Journeys in a mythological land

In a half-retrospective of her life as an artist, Jayasri Burman journeys from the shadows to reclaim her place in the Indian aesthetic. Kishore Singh follows her career

Jayasri Burman is enjoying her moment in the sun. Flashbulbs have been exploding in her face, she has been crouching for photographers, even lying face down on gigantic scrolls — a mermaid? a serpent? — as she prepares for the gigantic publicity blitzkrieg that will mark this, her largest solo show, that Art Alive gallerist Sunaina Anand calls a “half-life retrospective”, but which Burman herself dismisses as a chronological sequence of her works.

It is an occasion, certainly, to capture different moods in Burman’s life. Her eyes tear up when she remembers the help she received from artists Ganesh Pyne or Bikash Bhattacharjee, a shadow of desolation chases across her face when she recalls a failing marriage, she points to works that indicate a transition in her life “when I met Paresh [Maity]”, and the celebration of spaces suffused with decorative elements that have irked critics but floored collectors with an aesthetic that is undeniably, culturally and socially Indian.

If Burman is irked by what critics say, she doesn’t show it. Chimerically, the lines vanish from her face. “Shiva is a sweetheart,” she chuckles, when I carp that the wrathful blue god is depicted as too complacent in her pen and ink works, “and I am a romantic.” Nor does she dismiss a childhood spent in Kolkata learning Tagore’s poems, gazing in adoration at Kumartuli potters painting the eyes of the Durga idols, feeding on Saratchandra’s stories. “I am happiest when I’m painting eyes,” she says now, “I talk to them — but” she chuckles, “I run away if they talk back to me!”

A cultural rebel, Burman refuses to accept that her works are religious references, accepting only that she creates a world of myths “because mythological stories make me think more about human relationships”. The human form too inspires her. Put in perspective, it is almost amusing to see the nature surrounding her earlier work morphing into deities themselves. Where her gods and goddesses were once harmoniously placed in gardens, those same swans no longer swim in ponds but have developed as wings, limbs are now fins, lotuses erupt out of Durga’s eight arms, and Ganga surrounds herself with her lost children in a tale of incredible tragedy and foibles. “Only a mother,” Burman explains the old fable, “could have sacrificed them.” But if her Ganga is stoic, lost and bewildered, Jamuna is a celebration of the stories of Radha and Krishna, of cowherds and serpents “and of the mythology of my stories”.

Burman, whose early works are pungent with a sense of loss, and whose landscapes of the mid-nineties are strong and suggest another artist’s hand and imagery, found her own representation among the patachitras of her childhood, but referenced in a more contemporary idiom. The detailing in them is exhaustive, an engagement complicit in the hours and weeks she spends in enhancing the decorative aspect of her canvases — and, for the first time for this half-retrospective, but indicative of work she wants to do more of — bronze sculptures.

“Work is decorative only if there is no message,” she places the argument in perspective, explaining that “of course the colours should be aesthetically correct”. But what is the message? “That we human beings are lucky to be here, to enjoy the beauty of nature,” she smiles. “We should enjoy earth’s beauty, the bounty of nature, we should all be beautiful, and natural, and positive.” This is the quintessential, sentimental, romantic Jayasri Burman, and having got into the middle of a discussion, she isn’t likely to let go, positive or not.

“Rajasthan, Benares — they have such lovely, happy colours. How can you avoid them? Or the Bengal green, Indian reds?” As for her romantic imagery, “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to fly, so ducks become wings in my works. I think, ‘If I paint them like that, maybe I can fly’!” An observer of street-life and people — “unconsciously”, she hastens to add, lest you’re uncomfortable in her company — “when I sit down to paint, automatically something will flash in my eye, and I will change the way I had planned my work”. So a flower-seller will become the role model for the Goddess Ganga, and an emaciated cow will figure in a work with Shiva…

“I depend on my mood, my hands, my soul, my heart, my mind to do the detailing,” she opens up, “I want to give my best, sometimes spending a whole night restlessly, wondering if I’m doing too much. Then I say I can always stop later in life, but for now I must do the most, give it my best.” Now is also as good a time to take stock of both her life and her work. “I haven’t done too many solo shows,” she explains herself; “people see my most recent works only but do they know who I am? Or what is my past? How I have evolved?” To explain the importance of what she’s saying, she says, “When I go to museums abroad, I want to relate to an artist’s life and miss it when I can’t…”

Here’s a chance to engage with hers, when A Mythical Universe opens at the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi next week. It’s Jayasri Burman’s universe, too.

A Mythical Universe By Jaysri Burman Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, Opens January 14 (11 am-7 pm)