It is an uncharted and unfamiliar terrain that B.D. Dethan traverses in his latest series, ‘Avastantharangal’. Gone for a moment are the intense colours. Pen and ink illustrations speak of a sparseness and economy, both of which are a departure from the general drift of his works.
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The artist has an explanation for the 28 works on display at the Suryakanti Gallery. “Embellishments, fine lines and alluring, are not my kind of art. It just does not happen to me. Naturally, when I was asked to respond to a collection of 120 translated poems by Tagore in Malayalam ( Tagorinte 120 Kavithakal ) by Lizzie Jacob, I had my own reservations. Naturally therefore, my first question was, ‘Where is Tagore in all this?”
Well, the question had the answer in it too. Were Dethan’s works meant to complement the verses, or were his responses tempered by his manner of receiving the ideas contained therein? The latter was closer to the reality.
“Experiencing poetry is never the same. The individual receives the same lines differently every time he reads it afresh. Here I was trying to fathom the impact the poet’s lines made on my idiom. This time it was the pen and ink I relied on,” comes the explanation. Tagore’s poetry touches us at various planes and the accompanying illustrations occupy their determined spaces. But, when the illustrations step out of the pages of the book and assume its multiple identities it acquires a life of its own, the umbilicus has snapped. No more are the works seen as a counter to or reinforcing the thoughts expressed in the lines. To each medium its own strength, becomes the watchword.
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“I have tried to shed the complex responses of the adult mind and receive the intensity of the poet’s words at a very simple and direct level. Even as I explored the essence of the poem, the verse and reader permit no segueing: my lines were spontaneous responses to the felt emotion from the words,” he explains further.
Rarely are his works subtle. Most often it emerges from an emotion stirred by the external landscape: the human forms are strange and rarely visually appealing in the commonly used sense, yet arresting no doubt. The 28 frames which emerged from a reading of poetry retain the interstices created, but emerge with an identity that demands no frame of reference to the poems. Tempering the surface of the white canvas with shades of grey, in varying intensity, give the illustrations a vitality that, counters, alludes, and sometimes embraces the underlying thought-emotion in the poem. Space and surfaces have transformed, symbol of self, timelessness and transient emotions.
In his treatment of the human form, Dethan responds to external world with outpourings that disturb most often even if we are to accept that there has been a mellowing of his palette over the decades.
Illustration was something he started dabbling in long years ago at the behest of the well-known writer, Malayattoor Ramakrishnan. Later when requested by K.V. Surendranath (Aasaan) to send in illustrations for the journal, Sahitya Keralam , published by the C. Achutha Menon Foundation, he could not refuse.
With ‘Avastantharangal’, he revives a buried streak of his art, but will he return to the same? We will have to wait and watch.