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拍品专文
He [Pyne] is fascinated by water: the force and magnitude of it, the play of water as maya, the lurking fear of drowning.
- Geeti Sen, 1999
Painted in 1970, Under the Red Cloud (or The Amphibian) belongs to a formative moment in Pyne’s practice. By the turn of the decade, Pyne had honed his distinctive use of tempera, building surfaces through fine, layered applications of colour that lent his canvases both density and luminosity. In Under the Red Cloud (or The Amphibian), Pyne emphasises texture and ornament, which sumptuously adorn the canvas, against which the essential elements of his mature symbolic language are introduced and crystallised. Within the selection of the artist’s work in the Sublime Shadows collection, this painting stands as the earliest example of this fully realised approach.
The present lot is so richly laden with Pyne’s symbolic and surrealist imagery that it fittingly has been attributed with two distinct titles. The composition focuses on a riverbank; a humanoid figure, dressed only in an orange cloth around the waist, clambers out of the blue waters as if enchanted by the long, pale flame that emanates from the lamp next to it. Overhead hangs a looming red cloud and, adjacent to it, a gem-like sun.
Pyne refers directly to the river in his most significant works; it is a recurring theme, a stage on which to place his protagonists. The river in Pyne’s work is not merely a setting but a place of passage, charged with psychological and symbolic meaning. There is often reference to the river Styx from Greek mythology and the ferryman, an anti-hero outside of time who transports the souls of the dead across it to the afterlife. The act of crossing water becomes a metaphor for movement between states, from life into death, from the known into the unknown. Water itself is a paradox: it gives life, we are all born from it and require it to sustain us; however, to be submerged, to give ourselves up to it, would cause death by drowning.
Here, the ‘amphibian’ is a creature that belongs both to water and land, one that can simultaneously traverse these two states. Pyne became obsessed with these heroes and anti-heroes who occupy such dualities. The Fisherman (lot 8) is one such example, and The Amphibian of the present lot perhaps represents his genesis – a primordial fisherman, one that can exist beneath the surface. The amphibian is a natural metaphor for the space between surface and depth, the seen and the imagined, life and death, light and its shadow. The protagonist’s ability to plunge the depths of Pyne’s sacred waters is reinforced by the blue flourishes of water droplets that radiate outwards from its figure as if an aquatic halo. The protagonist’s chest also emits an opaque golden radiance. Pyne characteristically obfuscates whether this comes from external adornment or is the internal light generated by this liminal creature as it comes ashore.
The riverbank itself, as with most of the surfaces in Pyne’s work of this period, is rendered with an almost fetishistic devotion to surface. It is as if the very land wears a skin that glimmers, much as the sun gleams off sand on a hazy summer day. Sen describes how it was the artist’s command of tempera that helped him create this aesthetic, writing, “This new method, derived from old techniques, permits him to layer his canvases with colour upon colour – so that they seem to glow from within” (G. Sen, Ganesh Pyne, Revelations, Calcutta, 1999, p. 13).
The lamp introduces another fundamental theme in Pyne’s early practice. “The enigmatic presence of this vertical flame recurs in most of Pyne’s pictures, relating to his early fascination with light. This symbol surfaces in his mature works such as The Amphibian” (G. Sen, Ibid., 1999, p. 69). The flame, like the river or the lamp, is another symbol of life and of death. The red cloud, from which the work takes its initial title, further destabilises the scene. It functions not as a natural phenomenon but as a structural disruptor, a charged and ambiguous field. Rather than presenting as ominous or sinister, the red cloud evokes the lingering brilliance of the setting sun, further suspending the figure within a transitional and indeterminate space. The small, spherical, jewel-like sun pales before the lamp’s long flame and the red cloud which engulfs it.
When attempting the impossible task of unpacking and deciphering Pyne’s work, it must be remembered that “These images have an ambiguous quality [...]” and are “not easy to unravel.” This is Pyne at his best, as ultimately, “Here is a painter who thinks and writes like a poet [...] who dreams and who believes in the play of the imagination” (G. Sen, Ibid., 1999, p. 14, 12).
