‘Art must emerge from life and its tribulations’: Ganesh Haloi

Sharp as ever at 86, Haloi urges artists to draw inspiration from Indian nature painting over Western realism.

The artist at work in his Kolkata residence. | Photo Credit: Akar Prakar

As I was looking at the works, I intuited that they were mapping specific places from memory—recording the sediments of history experienced first-hand while also documenting the afterimages of intensely perceived natural phenomena observed over a long period of time and later revisited.” These aphoristic words are from Adam Szymczyk’s essay appropriately titled, “The Song, Not the Words” from the book, Ganesh Haloi: A Rhythm Surfaces in the Mind, a sumptuous book on the Bengali artist published by Akar Prakar in association with Mapin Publishing. Szymczyk, curator-at-large at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, is echoing Haloi’s words here: “When I listen to music I am only aware of the rhythm. Nature, too, has a rhythm. My canvases are like the stage where each and every object gravitates to each other. Like magnets. This rhythm is akin to dance”. As the artistic director of the 2017 exhibition documenta 14, held in Athens (Greece) and Kassel (Germany), Szymczyk had chosen to display Haloi’s work. His lines in the essay encapsulate Haloi’s earthbound yet rarefied vision. Szymczyk is one of the contributors to the book on Haloi edited by Natasha Ginwala and Jesal Thacker.

The book was released at four venues—Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Mumbai, on November 11, 2022, where a retrospective (curated by Roobina Karode) of Haloi was also held; Akar Prakar in Kolkata on November 13, 2022; Kochi-Muziris Biennale on December 29, 2022; and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, on January 5. The artist was present only in Mumbai and Kolkata.

Jamalpur to Kolkata

Haloi, 86, has not been keeping well for some time. When I met him at his modest home in Salt Lake, Kolkata, in April he had been released from hospital a few days earlier. He spoke on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from his ideas of design to his views on the current art education scene. He seemed happy with the way the volume has turned out. “Adam [Szymczyk] is sensitive. He follows my autobiographical notes,” said Haloi. “Lahore-born art historian and artist Iftikhar Dadi of Cornell University [one of the contributors to the book] has quoted my ideas on art verbatim,” added the erudite artist, who is also adept at painting with words—a quality he shares with Abanindranath Tagore. His description of the Ajanta hills swelling in the monsoon and dwindling in winter in the book, Ganesh Haloi: Naishabder Chitrakar (Ganesh Haloi: The Painter of Silence), are very evocative.

Untitled 4: Gouache on handmade paper laid on board, 22 x 31.75 inch, 2021 | Photo Credit: Akar Prakar

Haloi was born in Jamalpur, now in Bangladesh, in 1936. He was uprooted from his home in 1950 in the wake of communal violence. After settling in Kolkata (where he did not have a fixed address for a long time), Haloi was assigned by the Archaeological Survey of India in the late 1950s to reproduce the frescoes of Ajanta. The murals on the antique cave walls left a lasting impression, shaping his early paintings. After his return from Ajanta in 1963 until his retirement, Haloi taught at the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. His views on art are strongly influenced by his experience as a pedagogue.

Unbeknownst to many, Haloi has, in his time, curated two major art exhibitions—the first of these, Day (the Bengali word translates roughly into ‘Liability’), held at Asutosh Hall of the Indian Museum in 1993, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the man-made Bengal Famine of 1943 in which millions of Indians perished. Haloi had organised it in tandem with the journalist and urban historian Nikhil Sarkar. The works of Somnath Hore, Chittaprosad, Zainul Abedin, Paritosh Sen, Gobardhan Ash and Bhabesh Sanyal, who had documented the famine, were exhibited. “Zainul Abedin’s wife came from Bangladesh with three of his works. So did Gobardhan Ash, who was in his 80s then,” recalled Haloi.

Childhood and youth

The second was the landmark exhibition on pre-Independence Bengal art, held as part of the Calcutta Metropolitan Festival of Art at the Calcutta Information Centre in December 1997: it attracted thousands of visitors, academics and art critics from all over India. Haloi had moved mountains to exhibit works going back to 1864 (a graphic print of Raja Rammohan Roy) and displayed 200 works rarely seen until then, some belonging to institutions that had made a virtue of sticking to obsolete rules. Haloi was so engrossed in putting it together that he had to stop painting. “I curated the exhibition and Jogen Chowdhury organised the seminar. Vivan Sundaram and Ghulam Sheikh attended,” said Haloi. The redoubtable Geeta Kapur was impressed and nonagenarian Bhabesh Sanyal had remarked that “it was the visible evidence of our culture.”

Haloi has a wide collection of folk art and crafts in his Kolkata home: a pair of fish traps made of bamboo strips hanging from a window caught my eye. “I had a lot more but had to get rid of much of it because of mite infestation,” Haloi exclaimed. The fish traps reminded me of Haloi’s early figurative paintings, which are quite exceptional. Why did he switch to the abstract? Trying to explain, Haloi talked about his childhood and youth.

