Students block traffic in protest against fee hike
Our Correspondent

Ghaziabad, November 13
The law students of MMH College, Ghaziabad, today took out a procession and held up the traffic, in protest against the recent fee hike.

After a meeting with the students, the District Magistrate, Mr Santosh Kumar Yadav, asked them to deposit the fees for the current year and promised to write to the government recommending reduction in the fee hike for the ensuing years. Whatever decision the government takes will then be implemented, he said.

However, the principal, Dr M.P. Singh, refused to accept the forms unless the students paid the hiked fees. This infuriated the students and one group rushed to the collectorate and met the City Magistrate as the DM was away in Modinagar. Subsequently, the students held a demonstration at the crossing near the city bus stand, resulting in a traffic jam on the Delhi-Hapur road, with hundreds of vehicles stranded on either side.

In the meeting with the DM at the collectorate, the LLB students of the three-year course were asked to deposit only the current year’s fee.

The DM promised to send a letter to the government recommending that the fees of the previous years should not be hiked. Though the government had issued orders for increase in fees in 2001, the then principal had not shown any interest in the hike. However, the present principal decided to go ahead with the hike.

ARTSCAPE
Choyal is a dab hand at brushwork
Ravi Bhatia

A work of Nilanjan Ray.

Dhoomimal Art Centre is presenting a retrospective of paintings by P. N. Choyal, spanning his works from 1948 to 2003, at Rabindra Bhawan Galleries, Lalit Kala Akademi, Copernicus Marg, in the Capital. The show will be on till November 17.

For P. N. Choyal, it has been a long and fruitful journey as a close contemporary of the early Indian modernists of the 40s - the Progressive Art Group of Bombay, the Calcutta Group, and those of the Delhi Silpi Chakra of the post-Independence era.

Born in 1924, in Kota in Rajasthan, P. N. Choyal’s lifespan covers the most interesting period of cultural cross-fertilisation in the history of this subcontinent. In fact, in a way, his life is coeval with the history of modernity in Indian art. His life in art had a start when Ramgopal Vijaivargiya, 19 years his senior, had already become an influence in the fast changing art world of Rajasthan. Although, P. N. Choyal’s academic training in art covered the period between the mid-forties (School of Arts and Crafts, Jaipur) and early fifties (Sir J J School of Arts, Bombay), his search for modernity in the contemporary Indian context took a path different from those stalwarts we mentioned above. Since the beginning of his career, P. N. Choyal was against any wholesale borrowing from his illustrious forerunners.

An artwork of P. N. Choyal.

For him, it has been a long voyage across the tumultuous sea of world of art, through the rough weather of ‘internationalism’. He is still discovering new frontiers of pictorial means by way of techniques that express his renewed vision of a palette of fresh colours, which will respond to the new cycle of creativity.

Essentially an avid reader of literature and poetry, P. N. Choyal is still active and stubbornly refuses to grow old even at 80.

According to critics, P. N. Choyal reached the watershed of his career at the Slade College of Art, London (1961-62), when he was exposed not only to the European modernist tradition in general but also to the works of living English artists, such as Graham Sutherland, Victor Pasmore and Francis Bacon, along with those of the earlier generations, like Walter Sickert, Lucien Pissaro and Ausustus John. Not that he urged to ‘follow’ anyone of them. But, while in England Choyal must have tasted the irresistible charm of pure abstraction and the bouncing joy of “gestural” brushwork in oil. His paintings of the late seventies and nineties will bear this out.

From his painstaking classroom, Study from nude at Slade, London, emanated the amazing transformation of the human figure, particularly that of the woman. By the sixth decade of the last century, P. N. Choyal became deeply involved in the emerging realities.

A painting by Dinesh Bandhuni.

The overcrowded urban centres, the disinherited rural poor moving into towns and cities and the fast decay of traditional values in day-to-day living—all this affected the mature artist and stimulated his essentially Indian sensibilities for pictorial expression..

It was a universe very different from where he started. The humans, tightly packed into the heavily “spatulated” pictorial space of the Queue for Food (oil on board, 1962), are more symbolic in their pictorial significance than any realistic representation. His technique in oil eminently suited the paintings’ subject matter— the starving, faceless crowd. And his tempers of urban centres—men’s cramped living space, have the inner abstract structure spelt out in terms of the e ‘verticals’ and ‘horizontals’.

