Late S.H. Raza shared a six-decade-long camaraderie with fellow artist Krishen Khanna. A book featuring their 1956-2000 correspondence throws light at several curious, light and serious matters.
On this day 55 years ago, a mail that S.H. Raza writes to compatriot artist Krishen Khanna in another continent shows the former바카라s reluctance to be into any professional engagement other than painting. 바카라The International House here wants me to give a talk one evening, but I have a dislike for lecturing,바카라 Raza, three years elder to Khanna, writes from the United States on August 11, 1962. 바카라However my official title is Lecturer in Art. I wish you could take over.바카라
This string of sentences comes as an appendage to a letter Raza, who had shifted base to the West after having spent formative years in central India, wrote to his close friend a couple of days before that, but could not post immediately. He had August 9 mail, while working as a guest lecturer at University of California on western America.
바카라Here, in Berkeley, there is hardly any art activity except at the University바카라. We visited the San Francisco Muesum but could not see the galleries,바카라 Raza tells Khanna in a long letter, having been published as part of a book that carries four-and-a-half decades of correspondence from end-August 1956 between the two who went on to become titans modernists in Indian art. 바카라The art department is presenting my work in the gallery at the University,바카라 adds Raza (1922-2016) in that mail to Khanna, who now lives in Delhi and is 93 years old. The 224-page book, My Dear, is the first in a series of Raza correspondence featuring the letters the late artist wrote to friends of his generation in the field of culture.
Khanna바카라s reply (dated August 18) is still longer. The painter, who was born in Lyallpur close to Faisalabad in what became Pakistan after the 1947 Partition, focuses on an oriental trip. 바카라I had a strange experience in Borobudur in Java. I had heard that I was an impressive monument, but when I saw it I was quite amazed. Its enormity and consistency quite overpowered me,바카라 he says. And adds about his own upcoming US tour: 바카라We are planning to stay in San Francisco from the 3rd till the 10th of September바카라. On the 11th we arrive in Berkeley.바카라
The book, brought out by the nascent Raza Foundation in collaboration with VadehraArtGallery, also of Delhi (where the artist died, spending the evening of his life), isn바카라t all about just their personal matters or even artistic pursuits. It mirrors the close watch that both artists kept over cultural developments바카라particularly in their Indian subcontinent, no matter wherever in the world they lived.
The letters show a logical strengthening of the bonding between the pals, whose common interest converged largely on visual art. The correspondence, by and large, doesn바카라t make too obvious the admiration Raza and Khanna had for each other. Even so, there are glimpses of it.
Poet-essayist Ashok Vajpeyi, who was close to Raza and is the founder-trustee of the organisation named after the artist, notes that the correspondence 바카라also constitutes an informal record of what some of most creative minds of India thought and felt about their times, its anxieties and struggles and emerging aesthetics.바카라 Vajpeyi uses the word 바카라their바카라 in a sense beyond the two, because the foundation is proposing to publish more such documents.
The Raza-Khanna correspondence often banks on how their works are progressing and where all they are being shown and how, and the kind of feedback. They are predominantly centred round one바카라s own artistic travails and achievements (often exchanging samples of artworks as slides and photos) and personal issues (that are sometimes professional too). There were occasional traces of gossip too.
The ethos of a pre-email period comes in fascinating vividness. The necessity for artists to make money also finds a mention. As they succeed in life, both artists show keenness in charity and national welfare.
The first bit of tension in personal life comes in 1965 when Raza tells Khanna about a problem the former had developed with vision. 바카라Since this summer I have been very worried about my right eyes,바카라 he writes, to which the reply comes promptly: 바카라Renu and I are deeply distressed at the trouble바카라바카라 Raza had married Janine Mongillat, a French artist (who died in 2002).
The book, also for the sake of authenticity, shows select letters in their original format바카라either independently (in singles or collages) or imposed below the printed lines. They act as windows to the handwritings of the two masters, what with Raza바카라s looking a bit arty compared to Krishen바카라s, whose rather clumsy cursive letters ironically tend to contrast his deftness on the canvas.
By 1987, subtle references to their ageing come. Khanna says, 바카라I hope we can meet before we become too old (which in my parlance means 100)!바카라. By the year 2000, there is a reference to phone talks바카라something that became common in conversations in a fast-changing world thence.