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拍品專文
Beauty in art is perfection of form, depth of meaning, profound knowledge of the subject and the consequence of the artistic idea conveyed by the work. An accurate and impressive copying of life does not produce beauty. ‘You are not a lowly copyist but a poet’ wrote Honore de Balzac.
- Ganesh Pyne, 1990
While Ganesh Pyne’s technique and style were initially influenced by the works of Abanindranath Tagore and the Bengal School, they soon evolved from the gentle, narrative watercolors of the 1950s towards a more modernist vocabulary. Although his later work has also “been shown to possess mythic content and meaning, in no sense can it be called pure narrative […Here] fragments of a story [are] held together precariously by fine threads, interwoven between isolated elements by the use of an opaque light which envelops them. There is sensed also, in so many of these paintings, the lurking presence of that intruder and friend, death” (G. Sen, ‘Encounter in the Twilight Zone’, Image and Imagination, Five Contemporary Artists in India, Ahmedabad, 1996, p. 145).
After graduating from The Government College of Art and Craft in 1959, Pyne went to work at Mandar Studios, the first animation studio in India, where he honed his skills as a meticulous draughtsman. The studio was run by film director Mandar Mullick, who was keen to establish a vibrant animation industry in Calcutta similar to that of the Walt Disney Studios in California. Mullick brought veteran Disney animator Clair Weeks over to train his artists, and it was Weeks who taught Pyne how features could be distorted and exaggerated to convey different emotions. The artist continued to use this stylistic technique throughout his career to instill a sense of the uncanny in his paintings.
It was Mullick who introduced Pyne to European avant-garde cinema, which became one of his great passions. Gradually, objects and scenes from these films began to appear in Pyne’s paintings. One of the recurring motifs in his work, the fountain, was inspired by a scene from Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece, La Dolce Vita. “Pyne’s paintings carry more references to cinematic texts and stage productions than to lettered texts [...] That Pyne’s Before the Fountain [...] is an extended and static visual response to the [Trevi] Fountain sequence in Italian film director Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is obvious” (P. Ray, ‘From the Heart of Darkness’, A Painter of Eloquent Silence, Ganesh Pyne, New Delhi, 2018, p. 11).
In Fellini’s film, Anita Ekberg playing Sylvia decides to take a nighttime dip in Rome’s famous Trevi Fountain, getting Marcello, played by Marcello Mastroianni, to join her. This iconic scene has since become symbolic of seduction, beauty and hedonism, and has been referenced across the arts and literature, commonly referred to as ‘frolic in the fountain’. For Pyne, however, the fountain evoked the regenerative cycle of life and death. He recalled, “Suddenly when I was watching the film it struck, that possibly a fountain could be a life-cycle symbol, because the source of water is the same; the water gushes out again and again it comes back to the source. So I took it as a very significant symbol of the life-cycle” (Artist statement, N. Tuli, The Flamed-Mosaic, Indian Contemporary Painting, Ahmedabad, 1997, p. 358).
The present lot, a moonlit scene painted in 1974, is one of Pyne’s largest and most important works on canvas. On the left of the painted surface, a fountain elaborately carved from stone with two tiers and gargoyle-like finials, stands in the shadows. It does not seem to be functioning, and the water in its lower basin appears strangely static and opaque. An extinguished oil lamp, another regular motif in Pyne’s work, sits atop this structure, while a fanged serpent peeks out of its inert blue pool. All these symbols seem to reinforce what Sen termed ‘the lurking presence of that intruder and friend, death’ in the artist’s work. However, balancing their ominous presence and alluding to the cyclical nature of life and death, Pyne paints two luminous flowering vines flanking the fountain. It seems to be the mysterious allure of these plants and the aroma of their white blossoms that draws the disconcerting hybrid figure that occupies the other side of this frame near. Half-man half-bird, suspended in what appears to be a winged ribcage, perhaps it is this creature that will revive the fountain and reignite its lamp as he flies across it.
According to Sen, who wrote about this painting, “The winged creature beside the fountain is the critical element. Here the human head extends out of its caged body to inhale the perfumed flower [...] Half bird and half man, it evokes the mythical kinnaras, the celestial musicians from ancient paintings of Ajanta. Closer to the soil of Bengal, they remind us of the elusive caged bird of whom the Bauls sing, and of whom the poet Rabindranath Tagore exclaims, The bid of my desire has flown away, / and with him my heart’s joy. / Today the wind of madness has caught its wing, / Can the bird remain on its branch?” (G. Sen, Ganesh Pyne, Revelations, Calcutta, 1999, p. 63). However, Pyne, whose fascination with ambiguity and grey areas has a significant bearing on his work from this period, leaves his viewers guessing whether this hybrid creature is really a benevolent one, or whether, harpy-like, it is an agent of punishment and portent of even more darkness and death.
Laboriously rendered in translucent layers of tempera, this painting relies on the way that Pyne is able to manipulate light and color through his unique process to set a dramatic mood and draw attention to each element that constitutes the scene. Writing about his mastery of this medium, Ranjit Hoskote notes, “tempera gave Pyne both crispness of line and a sense of depth, the necessary illusion of volume as well as a sense of idyllic lightness [...] He is a master of patterning [...] This is how he controls the emotional chaos and the heart-breaking melancholia of his subject matter [...] The importance of shadows in Pyne’s art also means that it is attended by a basic ambivalence [...] Pyne’s images occupy the space of dream, the state of trance; and yet each of these paintings is like a journal entry, partly shared and partly withheld: the artist invites the viewer to play the game of understanding, to participate in the action of the painting and decode its significance without reducing it to explanation” (R. Hoskote, Ganesh Pyne: A Pilgrim in the Dominion of Shadows, Kolkata, 2005, pp. 13-16).
