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Remembering Mookiah
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The passing away of TRP Mookiah leaves a void in the modern Indian art scene
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Sculpture as a career for modern artists in
India, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s,
was never an option for various reasons.
The medium is physically intensive, requires
infrastructure of large open spaces and is
economically not viable. Yet there were artists
with burning desires to visualise their expression
three dimensionally.
One such artist in Chennai who emerged in
the late 1960s was T.R.P. Mookiah [1934-2009].
With his demise on June 25, the modern art
scene in the South has lost a stalwart. Mookiah
was unassuming and genial with a warm smile.
As a sculptor closely associated with the nativist
agenda of the Madras Art Movement, he
was inspired by D. P. Roy Chowdhary, S. Dhanapal
and Pradosh Das Gupta. His works may not
have had the desired visibility because his visual
language was premised on folk vocabulary.
Mookiah's oeuvre in retrospect occupies an important
place within the urban landscape of
Chennai.
Strong rural roots
An artist with strong roots in his rural cultural
background, he interfaced with its sights
and sounds to evolve his personal idiom. This
tendency is not just peculiar to Mookiah but
was a commonality with many other artists. But
he struck a posture of difference by translating
through sculpture, his culture with modern
sensibility.
His works are not monumental, nor are they
iconic heroic representations, but it was his
genius that he was able to communicate it as
both monumental and iconic. This is evident in
his thematic approach. The iconicity emerges
from his dominant engagement with festivals
such as jallikattu, folk musicians, and dance
forms such as karagattam.
Jallikattu happening during Pongal is a sport
that pits bulls against humans - Mookiah portrayed
the climactic bloody moment signifying
synoptically the nature and character of the
whole through vibrant gestures and theatrical
movements. Metaphorically his monumentality
is not premised on the criterion of size or
popular heroism within collective consciousness
but marking the drama of reality to create
monumental vignettes of culture for the gaze of
the urban audience who may never witness
these sports.
Consciously Mookiah interpolated with his
lived reality through these sculptures in the
1970s, reinforcing the call from critics and art
historians within the nation to actively engage
with their cultural milieu, thus investing his
sculptures with monumental ethos and iconicity.
Yet these portrayals were not idealistic but
tempered with raw primitive vigour and spontaenity
that remained salient in his works. Be it
the bull or the karagattam dancer or the horse
rider, his forms exuded power and strength.
Tryst with terracotta
Mookiah's preferred mediums in sculpture
were terracotta and bronze though he worked
with different stones. He once remarked, "Talking
about my terracottas, I must emphasise,
because of the nature of the material, and the
ease and freedom it offers, these objects afford
an insight into cultural traits, namely the customary
mode of expression. In this respect,
they are probably of greater value than the
impressive monuments in stone."
An alumnus of the Government College of
Arts and Crafts, he completed his Diploma in
Painting in 1956 and Diploma in Modelling in
1959. In the same year, he received a Cultural
Scholarship and a Junior Fellowship from the
Government of India. After serving as a designer
in the Department of Ceramics in the same
college, Mookiah became the Associate Lecturer
and the Head of the college's Department of
Textiles.
Mookiah was vice-president at the Association
of Young Painters and Sculptors. He was
also a member of the Executive Board of the
South India Society of Painters in Chennai.
He won the National Award in 1995 for sculpture.
The title of `Kalai Chemmal' was bestowed
on him by the Lalit Kala Akademi (Tamil Nadu).
His expert interweaving of traditional art forms
with contemporary sensibility gave his works a
sense of continuing vigour that inscribes modern
Indian art.
In his final rest, Mookiah leaves behind an
oeuvre of restless energy.
ASHRAFI S. BHAGAT
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