Making (Some) Sense of Concept Art

My first encounter with Conceptual Art was in the Kochi Biennale of Art, and it left me a little confused. Since then I have been to some other art biennales and I continue to be surprised by the popularity and apparent little-sense of this art.

Contemporary art, as displayed in the Biennales, has many works related to digital elaboration, photography, sound and video, which leave me perplexed - not because they are not art but because each of them has their own festivals and events, so I am not sure why would art biennales devote so much space to them. However, it is concept art which often leaves me feeling as a kind of idiot who can't get its point. For example, the image below has one of the works from a Kochi Biennale, which left me pulling on my fragile white hairs.

However, I am not the only one who feels confused by such art. For example, the Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith in his recent book The Peppermint Tea Chronicles, has one of the characters talking about the Turner Prize (a prestigious British award for contemporary art, which has been often given to works of concept art), which expresses my feelings very eloquently:

Angus was unrepentant. “I have little time for the Turner Prize,” he said. “I have no taste for its pretentiousness. I dislike the way it is awarded to people who cannot paint, draw, nor sculpt.” His eyes widened; he became slightly red, his breathing shallow - all fairly typical reactions provoked by the Turner Prize in those of sound artistic judgment. “You are not an artist if you merely make a video about paint drying or pile a few objets trouvés in a heap. You just aren’t.”Domenica shrugged. “Calm down,” she said. “Installations make us look at the world in a different way. They must have some artistic merit. They challenge us. ...”

Recently I read a book on contemporary art by Will Gompertz, which gave me some understanding about the origins of concept art and why it leaves me cold.

Origins of Concept Art

Will Gompertz in his book "What are you looking at - Strange Story of 15o Years of Modern Art" (2012) explains the origins of Concept Art with a story about Marcel DuChamp, whom he calls the father of "Concept Art" and who had pioneered the concept art movement with his work "The Fountain" in 1917 (which was a urinal he had bought in a shop):

After buying the urinal Duchamp takes it to his studio. He lays the heavy porcelain object on its back and turns it around, so it appears to be upside down. He then signs and dates it in black paint on the left-hand side of its outer rim, with the pseudonym “R. Mutt 1917.” His work is nearly done. There is only one more job remaining: he needs to give his urinal a name. He chooses Fountain. What had been, just a few hours beforehand, a nondescript, ubiquitous urinal has, by dint of Duchamp’s actions, become a work of art.At least it had in Duchamp’s mind. He believed he had invented a new form of sculpture: one where an artist could select any pre-existing mass-produced object with no obvious aesthetic merit, and by freeing it from its functional purpose—in other words making it useless—and by giving it a name and changing the context and angle from which it would normally be seen, turn it into a de facto artwork. He called this new form of art-making a “readymade”: a sculpture that was already made.Marcel Duchamp caused the decisive rupture from tradition and forced a re-evaluation of what could and should be considered art. Before Duchamp’s provocative intervention, art was something man-made, typically of aesthetic, technical and intellectual merit, which had been mounted in a frame and hung on a wall, or presented on a plinth to look splendid. ...

Some Examples of Modern Art

Let me start with my top-10 list of some examples of concept art, which perplex me. I will start with the ones which I felt were very different from the classical canons of art but which I accepted as a kind of art. The first was an installation by Bob Gransma from a Kochi Biennale - in this, the artist had made a gigantic slab of concrete to be placed inside a dug up area. I think that it expressed the ideas of disruption, destruction, and the fragility of life.

The next image has a work of Yuko Mori from a Kochi Biennale. It had metal rings on a metal stand with wires going down. I think that it was accompanied by a sound and video installation. It expressed the influence of mechanised world on the human life and people who spend their lives in factories repeating same gestures the whole day, every day.

The next image is of a work by Hassan Sharif from a Venice Biennale. It had a collection of bent aluminium spoons amidst a jumble of black plastic cords. It made me think of all the waste that we produce in our daily lives. It also reminded me of people hoarding stuff like wires, cords and bags in their cupboards because they might need them one day.

To conclude this part, I have another image from a Kochi Biennale which had a toilet by Dia Mehta Bhupal. It was also about urinals, like Du Champ's famous urinal which had started the Concept Art movement. However, the colours and designs used by the artist in this work changed the space into art and was the one which I liked most in this group.