The 21st century brought him back to his initial, steadfast individuality—the individuality that restrained P. N. Choyal from blindly following any laboured expressions of modernity, or for that matter, any passing vogue of post-modernity.

For form’s sake

‘Saakaar’ - in Sanskrit means that which has form, is an exhibition of four bodies of work, each invoking form to make a personal statement. Theme wise, each body of work is distinct from the other, both in its medium as well as the aspect in which it explores form. The Exhibition is on at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhawan, till November 17.

Bandeep captures elusive forms of rising smoke and tint drops dissolving in water to produce sinuous images that lend themselves to layered interpretations. Using powerful lines, Dinesh Banduni creates fluent anatomical sketches as his tribute to the ideal of the ‘Inner Warrior’. Human forms and rich colour coalesce on Nilanjan’s monitor to fashion cerebral specimens of digital art that render our subconscious and the dream states on the canvas. Subachan’s intricate layering of ink on canvas creates brooding, veiled forms that reveal inner states—both sensual and sublime. While each artist works on a different theme, a distinct use of form constitutes the core element of each effort. Once the eye settles, this underlying element surfaces in the vision.

The diverse efforts now appear as dance steps, celebrating the manner in which expression takes form. When this happens, you are looking at the substance of ‘Saakaar’.

Down memory lane

An exhibition, ‘Early Views of India’, through engravings and lithographs by Solvyns, Daniells, Home, Soltykoff, Wildemar at India Habitat Centre, Core 6A (Near Eatopia), Habitat Palace, Lodhi Road was virtually a walk down memory lane.

Until the last 30 years of the 18th century, the British public had no visual idea of India. It was only after 1770, when professional artists began visiting India to observe Indian life through British eyes and taste the local flavour that India began to capture the popular vision of the British public. These artists made oil paintings for local British residents as well as drawing, which later could be made into oils or engravings, litho prints for books, woodcarvings for news journals etc.

The first professional landscape artist to visit India was William Hodges (1744-97). Even more important, from the point of view of broadening the popular vision of India, were the works of Thomas Daniel (1749-1840) and his young nephew, William (1769-1837). They went as far as the North of Haridwar via Delhi and Agra and spent a lot of time in the Garhwal region. While travelling from Madras to Bangalore, they visited the hill forts of Tipoo, Madura, and even went up to Cape Comorin.

The engravings and lithographs at the exhibition are drawn from the immense reservoir of views of the Indian subcontinent produced by European artists roughly between the years 1780-1870. They are the work of amateurs and professionals. The professionals - William Hodges, Thomas Daniel, and Balthazard Solvyns came to India in the hope of finding patronage among the British merchants and Army officers, and later administrators, in the country.

DANCE BEAT
Ecological ballet

Rekha Mehra strikes a pose.

Kathak exponent Rekha Mehra presented her new ballet ‘Dhaani Chunaria’ at the Triveni Kala Sangam auditorium on Saturday evening. Choreographed by Rekha Mehra, the ballet based on Kathak style, was inspired by environmental pollution.

The evening was organised by the Urvashi Dance, Music, Art and Cultural society. The chief guest of the occasion was Dr G. V. G. Krishnamurthy, former Election Commissioner. Rekha Mehra and her students presented a number of items, including a thumari-based dance. This was followed by ‘Dhaani Chunaria’. The ballet explores the theme of pollution of all kinds affecting air, water and land, that is, the green cover of mother earth.

It tries to convey that pollution is the course of modern lifestyle of comports and luxury and man himself is fully responsible for today’s environmental imbalance and natural calamities in our own motherland and the rest of the globe.

The ballet attempts to express the man’s suffering on account of natural disasters and the realisation of his fault. The turns to gods and to mother earth and seeks their forgiveness. Mother earth them asks man to restore the flora and fauna (the green cover), which his mistakes have destroyed.

Besides the choreography by Rekha Mehra, art and stage direction was given by Rajiv Mehra. Pt Jwala Prasad has composed the music. A number of personalities from different fields were honoured on the occasion. Among them were Madan Chauhan MLA (UP), Anup Khanna, social worker (Noida), Arvind Gaur and Jitendra Gupta from theatre world, M. S. Azad, producer director C and M Communications, Madan Chandra, Principal, Birla Vidya Niketan, Kulveer Singh, Director, IES and K. K. Kohli.