flows as “extensions of my thoughts, day to day happening of things in life.” Portraiture dominates her oeuvre, in a signature expression of beings, of other artists. Confident and receptive, she relinquishes control and allows drama to unfold. How many minute attributes are transfixed, caught by the painter’s brush, the poet’s verse. An original and chimerical foresight, which celebrates work with a cosmopolitan flair and international cross-fertilization.

Kainthola’s palette boasts a vast vocabulary and rainbow realm of hue. At once lyrical, and poetic, wise and irreverent, witty and timeless, it illumines a global amphitheatre of her inquisitiveness. Metamorphosis connotes the infinite possibilities of transformation, concretization of an ineffable truth – of change, within continuity. Glimpsed in a library in 1982, an image of the Marilyn Monroe diptych by Warhol surfaces in her work in 2002…as magic of renewal, the crystal lacuna of past, present and future.

Magnifying a spectral lexicon, to signify art as synergy, Kainthola’s envisioned spaces stretch the imagination. Multifold personae from Indian mythology surrounded by flora and fauna encounter Warhol in Goddess Comes to New York, mounted within a light box. Throughout the History of Art series, a reverberation of ‘combines’ can be seen, part-painting, part-drawing. An astute, surprising effort at blending vibrant allegories. Poised against black-and-white backdrops, Kainthola effects resonance between the energies of Picasso, Gaughin, Modigliani, Duchamp, Tyeb Mehta and Souza, often with lotus borders and prominent friezes of Devnagri script. The Painter’s Studio, Kainthola’s own face serves as the canvas upon which Vermeer paints on his easel.

Pages from My Visual Notebook chronicle a movement from the abstract to concrete. Intricate tableaux unfold as a narrative hand scroll, unfurling a new language from when she first incorporated her own image and drew upon it with myriad tonalities of ink. A contemporary draughtswoman’s autobiographical take on the quixotic portrait of the Mona Lisa. Day after day, she produced another entity (computer generated inkjet prints on paper and vinyl) and worked on its surface…these became her ‘diary’. On one single page, two twentieth century masters of different genres, V.S. Naipaul and Bhupen Khakhar, materialize, as if to orchestrate a ‘ thinking out of the box’ dialogue of simile and narrative realism.

A most adroit example of this fluidity is the triptych, Autobiography of an Artist, Amrita SherGil. One panel portrays SherGil’s letter to her parents, the second art from Ajanta, and the third SherGil herself seated. Kainthola’s work honours the interconnectivity of art, stated in SherGil’s letter: “Modern art has led me to the comprehension + appreciation of Indian painting + sculpture.” A strong, original painter who in her own life and creativity bridged modernism between the East and West.

Influences of Surrealism’s serious experimental attitude toward the subconscious characterize work such as The Kiss. One butterfly impasto emblazons Monroe’s lips like a mercurial censor and another in her hair seems an Art Nouveau barrette. An elliptic embrace of the concrete and the fantastic share centre arena, to realize a tenuous unity of scale, subject and composition. Perhaps, Kainthola’s work, throughout its diverse phases and painterly endeavours, juggling contextual synapses and lenses, can be seen as ‘gestalt’ (Ger. configuration).

On another dais, consider the elegance and fancifulness of the panoramic piece, The Three Graces. Small-scale drawings are intense and subtle in character, a precursor to the latest ambitious solo paintings, The Last Judgment, Modigliani and Nefertiti. Kainthola’s imagination is incessantly changing scenes, dangling scenarios across the picture plane.

At any time, retracing and commingling spheres of memory and inspiration: observed prints in the sand on Bombay beaches appear as the footprints of Raza and Hussain on earlier canvases (again this trace quintessence of art), lines from T.S. Eliot’s poems, an ongoing aesthetic homage to fiercely gifted woman painters, in particular Frida Kahlo and Amrita SherGil (esteemed for their inventive worlds), as well as pop icons, classical deities, old masters and modern iconoclasts.

Kainthola blends diverse figure-ground liaison and rich pigmentation from the vista of art history, from classical Western (think of Correggio and Da Vinci) and Indian court painting (Mughal and Rajput miniatures), to the most established and controversial of modernist procreation. Transcribed with a novel spontaneity, her brush and pen act like a glass lantern, casting shadows, uncovering mental pictures. Furthermore, The Last Judgment (print on canvas with acrylic/mixed media) reconfigures classical references, juggling the meaning of portrayal.

Dialectics of creativity mark a swirling, omnipresent meeting of the physical and metaphysical. “The creation of an icon is an art of the same order of the creation of the world.” From one composition to another, Kainthola summons a continuum of abstract and representational, seemingly the blend of matter and reflection. And so does her wand paint its energetic wit and passion beyond our minds, casting an intuitive metamorphosis and vital fusion of colour and form.