- Geeti Sen, 1999
Painted in 1970, Under the Red Cloud (or The Amphibian) belongs to a formative moment in Pyne’s practice. By the turn of the decade, Pyne had honed his distinctive use of tempera, building surfaces through fine, layered applications of colour that lent his canvases both density and luminosity. In Under the Red Cloud (or The Amphibian), Pyne emphasises texture and ornament, which sumptuously adorn the canvas, against which the essential elements of his mature symbolic language are introduced and crystallised. Within the selection of the artist’s work in the Sublime Shadows collection, this painting stands as the earliest example of this fully realised approach.
The present lot is so richly laden with Pyne’s symbolic and surrealist imagery that it fittingly has been attributed with two distinct titles. The composition focuses on a riverbank; a humanoid figure, dressed only in an orange cloth around the waist, clambers out of the blue waters as if enchanted by the long, pale flame that emanates from the lamp next to it. Overhead hangs a looming red cloud and, adjacent to it, a gem-like sun.
Pyne refers directly to the river in his most significant works; it is a recurring theme, a stage on which to place his protagonists. The river in Pyne’s work is not merely a setting but a place of passage, charged with psychological and symbolic meaning. There is often reference to the river Styx from Greek mythology and the ferryman, an anti-hero outside of time who transports the souls of the dead across it to the afterlife. The act of crossing water becomes a metaphor for movement between states, from life into death, from the known into the unknown. Water itself is a paradox: it gives life, we are all born from it and require it to sustain us; however, to be submerged, to give ourselves up to it, would cause death by drowning.
Here, the ‘amphibian’ is a creature that belongs both to water and land, one that can simultaneously traverse these two states. Pyne became obsessed with these heroes and anti-heroes who occupy such dualities. The Fisherman (lot 8) is one such example, and The Amphibian of the present lot perhaps represents his genesis – a primordial fisherman, one that can exist beneath the surface. The amphibian is a natural metaphor for the space between surface and depth, the seen and the imagined, life and death, light and its shadow. The protagonist’s ability to plunge the depths of Pyne’s sacred waters is reinforced by the blue flourishes of water droplets that radiate outwards from its figure as if an aquatic halo. The protagonist’s chest also emits an opaque golden radiance. Pyne characteristically obfuscates whether this comes from external adornment or is the internal light generated by this liminal creature as it comes ashore.
The riverbank itself, as with most of the surfaces in Pyne’s work of this period, is rendered with an almost fetishistic devotion to surface. It is as if the very land wears a skin that glimmers, much as the sun gleams off sand on a hazy summer day. Sen describes how it was the artist’s command of tempera that helped him create this aesthetic, writing, “This new method, derived from old techniques, permits him to layer his canvases with colour upon colour – so that they seem to glow from within” (G. Sen, Ganesh Pyne, Revelations, Calcutta, 1999, p. 13).
The lamp introduces another fundamental theme in Pyne’s early practice. “The enigmatic presence of this vertical flame recurs in most of Pyne’s pictures, relating to his early fascination with light. This symbol surfaces in his mature works such as The Amphibian” (G. Sen, Ibid., 1999, p. 69). The flame, like the river or the lamp, is another symbol of life and of death. The red cloud, from which the work takes its initial title, further destabilises the scene. It functions not as a natural phenomenon but as a structural disruptor, a charged and ambiguous field. Rather than presenting as ominous or sinister, the red cloud evokes the lingering brilliance of the setting sun, further suspending the figure within a transitional and indeterminate space. The small, spherical, jewel-like sun pales before the lamp’s long flame and the red cloud which engulfs it.
When attempting the impossible task of unpacking and deciphering Pyne’s work, it must be remembered that “These images have an ambiguous quality [...]” and are “not easy to unravel.” This is Pyne at his best, as ultimately, “Here is a painter who thinks and writes like a poet [...] who dreams and who believes in the play of the imagination” (G. Sen, Ibid., 1999, p. 14, 12).