C. N. KARUNAKARAN (1940-2013):
DEATH OF A PAINTER
JOHNY ML
C. N. Karunakaran is no more. He was 74 years old. There are some artists who choose to live in their own birthplace, work there, gain recognition amongst the same linguistic groups, live a happy life and pass away. They do not aspire for recognition and appreciation of their art beyond the geographical boundaries that they have chosen to be in. C. N. Karunakaran was one such artist. Whether being in one place is a good or bad thing for an artist is a different issue, perhaps to be debated and determined by art historians. Before geographical boundaries became fluid as they are today, there used to be artists who showed their mastery and love for art and life by living in their own place of birth. They might have moved from their own villages to a far off city to study art and then moved back to a city which was closer to their birthplaces. C. N. Karunakaran was one among those artists who had always gravitated towards their roots, by choice. That does not mean that Karunakaran was not exposed to the world. He too had travelled and exhibited in other parts of India and abroad and even gained recognition and appreciation. But going back to the comfort zone was important for him. When artists like him disappear from the face of the earth, we suddenly feel a heavy silence descending upon us. We think of the enormity of such humble and simple lives. They, too, had lived here. They too had created art. National recognitions in the form of Padma awards or a retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art did not come to him. However, he was an artist of the people. When he became the Chairman of Kerala Lalitha Kala Akademi, no one questioned his relevance. People knew him as an artist who had been working and exhibiting for almost fifty years. Such familiarity makes artists relevant for people. An artist who could be seen and touched. An artist with human follies. An artist who could create beautiful paintings. An artist who does not look like a film star who wears designer clothes and always expects flash bulbs. C. N. Karunakaran, in our times of biennales and art fairs, looked like an ordinary man. Being ordinary is an extraordinaryfeat for anybody.
Born in 1940 in a village named Brahmakulam, near the illustrious temple town Guruvayoor, C. N. Karunakaran studied art under the masters like D. P. Roy Chowdhury and K. C. S. Panicker. While K. C. S. Panicker moved from his Impressionistic and Post-impressionistic ideas to find an indigenous visual language he had found, before he settled on the Tantric and traditional scriptures as his visual inspirations, the traditional murals with their enormous possibilities of stylization, embellishment and narrative vigour. Artists who studied under him found their fountains of inspiration in Panicker’s two
different phases of art: one, of the stylized mural language and two, of the Tantric traditions. Though K. C. S. Panicker’s latter phase of neo-Tantric art became very popular and found more followers and practitioners, the former phase, too, was appealing for artists like M. V. Devan, Namboothiri and C. N. Karunakaran.
