Three things are impressed in my mind, even fourteen years after reading about Maya Lin’s vision for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. One, as Lin wanted, the edifice simply cuts into the earth. Two, it contains all the names of service members who died and went missing. Simultaneously, the polished stone reflects the viewers as they read the names, melding the past into the present. Three, Lin said she wanted people to touch the stone, tracing the letters with their fingers. Photographs show visitors to the site doing just that.
Why do I think of Lin when I see Mamallapuram? Tamil Nadu’s 7 Century site is carved out of a landscape of rocks that seem to rise out of the sands as Lin wished her site memorial to spring out, grass growing at its base. Scenes from mythology and monuments become part of one integrated experience by the seaside. Arjuna’s Penance and the Rathas, representative of the grandeur of a past civilisation, exist alongside commonplace scenes such as one monkey grooming the other. Sculpture parks in America bring people into the space by encouraging interaction with the sculpture. Here in India, we have been doing this for centuries, making art a part of our living space, making imagination a part of our lives.
Great art has to be that which lasts beyond a certain time period, and Mamallapuram has constantly inspired photographers, sculptors, printmakers, illustrators, craftsmen and everyday visitors. Artist A. Ramachandran was commissioned in 1995 to do a sculpture for the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial at Sriperumbudur. From Rajiv Gandhi’s vision of India as an old country and a young nation, Ramachandran wished to bring the past to reflect on the present, to find its way in renewed forms. Ramachandran based his design on the Mamallapuram monuments and style. His bas-relief sculpture of more than 400 panels runs for 125 feet and is nineteen-and-a-half feet high.
An unforgettable photograph from Vintage Vignettes’ Wiele and Klein collection from the early 1900s shows a dhoti-clad Indian and a white man pretending to push Krishna’s Butterball, a great rounded rock with a weathered surface, precariously placed. To this day, tourists pose next to the Butterball for wacky photos. The landscape invites a playful participation to effect idiomatic expressions and this is seen in another plate of the same collection. Against the background of the Shore Temple, three men play dice while bystanders watch. The scene looks ordinary enough but it is evident that the photographer has made people pose for the picture, creating a new form of art. For the slow speeds of early photosensitive coatings, it was necessary for subjects to stand perfectly still.
This summer in Kodaikanal, artist Bruce Peck met me at his studio by Coaker’s Walk. Surrounded by swirls of mist and a magnificent view of the valley, Peck showed me an original copper plate with his fine etching. “I do my etching looking at a photograph,” he said, showing me his tool, a sewing needle attached to a pencil. A son of missionaries, Peck grew up in Kodaikanal. After marriage, he continued to divide his time between Kodaikanal and America with his family. Peck had never thought of art as a career but a course in printmaking steered him in this direction. When he found that print reproductions of pen and ink drawings did not have much value, he began Bruce Peck Etchings in 1987 with his wife Ann Peck’s encouragement. In the 1990s, Peck became well known for his prints of Southern India, including Mamallapuram and Srirangam Temple. In his etchings, there is a packed vibrancy, a dwelling beneath the surface like he is bringing us to look at the many lines and dots that make up the universe and those that lie beyond our vision. His landscapes possess the force of his craftsmanship, uncannily making me want to feel it come alive under my fingers. Peck’s prints of Mamallapuram bring its peculiar flavour alive — ordinary exchanges against a phenomenal backdrop. The beauty of Mamallapuram is that it allows our everyday activity to reflect against its theatrical backdrop, making our lives seamlessly mingle with mythology, the past in the present.
(Chennai Canvas links art to design and culture through an inside look at the city)
