Play for Joy of Seeing Celebration of Partha Pratim’s CreationPartha Pratim Deb need not know that there was a long tradition of thought on
creative motive, in Sanskrit, comprising copious discourses on Leela as the prime
mover in creativity, or better, the creative activity. Leela is the no-win-no-loss
game that the divine creator plays, resulting in creation of the sensory universals
– filling the creator with Ananda (bliss). All pranamay and manamay beings born
of divine play inherit this capacity of attaining bliss from no-loss-no-gain play of
creation of sensuous objects, those transcending mundane usefulness. The deliverer
of the Bageswari lectures on art was surely conversant with the discourses on the
concept of Leela, but Abanindranath, the artist, while playing with twigs and driftwood,
to bring into being the images which lay eminent in those to be discovered
by Abanindranath’s gaze-directed hands, to be transformed into surprising images,
was not so much intellectually motivated as by curiosity, joy of play and bliss from
creative fulfilment. Partha Pratim Deb has a very personal way of looking around
himself- a world full of Bengali middle-class beings and the objects of their daily
use. He neither represents them, nor their objects of daily use. Partha Pratim’s art
is a take on those. He takes up discarded and worn-out objects of middle-class daily
use, and transforms those, just as Abanindranath did, following his personal gaze to
turn those found objects into funny mirthful images, with significant social-critical
undertones, indicating a departure from Abanindranath’s play. Consumerist habit of
making obsolete all that were once loved is the target of Partha’s oblique statements.
Although Partha Pratim’s colourful re-configuration of once sought-after
commodities turned to useless junks into decontextualised images, bearing new
meaning, seem to have family resemblances with Marcel Duchamp, and especially
with Robert Rauschenberg’s re-configuration of industrial junks, he displays none
of angry criticality that can be discerned in their acts of composing the imagery.
Partha Pratim, like his gurus, Nandalal (viz. the hand torn paper images), Benode
Behari (viz. the cut-and-paste paper collages) and Subramanyan (viz. the toys made
with found carved wood and leather pieces), seems to enjoy merrily the processof turning the discarded objects into
images by playing with them. This
should however, not be taken as that
he ends in giving to the objects some
new resemblances only. The new and
the craft-attributed likeness he gives
to the found objects transform those
into significant images, i.e. images
with indicated and/or suggested
meaning. Thus indicated/suggested
meaning that Partha Pratim works
out through the making process
often subsumes an unmistakable
criticality. His strategy for
visualisation of any critique
is humourous and ironical,
rather than angry. He would
dynamically juxtapose unlikely
images in a configuration, or lay
emphasis on comical gestures
and postures in the figuratively
suggestive images, unlike Robert
Rauschenberg, and more like
Sukumar Ray and Subramanyan.
This carricaturish approach
links Partha Pratim even with
some of Paul Klee’s drawings,
remember his Twittering
Machine. It is this kind of
purposeful absorption of
linguistic devises from choicest
predecessors that makes Partha
Pratim’s art truly global,
without ever exhibiting the
loaned kinships. And rooted
he remains, through his use of
objects of daily experience for
his imagery.