I
n a letter to his daughter, Rabindranath Tagore had once commented that painting wasn’t really his forte – had it been so he would have demonstrated what needed to be done. But much before this lament, in an earlier epistle addressed to J.C. Bose (1858-1937), he had mentioned in an ebullient tone that it would surprise the latter to learn that he had been painting in a sketchbook, although the effort with the pencil was being overtaken by the effort with the eraser, such that Raphael could lie peacefully in his grave without the fear of being rivaled. The multifarious personality of Rabindranath covered diverse terrains of creative expression, but he ventured into the world
of painting quite late in life. The pages of his manuscript titled Purabi, a book of poems published in 1924, is conventionally identified as the first evidence of articulation through full fledged visual images. In the process of editing and altering the text of these poems, the poet began joining together the struck-out words in rhythmic patterns of linear scribbles, with the result that these connected erasures emerged into consolidated, united and independent identity as fantastic visual forms. About this process, he later wrote: “I had come to know that rhythm gives reality to that which is desultory, which is insignificant in itself. And therefore, when the scratches in my manuscript cried like sinners, for salvation
Tagore selecting his paintings in Moscow
distinctly identifiable moods, emotions and characteristics, such that they become personalities rather than blankforms.
Tagore at his exhibition at the Gallery Pigalle with Victoria Ocampo (seated).
and assailed my eyes with the ugliness of their irrelevance, I often took more time in rescuing them into a merciful finality of rhythm than in carrying on what was my obvious task.” (‘My pictures’, 1; 28th May 1930). The Purabi corrective cancellations, deleting the unnecessary and unwanted, finally fused together into a unity of design; but more than that, this rhythmic interrelationship gave birth to a host of unique forms, most often queer, curious and grotesque. This nearly subconscious birth of forms, springing up unpremeditated on the sheet of paper, is a necessary corollary to the poet’s innate concern with rhythm. It was not the sheer delectable beauty of swirling arabesques
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All paintings illustrated in this essay are by Rabindranath Tagore.
that interested the poet, but the emergent unpredictable that delighted him. These creatures may certainly defy classification according to strict conventions of zoology, but are very much valid as entities in a painter’s world. They even possess INDIA PERSPECTIVES
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The manuscript is a private and personal domain; as the presence of these emergent forms began to demand more independent existence, the poet-painter turned to full scale paintings. However, having originated from the subconscious playfulness of the erasures, somewhat unfortunately and for a considerable time, Rabindranath’s pictorial practice tended to carry the stigma of being a dilettante’s dabble. While it is true that he did not possess any academic initiation into the domain of the visual arts, he did take lessons in painting in his childhood, as most children do, from home-instructors. In his reminiscences titled Chelebela (my childhood days) Rabindranath had recalled how in the interminable sequence of home-instructors, an art teacher would immediately step in once the instructor in physical education had just left. While that is no pleasant recollection that may inspire later indulgence in the visual arts, in the Jeebansmriti (My reminiscences) he had recorded a slightly different childhood memory – at bed-time he would stare at the patterns of peeling