Borderline Art

Next are 2 examples of concept art, which I felt were more borderline - I am still able to see them as a work of art but I am really not convinced about it. The first image is of a work by Takahiro Iwasaki and has some books arranged on a table, along with some coloured wires coming out of some of them.

The second one is an installation of B. V. Suresh from a Kochi Biennale, which was accompanied by sound and video effects.

The Lazy Artist?

The final 2 examples of Concept Art are the ones which I found most problematic. The first was a work by an Indian artist from the Kochi Biennale - it had the trash from a building construction arranged in the centre of a room.

The second example below was in the Israel pavillion in a Venice Biennale - I won't even try to describe it.

Conclusions

I agree that all the works presented above, can make us reflect and may be, see the world in a different way but I am not always sure if there was some art in them. If the art is just in a concept in the artist's head, then how do we decide who is an artist and who is not? All of us have concepts in our heads, who gets to decide if my concept is artistic? The guy who made the art by sticking a banana on a board? Or is it art, because some guy with more money than brain, bought that banana-board for a million dollars? It somehow reminds me of the story about the king's invisible clothes.

In his book, Gompertz asks "Such works are often entertaining, even thought-provoking, but are they art?" His answer is "Yes. They are. Because that is their intention, their sole purpose, and the grounds upon which we are being asked to judge them. The difference being that they are operating in an area of modern art that is first and foremost about ideas, not so much the creation of a physical object: hence conceptual art. But that doesn’t give artists the right to serve up any old rubbish."

Perhaps I lack certain qualities for proper art appreciation, but I wish that the biennale curators do not dedicate so much space to Concept Art. While we areat it, I would like that the space given to video and digital art installations should also be limited.

The last image of this post (above) is an installation by Kaushik Mukhopadhayay from a Kochi Biennale - he has used old thrown away stuff to make a delightful mechanical installation - it means that art can come out of garbage, but there is a difference between making art from rubbish and serving up rubbish as art.

Let me conclude this post with another quote from Gompertz -

In my opinion the best place to start when it comes to appreciating and enjoying modern and contemporary art is not to decide whether it’s any good or not, but to understand how it evolved from Leonardo’s classicism to today’s pickled sharks and unmade beds. As with most seemingly impenetrable subjects, art is like a game; all you really need to know is the basic rules and regulations for the once baffling to start making some sense.

This last quote from Gompertz does not really convince me - I don't think that art should be about learning the rules of some game. However, if you want to understand some of the most important art movements of late 19th and 20th century, read this Gompertz book - it is one of the best that I have read on this theme.

***

Papermade & the paper art (2)

Papermade is a biannual art exhibition held in Schio in the north-east of Italy around Christmas. As its name suggests, it focuses on paper art. The last Papermade exhibition was held in December 2017. In this post I present some of my favourite works from this exhibition, starting with the installation that I liked the most.

The above image shows details of a sculpture called "In your arms" by the Italian artist Marco Laganà. It was made by using papier-mache on a wooden structure, showing a soft whitish-bluish tree with a black bird. It was the art work that I liked the most in this exhibition because it gave me a surreal and dreamy feeling. I also loved the texture of branches and the bird. In fact, I think that in appreciating the paper art, texture of the paper plays a crucial role.

Let me now present some other works that I liked in this exhibition.

A sacred geometry by Karen Oremus (Canada/UAE)

Karen had created this work by cutting shapes in the paper with a laser and then stacking those papers over one another. This led to the creation of two kinds of towers - a downward going gentle tower/well that reminded me of the geological configuration of the Echo point near Munnar in Kerala, India. The other was a tower rising up in the air.

Scattered words in Arabic and English on the two sculptures made me think of the mythical Tower of Babel.

Domestic intimacy by Alexio Minini (Italy)

Alexio used paper and the origami to create a dancing old couple. The paper folds were very effective in creating wrinkles and screwed-up eyes on the faces of the dancers. (Click on the image for a bigger view)

This sculpture reminded me of very similar paper sculptures that I had seen in the central square of Mexico city in the early 1990s. I had even bought one of those sculptures as a gift for a friend. I wonder if something similar has inspired Minini's work.

At home by Maurizio Corradin (Italy)

Maurizio, an art therapist, had made a huge installation of a dome using paper, plastic, coloured LED lights and painting. The image of this work that you will find below shows the close-up of one of the sculptures near the bottom of the structure so that you can appreciate the kind of work that had gone in creating it.