Elizabeth Rogers
2005





Canvas caravan

Shoma A Chatterji

ALL creative people love reinventing themselves constantly. So what makes Durga Kainthola special? Well, extraordinary painting ability apart, it is her courage and will to embrace new technologies for her work and, at the same time, an unwavering commitment to traditional art forms that make her a different breed.
Durga (43), now based in Delhi, is now seen as one of the most talented artists in the country. Her single work, Mother and Child, selected for Tina Ambani’s first Harmony Exhibition in Mumbai, was bought by Ambani herself almost as soon as it was put up.
Born in Kolkata, Durga comes from Garhwal in Uttaranchal. By the time she was six, the family had moved to Mumbai, where she joined the JJ School of Art after finishing school. Footprints were what formed the central focus in her first exhibition. “For me, footprints at that time, represented the human form, the part indicating the whole, both metaphorically and figuratively,” says Durga.
A visit to Juhu beach gave her an opportunity to discover footprints as her symbol of creative expressions. Earlier, she had tried several modes of visuals — landscapes, heads, portraits, abstracts and nudes, etc. “I was hardly content,” says Durga. “There was always a feeling of being unfulfilled, disillusioned, and even frustrated at times.”
But things changed ever since Durga came across a man walking on a seashore. Her eyes were on the man’s footprints on the sands till waves washed them away. The transformation came about and Durga felt she had found “my destination and and direction”. Earlier, death was her subjects of many of her oils and graphics after one of her “brilliant friends ended his own life”.
She did her post-graduation at MS University, Baroda, where she learnt the basics of narrative work, using oil on canvas and water-colour on paper. She could churn out figures that “floated in space”.
“I just tried experiment with them. There we had Nasreen Mohamedi, who understood the need of each individual student and guided them accordingly,” Durga says about her “teacher and mentor”. I learnt to blend ability with innovation. The art school experience freed me of the compulsions of the mundane ties but kept me tied to the values and emotions that make both life and art meaningful,” she adds.
Goddess Comes to New York, her first painting of digital prints on canvas was on Andy Warhol, his work and success as a metaphor. The series was placed in a catalogue form so it travelled across the world before the Holland Art Gallery picked it up and invited Durga for a solo show.
In the midst of the modern techno, Durga painted a canvas inspired by a famous TS Elliot. Do I Dare Disturb the Universe depicted a headless man wearing suit and tie and a headless woman wearing bikini flaunting her slim abdomen.
Durga’s is a wonderful journey, from her first exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai in 1987 to Amsterdam in 2004. In Holland, she was the only artist to represent India. Warhol and the History of Art, a collation of 50 paintings chiefly portrayed “the East’s presentation to the West”.
“I always move along with times and technology and, as an artist, I wouldn’t like to act like a slave to them. But I must say I owe my foundation to JJ School of Art,” Durga says.
Her interest, which is rather unusual, in Andy Warhol is traced back to her school days. The school library had more books on Western art than on miniatures or Indian schools. One day, Durga chanced upon Warhol’s Marlyn Dyptich 1962. “The book raised my curiosity, a few days later, but I forgot all about it. It experience returned much later, thanks to Rajani Hebbar, daughter of KK Hebbar, who taught us history of art at JJ School of Art. I also saw the works of MF Hussain, a man I greatly admire.
“He both paints and experiments, with countless colours and shades. His work inspired me to start experimenting. I particular like the strength of his lines. Once I painted a portrait of him holding an umbrella. Later, I did sculptures. In fact, I’d place him alongside Pablo Picasso as a creative thinker.”
About art, Durga says, “It is is an expression of my thoughts, conjuring up myriad of images, consciously or sub-consciously. The worldly experience becomes an integral part of the actual metamorphosis that gives new meanings and depths to every creation I make, over time and space, colour and light, plane and dimension, music and rhythm, history and infinity.
Thankfully, art’s horizon is widening. Art is something that cannot restricted a few subjects or themes. It goes beyond the frame, colour, space and light. Like a poem, art expresses itself differently to different people and has a language of its own. It’s like Braille, a language (or essence) that only those without sight can understand or feel.”
In 1999, Durga bought a computer, a scanner and a printer and with them her experiments with art and technology began. With a self-portrait, she made herself both her object and subject. She took out 50 prints of the portrait and kept hoping “something new” will come out.
Her patience paid. What followed soon was a series, Pages from My Visual Notebook. She began drawing the thoughts and experiences on the printed image as one documents one’s own experiences in a diary.
With that began Durga’s journey to world of portraits. She painted portraits of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, whose works “inspired me profoundly”. Then she moved on to digital prints on canvas and now is painting images from history, art, popular culture and even celebrities.
“I don’t get carried away by praise. Nor am I feel down by criticisms. In fact, I’ve learnt a lot from critics, who represent the common man,” says Durga.
Durga owes a lot to her parents who never interfered in what she chose to do. “I was never questioned about my aims. I chose my career, my husband, and so far I have lived my own life on my own terms. I love kids and I have three. Even when I help my children in their homework, the creative mind in me is active. It’s a constant process of creation and re-creation. I have been painting images since I was a toddler. I still enjoy it and never feel any pressure. Nor have I ever allowed myself to get bogged down with thoughts like if galleries would like my works, if the media would write good things about me, if my paintings would sell,” she says.



06.04.2006

Theatrics of Art
In Durga Kainthola Oeuvre
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