Images and paint churn in my mind, sometimes I think I can’t get away and sit at the desk and ask myself, am I somehow addicted to literature and the arts? I am astonished by the Nepalese arts when I meet people who think their lives as literature and the so called thing called art.
Contemporary art in Nepal has a tradition: artists with name and connection are at the forefront on the basis of relations rather than creative quality, this has been a bad backdrop for Nepali arts. Nepali artists find themselves attached to people and knowing them personally rather than artwork and creativity.
And it is interesting when you are in front of the biggest canvas ever bought and painted in Kathmandu: abstract abstraction or subjectivity? Ideas come into your mind and drone on. Art is a “light” a brightness that fosters aesthetic and intellectual growth. As a corollary, the longer the history of the artwork the more refined the aesthetics and higher the intellectual development of people involved.
In this context, the history of Nepalese modern art doesn’t date back very far. So in some ways we have neither the higher intellect nor in some ways an adequate understanding of the arts as an audience. Owing to this, Nepali criticism is still nascent and leaves much to be desired. So it was amazing when I was recently faced the biggest of canvases in Nepal, I was faced by paint and color and shapes, fundamentals of expression rather than the expression of the artist. I was struck by subjective views not only the opinion and approach of the artist.
It was Pallav Ranjan, beside me, with acrylic on plates and buckets and brushes and knives and spoons. The vibrant colors flowing non-layered. The shapes were simple, alluring, and making an effort to get your attention. Is a woman’s gaze different from a man’s? How does gender difference influence the way in which two different these things are viewed: temperament of the presentation or the subject’s real nature? I was really attracted by the second panel of this gigantic project. It was the media section of the canvas. There was a period when people had to go through intermediaries like newspaper or broadcasting medias like radio and television.
This reminds the times when even artists had to go to newspapers begging their largesse for the publication of their arts. Now time has changed. The internet speaks all over the world and those who cannot communicate or keep in touch with the media or have connection only can go through the net and reach out to the world themselves. The media opportunity shown or painted in the canvas by Pallav speaks thus, the canvas holds the biggest strength in this. The eye in the painting seem to see me and with the ear I am given the ability to hear tunes: multimedia involves the interplay of visual elements, with text (e-books), sound (music) and more recently even feel and smell (3 and 4-d technologies).
Some aspects of multimedia may be interactive and include movement. This is how the biggest canvas in Nepal comes through. For me, this panel is a showcase of connection between multimedia, the internet, and the written word. It is something that can make a buzz amongst every viewer, even the most ordinary.
Even on my first examination, it was obvious that the work had high artistic value. Its surface was on the whole in smoothly finished on due to the careful custody of Ranjan. Retouches were apparent in places, mainly in the background, with some scratches at the edges of the canvas, but after careful study, and yet this was not the finished product I learned.
Pallav a true and an honest artist living for arts and literature in Nepal. He remembers and smiles saying that 54 feet by 8 feet is a long surface to be looking at especially when the canvas is blank and you are the artist and he had had a similar situation while painting “Sun on the Mountains,” a book Netherlands Consulate brought out to celebrate their involvement in Nepal for twenty-five years.
Pallav’s latest art project which I have viewed with astonishment will portray e-opportunies… and online trading on a single 60 x 8 foot canvas at CAN InfoTech to be held on coming February. The display which may be viewed by 300,000 people has been understood and supported by e-commerce site muncha.com in order to assure that it has wide access.
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