The tiny figure seems to be made of metal wearing a helmet along with a red shoe in the left foot. It has wings of paper while white flowers adorn its head. It also has a wood stick with its tip painted black representing an erect phallus, giving the idea of a tribal fertility god.

Overall, I found the installation to be a little gimmicky for my taste and it did not evoke an emotional response in me. However, I did appreciate some of the details of this work.

House of my mind by Daniela Camuncoli (Italy)

Daniela is known for her paper collage work. She had made a wonderful collage of a young woman with earnest blue eyes that I loved for its colours, form and textures. I thought that it was unpretentious, clean and direct. It also had a charm in it that made me stand there and look at it for a very long time.

Apart from David Laganà's papier mache installation mentioned above, this was the art work that I liked most in this exhibition.

Some other Paper art installations

In the first part of this post presenting some works from a previous Papermade exhibition, I had explained that I am not fond of use of computers to create art - I feel that it is a kind of cheating. However, I also agree that my attitude towards digital art is a bit irrational - digital art is probably the future of art and artists need to have the freedom to use the medium they like for their art-expression.

Here are some other installations from the Papermade exhibition, which were good but at the same time, were based on a more traditional use of paper.

The first of these was a work called "Over confidence" by the Italian artist Alberto Balletti. It had been produced by an ink-jet etching. It showed a nude couple, probably in their fifties or sixties, who seem to be lying close to each other and yet distant, lost in thoughts with a kind of defeated look on their faces. I am not sure why the artist has named it "over confidence". Can anyone explain?

The second was called "Cartographies of the soul" and was by the Argentinian artist Alicia Candiani. It had a row of papers, each with blocks of orange and white colours with some superimposed images like the arm and the hand shown in the image below.

The third was called "Through the glass" by the Italian artist Simone del Pizzol. It had prints of an ink etching hanging in a row in a room, each showing some variation around a figure seen across a glass.

The fourth and the last art work of this group that I liked was called "Acathexis" and was by the Israeli artist Orit Hofshi. In this, the artist had used xylography (wood block printing), showing figures made in black ink against a red background. The image below presents some details from this work.

Acathexis is a psychoanalytical term used for persons who are unable to feel and show emotional responses. I think that probably this work showed Israeli persons who have been desensitised by the long on-going war with the Palestinians.

Conclusions

I like Papermade art when artists use paper as a building material through papier-mache, collage, assemblage, origami or paper-cutting, and not just use it to print or paint something. In the last Papermade exhibition, there were not so many examples of such use of paper to create art. Most of the works had used paper to print or paint. Thus, I was a little disappointed. However, I loved two works - House of my mind and In your arms.

If you had missed part 1 of this post about a previous Papermade exhibition, you can also check it.

***

Papermade & the paper art (1)

Since 2013, around Christmas every two years, Schio in the north-east of Italy holds an art exhibition called Papermade, focusing on paper-art. This first part of my blog-post presents some of my favourite exhibits from the Papermade exhibition held in December 2013. The second part of this post will look at exhibits from the event held in December 2017.

The above image presents Paper Women with  papier-mache white shoes shown against a red backdrop. It was one of my favourite installations from that exhibition. It was a work of Taiwanese artist Li Chen.

Let me also explain why I liked Chen's shoes! I think that appreciating art is about emotions provoked by the art. It reminded me of a Bollywood song from the 1964 film "April Fool"- "Mera naam Rita Cristina, ai-yai-ya, mein of Paris ki haseena, ai-yai-ya". You can watch this song on Youtube and try to guess why this work of art reminded me of that song!

Use of paper in art

Paper-making was invented in China around 2000 years ago. It came to Europe in the 12th century.

The tradition of Papier-mache, combining sheets of paper and molding them to create sculptural forms, also goes back to early China. It was adopted in France in the 17th century, who gave it its name by which this technique is widely known today.

Cutting paper for artistic expression was also invented in China in the 4th century. Folding papers to create paper-sculptures called Origami developed in the Edo period of Japan in the 17th century. Collage and Assemblage created by gluing together different materials on paper to create art are credited to early 20th century France.

Thus, using paper in different ways as a medium of artistic expression is not new. The Papermade exhibition of Schio brought together some examples of these practices.