- Ganesh Pyne, 1990
While Ganesh Pyne’s technique and style were initially influenced by the works of Abanindranath Tagore and the Bengal School, they soon evolved from the gentle, narrative watercolors of the 1950s towards a more modernist vocabulary. Although his later work has also “been shown to possess mythic content and meaning, in no sense can it be called pure narrative […Here] fragments of a story [are] held together precariously by fine threads, interwoven between isolated elements by the use of an opaque light which envelops them. There is sensed also, in so many of these paintings, the lurking presence of that intruder and friend, death” (G. Sen, ‘Encounter in the Twilight Zone’, Image and Imagination, Five Contemporary Artists in India, Ahmedabad, 1996, p. 145).
After graduating from The Government College of Art and Craft in 1959, Pyne went to work at Mandar Studios, the first animation studio in India, where he honed his skills as a meticulous draughtsman. The studio was run by film director Mandar Mullick, who was keen to establish a vibrant animation industry in Calcutta similar to that of the Walt Disney Studios in California. Mullick brought veteran Disney animator Clair Weeks over to train his artists, and it was Weeks who taught Pyne how features could be distorted and exaggerated to convey different emotions. The artist continued to use this stylistic technique throughout his career to instill a sense of the uncanny in his paintings.
It was Mullick who introduced Pyne to European avant-garde cinema, which became one of his great passions. Gradually, objects and scenes from these films began to appear in Pyne’s paintings. One of the recurring motifs in his work, the fountain, was inspired by a scene from Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece, La Dolce Vita. “Pyne’s paintings carry more references to cinematic texts and stage productions than to lettered texts [...] That Pyne’s Before the Fountain [...] is an extended and static visual response to the [Trevi] Fountain sequence in Italian film director Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is obvious” (P. Ray, ‘From the Heart of Darkness’, A Painter of Eloquent Silence, Ganesh Pyne, New Delhi, 2018, p. 11).
In Fellini’s film, Anita Ekberg playing Sylvia decides to take a nighttime dip in Rome’s famous Trevi Fountain, getting Marcello, played by Marcello Mastroianni, to join her. This iconic scene has since become symbolic of seduction, beauty and hedonism, and has been referenced across the arts and literature, commonly referred to as ‘frolic in the fountain’. For Pyne, however, the fountain evoked the regenerative cycle of life and death. He recalled, “Suddenly when I was watching the film it struck, that possibly a fountain could be a life-cycle symbol, because the source of water is the same; the water gushes out again and again it comes back to the source. So I took it as a very significant symbol of the life-cycle” (Artist statement, N. Tuli, The Flamed-Mosaic, Indian Contemporary Painting, Ahmedabad, 1997, p. 358).
The present lot, a moonlit scene painted in 1974, is one of Pyne’s largest and most important works on canvas. On the left of the painted surface, a fountain elaborately carved from stone with two tiers and gargoyle-like finials, stands in the shadows. It does not seem to be functioning, and the water in its lower basin appears strangely static and opaque. An extinguished oil lamp, another regular motif in Pyne’s work, sits atop this structure, while a fanged serpent peeks out of its inert blue pool. All these symbols seem to reinforce what Sen termed ‘the lurking presence of that intruder and friend, death’ in the artist’s work. However, balancing their ominous presence and alluding to the cyclical nature of life and death, Pyne paints two luminous flowering vines flanking the fountain. It seems to be the mysterious allure of these plants and the aroma of their white blossoms that draws the disconcerting hybrid figure that occupies the other side of this frame near. Half-man half-bird, suspended in what appears to be a winged ribcage, perhaps it is this creature that will revive the fountain and reignite its lamp as he flies across it.
According to Sen, who wrote about this painting, “The winged creature beside the fountain is the critical element. Here the human head extends out of its caged body to inhale the perfumed flower [...] Half bird and half man, it evokes the mythical kinnaras, the celestial musicians from ancient paintings of Ajanta. Closer to the soil of Bengal, they remind us of the elusive caged bird of whom the Bauls sing, and of whom the poet Rabindranath Tagore exclaims, The bid of my desire has flown away, / and with him my heart’s joy. / Today the wind of madness has caught its wing, / Can the bird remain on its branch?” (G. Sen, Ganesh Pyne, Revelations, Calcutta, 1999, p. 63). However, Pyne, whose fascination with ambiguity and grey areas has a significant bearing on his work from this period, leaves his viewers guessing whether this hybrid creature is really a benevolent one, or whether, harpy-like, it is an agent of punishment and portent of even more darkness and death.
Laboriously rendered in translucent layers of tempera, this painting relies on the way that Pyne is able to manipulate light and color through his unique process to set a dramatic mood and draw attention to each element that constitutes the scene. Writing about his mastery of this medium, Ranjit Hoskote notes, “tempera gave Pyne both crispness of line and a sense of depth, the necessary illusion of volume as well as a sense of idyllic lightness [...] He is a master of patterning [...] This is how he controls the emotional chaos and the heart-breaking melancholia of his subject matter [...] The importance of shadows in Pyne’s art also means that it is attended by a basic ambivalence [...] Pyne’s images occupy the space of dream, the state of trance; and yet each of these paintings is like a journal entry, partly shared and partly withheld: the artist invites the viewer to play the game of understanding, to participate in the action of the painting and decode its significance without reducing it to explanation” (R. Hoskote, Ganesh Pyne: A Pilgrim in the Dominion of Shadows, Kolkata, 2005, pp. 13-16).