Tilak Samarawickreme can talk about art. He can talk about design. He can talk about handicraft or with a
broader brush fill the mind’s canvass with opinion on culture, heritage,
history and politics, both of the mundane diurnal and of the more abiding
ideological. He can also talk of
exploration, the search for and encounter with all manner of things, with
different shapes, lines, colors and meaning.
‘A Voyage in Sri Lanka Design,’ an elegant volume put out by
Vijitha Yapa Publications is a life story.
It is an account of exploration along many pathways with astute
acknowledgment of intersection and commonality, and sensitivity to connectivity
across time and space of multiple spheres.
The text and illustrations are neatly organized in a by-subject manner,
but within these chapters the signature of a man with multiple interests and
one who has resolved to keep mind open to both the fresh and abiding is
apparent.
Tradition and the traditional are things he has clearly
encountered and occupied himself with, in both gaze as well as creative
work. His, however, is not a hard-grip
encounter but a caressing. This is what
probably allows him to see unevenness in what his gaze encounters. It allows him, moreover, to slip under sheen
and observe the delicate and violent mix of ideology, philosophy and political
economy.
Tilak is not a transcriber of things past and things on
their way out. He obtains inspiration
from the traditional and adds social and economic shelf life by using idea,
motif and material in what he produces for modern day consumption. That’s not a surprise, given unabashed
veneration of Ananda Coomaraswamy and in particular of his definitive (for
many) work, ‘Mediaeval Sinhala Art’, which he says has framed this book and
indeed, one could argue, his life.
Coomaraswamy saw art not as ornament but as something alive and which
obtained value mostly from utility.
Tilak’s excursions have gifted him ample examples of live art and his
urban encounters probably made him see enough of ‘art as ornament and nothing
else’. His own work appears to take
direction from the Coomaraswamy definition.
His ‘journey’, therefore is vibrant, his work speaks, they engage and
perhaps even transform. 
The world and in particular Sri Lanka has not picked up on
Coomaraswamy, though. ‘Tradition’ hangs
from walls wherever we go, from hotels to the living rooms of the affluent and
even the art loving Bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians), but utility value has for the
most part been reduced to eye-candy and showcasing. Tilak’s tapestries speak of a past as well as
an abiding sense of ‘way of life’. They
have market value, yes. They also speak.
They teach. They preserve and nurture something more than a color-line mix that
pleases eye.
Art connoisseurs would probably speak of Tilak’s aesthete
and his contributions to create ‘a new aesthetic order’. What the uninitiated realizes is how Tilak’s
reinvention of the tradition has spilled over to real, lived, experienced life,
for example in the world of fashion.
The book contains the words and appreciations of
experts. Those essays illuminate. They
also help us understand where Tilak stands in the global art firmament. Bruno Munari’s piece on his drawings is a
case in point. He speaks of the amazing
economy of Tilak’s hand. He expresses so
much with so little, which of course implies the ‘lot’ that is constituted of
study, experimentation, reflection and imagination. He must possess the most delicate fingers,
that much can be concluded.
Those line drawings manifested themselves in the now
celebrated and oft-wowed Munchee TV
commercial aired during the recently concluded T-20 World Cup. It demonstrated that ‘tradition’ to Tilak is
not cast in stone and not buried in the past either. It is up to those present to do what they
will. Tilak is firmly rooted in the
moment, which is a high vantage point to those who sees it as such from which
gaze can be cast on that which came before and that which is yet to unravel. This is why there is a certain futurism in
his work that is (interestingly) familiar as well. He takes line and he makes it dance. He gives a third dimension even in a
two-dimensional activation. That must
take a lot of skill. He says his architecture ‘has a universal and cosmopolitan approach’. Perhaps it is something intrinsic to ‘buildings’ but his designs are a stark contrast to his drawings. Curve is replaced with straight line. There is less ‘dance’ and more ‘standing’ if you will. Neat. Elegant.
This book can be a flip-through and that would please much,
let there be no doubt. That, however,
would be a disservice to the man, the work, the pathways he has travelled, the
treasures he has picked up and the painstaking but seemingly effortless
polishing and crafting he’s engaged in all his professional and artistic
life. Most importantly, one would miss
the significance of the ‘social’ in all his undertakings. Even as his craft carries his distinctive
signature, Tilak’s work has always been contextualized by a deep appreciation
of the collective, a strong respect for those who came before, appreciation and
acknowledgment of the wells he has sipped inspiration from and an abiding sense
of social responsibility. It all adds up
to many things, including a kind of patriotism that flag-waving and
anthem-singing ‘nationalists’ have no clue about.
It is a journey in itself, this reading. It is a quick-read book that needs to be read
slowly and many times over, one feels.
It puts reader in touch with something that is hard to describe but
perhaps speaks to him in a familiar voice of things he or she is made of but
probably unaware of. A treasure,
simply. [Review was carried in the UNDO Section of 'The Nation', November 18, 2012]
0 comments:
Post a Comment