Here are some of the art installations that I liked from Papermade 2013.

Secret Heart by Marina Bancroft (Canada)

This installation had a book whose pages had been cut in different ways, creating layers of paper-strips with scattered and incomplete words, growing in different directions. At some places, the paper strips were weaved like baskets, at others they were free floating.

Forgotten words by Terhi Hursti (Finland)

This installation also had books in Coptic calligraphic language, bound together along with forms in fluffy white cotton. The yellowed and blackened margins of the books, which were deformed as if they had been out in the rain, gave me an idea of passage of time and experiences of life.

The fading inks of the calligraphy made me think of all the languages, stories and cultures that are disappearing and dying, as young people think that English language and Western cultural values express superiority, modernity and progress while indigenous cultures and values are reduced to becoming museum pieces.

Paper Mache Tank by Marco Ferrari (Italy)

This installation used a wooden structure on which plastic containers in different forms and colours were recreated with paper-mache. It reminded me of some of my journeys in Africa, where in the rural areas, it is not easy to find petrol pumps and where people, especially women, sit along the roadsides selling petrol in colourful plastic containers.

It also made me think of the tons of plastic bags and bottles that are littering our lands, ponds, rivers and oceans, creating a vast new continent of garbage.

The second moon by Fernando Masone (Italy)

The installation had a central rod covered with paper that carried a three-tiered cut-paper flower at the top. I am not sure about the symbolism of the two cups holding the round moon of cut paper, but I liked its simple lines and symmetry. The textures of handmade paper were also very prominent in this work.

Vertigo by Margherita Levo Rosemberg (Italy)

This installation had rolled up papers from newspapers and magazines, stitched together in different layers along circular wire frames that brought a mild sense of vertigo as I looked at them. It was one of the most physical installation in the exhibition. The artist Rosemberg is a psychiatrist and she adds different layers of meanings to her works, both physical and psychological.

Design For Living & Lost Letters by Peter Ford (UK)

Let me conclude this post with the work of another artist that I liked very much.

The British artist had two installations and I liked both of them. Design for Living had designs made by raised-up relief on handmade paper. It had geometric forms laid out in grids, mixed with islands of people. It made me think of a map for blind and low-vision persons and I liked its gentle colours.

Lost Letters had wood-block prints in rectangular blocks that reminded me of ponds where they grow fish and prawns. Round bumps of coloured papers rising up in those ponds were like some little islands. Words like memories and forgetting floated in those ponds.

Conclusions

I liked the idea behind the Papermade exhibition. However, many of the exhibits were paintings or printed things on paper, and I did not find their ideas very stimulating or innovative. I must also confess that I am not enthusiastic about digital art - I feel that it is a kind of artistic cheating if we use computers to create art. I am sure that many of you would not agree with me on this point!

Most art exhibitions of Schio are held at the historic building of Palazzo Fogazzaro in the city centre and are free. If you are visiting Schio, do take a look at Palazzo Fogazzaro to check its on-going exhibitions.

In the second part of this post, I will talk about installations from the more recent Papermade exhibition held in December 2017.

***

Exploring Kochi Art Biennale

When I had planned my visit to Kochi (Kerala, India), I had not thought about the Kochi Art Biennale. It was being held in the beautiful Fort Kochi area, where I was staying. It was a pleasant surprise to be able to visit the Biennale and to expand my ideas about art.

The image below shows the famous Chinese fishing nets of Fort Kochi.

ART IN KOCHI BIENNALE

Art at the Biennale touched on all the different ways of human expression - paintings, sculptures, architecture, sounds and videos. Appreciating some of them required sitting down, without feeling rushed. However I had little time and I wanted to see a lot of things, so that was not easy.

The location of Fort Kochi, especially the old ruined buildings next to the sea, contributed to the experience of appreciating art. For example, the image below shows the installation, “Shell Mycelium – Degradation movement manifesto” by Asif Rehman Junaid, Giambattista Areddia and Mohamad Yassin, at the Dutch Warehouse (MAP). I felt that the location with the ruins added so much to this installation.

First, I want to tell about three of my favourite art experiences from the Biennale. For me art is all about emotions and feelings. Thus, my favourite art experiences were those that had a strong emotional impact on me.