Untitled 1: Gouache on handmade paper laid on board, 22 x 11.25 inch, 2021 | Photo Credit: Akar Prakar

Growing up in Jamalpur, Haloi had felt the presence of nature in his bones in moments of Wordsworthian revelation. “I used to roam around all alone in the afternoon, when everyone was having a siesta. No one at home ever stopped me. I climbed every tree. When I was employed by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1957 to reproduce the murals of Ajanta, I used to trek the hills and walk on the dried-up courses of streams in arid summers. There would be potholes, which turned into torrents in the monsoon. Tigers were occasionally sighted.”

“At times darkness would fall while I was fishing in the Brahmaputra river [in Jamalpur], a marsh or a pond. The water turned murky. In the prevailing silence, suddenly a fish would surface noisily, something seemed to stir, and I felt a frisson. I can paint this scene or even take a photograph of it, but how do I express my fear? That is not a visible feeling. It is insubstantial. That is where the idea of abstraction comes in. Perhaps I could draw a red line to manifest that feeling. There is the famous folk song sung by the great Abbasuddin Ahmed about a severe drought in which the sky is described as ‘splintered’. The sky can never be splintered but the adjective was used to indicate the relentlessness of the sun.”

Not borrowed from books

Asked why contemporary Indian art still relies heavily on ideas generated in the West, Haloi squarely blamed it on the way the syllabi and curricula are framed in art education centres like Visva Bharati, Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai, Delhi Art College, and the faculties of art at Benaras Hindu University and MS University in Baroda. “Don’t copy Indian art, study its essence. Kailasa temple in Ellora, Khajuraho, the cosmic dance of Nataraja—these are all world-class works of art. Yet we forget these and rely on realism, which came from the West. Inspiration and imitation are not the same. Realism sets limits. When we look at ourselves, we cannot see our back. However, the compositional structure of Indian art allows visibility from different directions. Indian nature painting has everything—it is multi-dimensional.” stressed Haloi.

Untitled 14: Gouache on handmade paper laid on board, 22 x 31.75 inch, 2021 | Photo Credit: Akar Prakar

Before he took up teaching in 1963, painting occupies most of his time; Haloi did not spare a thought for much else. His ideas of painting and design are his very own—not borrowed from books—and they evolved as he contemplated these issues when he confronted his students. “A weaver weaves a beautiful sari, the intricate design and shades of its border and pallu enhancing its value. It becomes a distinguished design piece in a shop. When a woman wears the sari it becomes part of her life and its vagaries. Then it transforms into a painting because it becomes a part and parcel of a living being’s life. Many kinds of spoons are available in the market. But the moment you choose a particular spoon to make your morning cup of tea and it makes a tinkling sound as you stir the tea in your cup, it becomes deeply attached to your life and its joys and sorrows and your thoughts. Then the spoon does not remain merchandise any longer, it becomes a painting. Art is not art unless it emerges from life and its tribulations.”

Highlights

• Ganesh Haloi: A Rhythm Surfaces in the Mind, a sumptuous book on the Bengali artist, who is also one of the greatest contemporary Indian artists, was released earlier this year.
• Haloi was as inspired by nature as by the murals on the antique cave walls of Ajanta.
• Haloi taught at the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. His views on art are strongly influenced by his experience as a pedagogue.

Staying on in India

“Art education should not be marks oriented,” Haloi said. “There should be no first or second class because the aggressive ones are the gainers in such a system. The certificate should state the period of a student’s study in an institution and his/her behaviour and attitude during that period,” he emphasised, adding that teachers have become negligent and students take advantage of the situation.

Untitled 18, Gouache on handmade paper laid on board, 22 x 24.5 inch, 2021 | Photo Credit: Akar Prakar

At a time when most students applied to study art abroad, Haloi decided to stay on in India, which made him, along with Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Sanat Kar and Shyamal Datta Roy, an exception. “Their work changes the moment they go abroad, becoming more like a statement.  One’s work should change on its own. Reading is a must but few lose any time on it. They talk of the global village. But does it really exist? That day has not come. There are still too many differences between the global North and the South. This [tendency to pursue foreign degrees] has engendered a messy, mishmash culture which has only a tenuous connection with our lives. I feel ashamed to admit that my grandchildren are not aware of great litterateurs like Manik Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan [Bandyopadhyay] and Abanindranath [Tagore]. We will forget Bengali.”

Untitled 5: Gouache on handmade paper laid on board, 22 x 31.75 inch, 2021 | Photo Credit: Akar Prakar

For a soft-spoken man, Haloi holds rather strong views. He blames the politics of the day for the present situation. “Think of the intellectual awakening in Bengal. In the realm of art, Bengal led the way into modernity... Yet look at the condition of the State now. There is a leadership vacuum, there is lack of honesty. Without honesty how can artistic integrity be maintained?”

This is the unbending spirit—Haloi has never made any compromises for the market—that perhaps energises him to paint every single day even at this stage of life.

Soumitra Das is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata.