The Afterglow of the Bengal School: Ashok Vajpeyi on Jogen Chowdhury

From the conversation with Piyush Daiya

With the passing of Jogen Chowdhury, Indian art has lost one of its most distinctive voices, an artist whose dense webs of cross-hatched ink gave Indian modern art some of its most unsettling and tender human figures. In this edited excerpt from his autobiography, a book still taking shape through his conversations with the writer Piyush Daiya, the poet and literary-cultural critic Ashok Vajpeyi reflects on an old friend. He reads Jogen as the afterglow of the Bengal School and a painter of alienation, whose crowd of nameless figures forms a chronicle freed from time and place. We, Abir Pothi publish it here in tribute.

The Afterglow of the Bengal School

Jogen Chowdhury was, in a way, the afterglow of the Bengal School, in the sense that he took the lyrical quality of line and elegance developed in Bengali fine art towards rugged, ordinary forms. Many of his portrait-like paintings depict individuals with unusual physical forms. At times, these forms have been made unusual, while at other times, they are inherently so. There is a certain ruggedness to them—the way the physiques of ordinary human beings differ from one another, and how these differences lend them a distinctive kind of character. Their forms are curved and contorted, sometimes suddenly revealing very fleshy bodies, yet possessing a strange kind of suppleness as well.

This also means that these forms emerge from the physical characteristics of ordinary human beings. Jogen had a remarkable grasp of this aspect; it reflected his exceptionally keen powers of observation. He had achieved mastery in this regard.

A Pictorial Chronicle of His Time

The abundance of faces and human figures in Jogen’s work is, in a way, like a pictorial chronicle of his time. His paintings do not tell one single story; each story takes shape on its own. There are figures of all kinds—men, women, women with more exaggerated bodies, and even wealthy merchants and moneylenders with exaggerated physiques. Together, these figures form a kind of chronicle.

It is not a story in the sense that one event follows another. It is a story in the sense that these characters exist, and the sequence continues. There are so many of them, which is interesting, yet looking at them together never becomes tiresome. One never feels that they are all the same, repeating themselves over and over again.

An Insistence on Line

He created intricate details and used lines with great concentration. The details within his forms differ in several ways. He was not a painter who insisted on colour; he was a painter who insisted on line. In this sense, he differed from his peers and contemporaries because, in his work, the line was central.

Beyond Time and Place

All the subjects, faces and bodies in Jogen’s paintings are of unknown identity and background, in the sense that we know neither the names of these individuals nor anything about the places they belong to. These are paintings that keep themselves free from the references of time and place. In this sense, they could exist anywhere and at any time.

The only exception is when he depicts clothing and other such details, through which we understand that these figures are Indian, whether they are from Bengal or from somewhere else. There is a certain degree of locality in this respect, but beyond that, we have no idea where they live, what they do or who they are.

In one sense, we could say that this is a pictorial chronicle liberated from time and place. This makes it unique, because most chronicles are, first and foremost, situated within a particular time and place, and ultimately derive their identity from that context. Something entirely different is happening in Jogen’s work.

His figures have a certain contortion, but this has not occurred spontaneously or of its own accord. There is something external, something outside the body and outside the figure itself, under whose pressure this contortion has taken place. Therefore, we must think about and recall that pressure. In this sense, it becomes a kind of context.

It would probably not be sufficient to describe it merely as emotion. There is emotional intensity, but that intensity is not entirely free from, or separate from, a certain kind of intellectual tension. This is because the human condition involves the various pressures under which human beings are continually shaped, distorted, rendered grotesque or made beautiful.

This is another aspect of his paintings. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to describe them merely in terms of an emotional state. Intellectual understanding also plays a role in them.

A Grey World

At times, when Jogen Chowdhury created other kinds of paintings, he made extensive use of black. In his work, colours were important only to the extent that they were needed to give a certain emphasis or relief to a figure or form on the canvas. Beyond that, he perceived a grey world.

We could also say that he consciously decided, as part of his artistic vision, that the world was made up of greyness just as much as it was made up of colours. This was a much greater concern for him than the colourful diversity of the world.

In this respect, his approach is completely opposite to that of Husain. Husain’s world is full of colour. Jogen’s greyness, by contrast, brings him closer to the lines of Nasreen Mohamedi.

In a sense, we can say that Jogen was a painter of alienation—not of cooperation, companionship or neighbourliness among human beings, but of the separation that exists between them. This gives his art a modern character.

That is why he does not provide contextual references, as I mentioned earlier when speaking about how he keeps his figures free from time and place. Keeping them free from time and place is also an expression of a certain kind of alienation. It suggests that everything about human beings—their condition and their physical forms—is not necessarily tied to a particular time and place. There is always something that exists apart from these constraints. This very separation, this element of alienation, seems to have been Jogen Chowdhury’s central concern.

In the Rajya Sabha

Jogen Chowdhury was a member of the Rajya Sabha, as were Husain and some other artists and writers. Almost none of them left a significant mark there, and for good reason.

Nominated members of the Rajya Sabha get very little speaking time because the available time is distributed among members. Even in the Rajya Sabha, the allocation of speaking time depends on the number of members the concerned political party has. It is distributed according to party strength. These artists do not belong to any political party, which is a major structural disadvantage.

Secondly, being in Parliament could have given these artists greater opportunities to speak in public life. If they wanted to speak about a particular issue but were unable to get time in the Rajya Sabha, or if their views were being ignored, they could have called a press conference outside Parliament, at the Press Club, for instance.

If Jogen Chowdhury, as a Rajya Sabha member, had called a press conference to express his views, people would have attended and listened to him. The media would also have been readily available to cover the event. Unfortunately, none of them did this. Perhaps the reason is that the prevailing political atmosphere makes it almost impossible to talk about anything other than politics itself. Another issue is that the political vision of these artists, if they have one, has never been particularly clear. Their artistic vision is, in a way, their political vision as well.

There are four or five such members, although their numbers are gradually declining. Since they are nominated during the tenure of a particular government and represent the party in power, they often maintain a kind of loyalty to that government by remaining silent without any apparent reason.

But what are they ultimately going to gain from this? What does membership of the Rajya Sabha actually lead to for them? Nor does being a Rajya Sabha member necessarily bring any particular benefit to their art. It is not as though these individuals need such benefits. Jogen Chowdhury was an established and respected artist. His membership of the Rajya Sabha did not provide him with any special opportunities, nor did it do so for Husain.

Sonal Mansingh, however, may have benefited, because she is more self-interested in this regard and more active in making political use of her position.

The Buddha once said that ignorance is an unforgivable sin. If nominated artists say that they do not understand these matters and know nothing about them, then why did they become members of the Rajya Sabha in the first place? If you do not understand the political structure, and remain silent or inactive at a time when political turmoil is so decisive, what is the point? They remain inactive in the Rajya Sabha itself and have never even considered using their membership to raise issues outside Parliament, where they could have made their voices heard. They could have issued a statement outside Parliament about the condition of our publicly funded cultural institutions, but none did.

The Painter as Poet

I read Jogen’s writings and some of his poems. Painters have written poetry in two ways, though there may be others. Picasso’s poems are extremely complex and intricate, and they display considerable innovation at the level of form. In his poetry, Picasso wants to do almost the same thing that he does in his visual art. The second kind of artist attempts to do in poetry what they could not achieve, or were unable to do, in their art.

Jogen Chowdhury belonged to this second category of poets. In his poetry, he did something different from what he did in his art. This disappointed me a little. He possessed the ability to bring elegance and ruggedness together in his visual art, but that skill is absent from his poetry.

The Bengali Milieu

Jogen Chowdhury was Bengali, both in his behaviour and in the way he dressed. Bengali artists deserve appreciation in this respect because they remain Bengali and visibly retain their Bengali identity. In physical terms, Jogen was very much a part of the Bengali milieu.

Compared with other linguistic and cultural environments, the Bengali milieu has historically witnessed greater interaction among the arts, literature and other creative fields. This remains true today, just as it was in the past. This tradition goes back to the time of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore himself was its greatest example. Elsewhere, even in major centres of art such as Mumbai and Delhi, this kind of interaction has become fragmented. This has been one of Bengal’s distinctive strengths. Such interaction has, in fact, been an essential aspect of modernity throughout the world. Surrealism, for instance, was not confined to painting; its principal pioneers were poets. It also extended into fashion, theatre and numerous other fields.

Modernity, in its own way, made such dialogue possible and nurtured it almost everywhere. Unfortunately, in India, this interaction has largely remained fragmented and obstructed.

Two Centres and a Friendship

I continued to meet Jogen from time to time. He was among the few artists who used part of their accumulated wealth to benefit others.

He established two centres. One is near Santiniketan, while the other is possibly in Kolkata. When the centre near Santiniketan was being established, he invited me to join it. I went there. When he organised events at Santiniketan, they tended to be somewhat different in character. He often remembered us, and when he did, and we at the Raza Foundation helped him. The Lalit Kala Akademi in Bengal had become almost defunct and was not doing anything particularly significant. When Jogen became its chairman, he invited me to deliver a lecture. I gave a lecture on abstraction.

There was a certain sense of camaraderie and warm friendship between Jogen and me.

Editor’s note: This excerpt was originally spoken and recorded in Hindi, in conversations between Ashok Vajpeyi and Piyush Daiya, as part of Vajpeyi’s forthcoming autobiography. It has been translated into English and edited for publication. Portions of the original conversation not directly related to Jogen Chowdhury have been omitted, and subheadings have been added for ease of reading.

Cover image: Artist Jogen Chowdhury; (Photo: Bandeep Singh)