Jatin das
By Vijay Phanshikar :
“I don’t paint my canvases, I sculpt them”.
- Famous painter Jatin Das
THE statement is very profound -- though, of course, crisp. It points to the great artist’s spiritual need to add more dimensions to his flat, two-dimensional medium -- canvas!
This approach needs deeper scrutiny.
The very word ‘sculpt’ points to an effort to lift a subject over and above the surface of the medium, to add certain depth to the subject, to offer it a relief from the confines of the surface’s flat arena. In other -- and simple -- words, Jatin Das tries to add more dimensions to the flat,
two-dimensional canvas. The very thought invokes in the connoisseur’s mind deep curiosity about not the process but the thought.
Factually, many artists -- such as Michelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci -- dwell in both the worlds -- of painting and
sculpting.
Many of their works offer touches of both the arts. One cannot, therefore, miss the third dimension in the famed Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo Da Vinci -- or his famed painting ‘The Last Supper’. Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel in the Vatican also depict the double qualities of painting and sculpting.
When Jatin Das says he does not paint his canvases, but sculpts those, he suggests an intense effort to add a third dimension to the art that is supposed to dwell on the
two-dimensional surface -- canvas or paper (so to say). But when a painter talks of “sculpting” in his art, he suggests the
effort to lift the subject over and above
the surface.
This effort, this struggle, this intense
delving deeper into the subject and attempting to bring it up toward the connoisseur suggests not just a third, but also a fourth -- spiritual -- dimension. This thought has little to do with playing with words; it has everything to do with the artist’s urge to make the art speak more than it is expected to do normally.
True, every artists tries his or her best to tear through the membranes of common perception about an art -- painting or sculpting or drawing or carving ...! Yet,
generally speaking, the art remains within the confines of its matter (or material used to create it).
A few rare artists, however, try to
transcend the limitations and by adding more dimensions not just to the work of art but also to the thought-process -- of
creating the work and of the connoisseurs.
When Jatin Das says he sculpts his
canvases, he grapples with the third and the fourth dimensions. That is where he stands out -- like do his works.