1. INVERSO MUNDUS BY AES+F

This video installation at Anand Warehouse of Fort Kochi was the best experience I had at the Biennale. The video was projected on a huge screen. It was very powerful and provocative. 

It was by AES+F. It made me think about things we take for granted in the daily life - it turned them upside down. For example, the way we treat animals, the way we treat women and the new areas of scientific research.

One episode had a butcher guy hanging upside down. Then a pig came and opened the guy’s tummy with a knife, to let the blood drain out, as the butchers do with the pigs.

In another episode young guys were tied down and women came with shears, scissors and other instruments to cut them and mark them like animals.

I also liked another work of AES+F presented at the Biennale – Dèfilé. In this work, they had presented some digital images of recently dead persons dressed as fashion models. They explained the concept of this work as, “Motionless bodies in early decomposition, dressed in clothing of an industry obsessed with youth and what is hot right now.”

2. THE PYRAMID OF EXILED POETS BY ALES STEGER

Ales Steger is from Slovenia. His installation at the compound of Aspinwall House had a pyramid with sound recordings of poets who were exiled from their countries. The poets included Bertolt Brecht, Dante Allighieri, Mahmoud Darwish and Ivan Blatn.

I am a little claustrophobic. When I had visited the pyramids in Giza (Egypt), I had not entered the pyramid tunnel because of this fear. However, Steger’s pyramid did not look big and I entered it without thinking. The dark narrow spaces inside it, immediately made me wish to turn back and go out. However, there were other persons behind me and going back was not an option. Thus, I moved slowly, keeping my hand on the wall and trying to take deep breaths to calm myself.

Perhaps it was this state of heightened awareness that contributed to making it a strong emotional experience. The textures of the wall, the smell of mud and wood, the voices of the poets and the suffocating darkness, they were all part of this art experience.

3. TWELVE STORIES OF P. K. SADANANDAN

P. K. Sadanandan is from Thrissur (Kerala, India). His “Twelve stories of the 12 progeny” was a mural painted with natural pigments.

His painting style seemed similar to the 17th century murals from the king's house (Dutch Palace) in Mattancherry in Fort Kochi. His illustrations made me think of a tropical jungle. Episodes of the stories were often separated by rope-lines just like the murals in the Dutch palace. There was a dominance of blue and grey in his images that was beautiful.

This mural depicted the traditional stories of the 12 families (kulam) of a woman called Parayi Petta Panthiru. These stories provide lessons for life such as value of listening, importance of fate and inequality of the caste system.

OTHER ART AT BIENNALE WHICH I LIKED

Apart from the above three art installations which had a strong impact on me, I also liked the following works:

Go Playces: Orijit Sen’s installation had city maps composed of persons, families, shops and events of daily life. These events intersected with the stories of his experiences of visiting these cities. Some of those experiences were represented on magnetic jig-saw puzzle pieces. Thus, the interactive installation invited visitors to imagine the location of those jigsaw puzzle pieces on the maps.

There were too many persons, especially young guys, interacting with this installation, so it was a little bit noisy. Yet, the stories of visits and looking at the huge colourful maps of people and events touched me, making me think of some of my own journeys and experiences.

Riff Off by Bob Gramsma: A huge concrete wall fallen inside a mud pit may seem to be a very unlikely art installation. Many persons would have difficulty in seeing the “art” in it. Yet, it had a strong emotional impact on me.

Bob Gramsma is from Switzerland. His site-specific sculpture in concrete is “a register of an excavated hole”. His explanation about how this sculpture was produced says: “After digging an extensive opening in the earth, a concrete cast was made to produce an inverted sculptural reproduction of the previously created void… it sits as a monumental, inverted blueprint of an excavation it now dissects.”

I am not so sure why it had that impact on me. Perhaps it was the idea of seeing the space created by excavation, not as an empty void, but as a steel and concrete structure.

Bathroom set: Dia Mehta Bhupal (Mumbai, India) had two installations in Biennale. I liked her “Bathroom Set” (it was more of a male urinal rather than a bathroom) in blue, grey and white. It had a strong impact on me because it made me look differently at a place often associated with strong unpleasant smells.

The whole installation was made of scraps of papers taken from magazines – a papier mache world.

Big Dog: Liu Wei is from China. Her installation used oxhide, used for making chewing toys for dogs. She had used oxhide to construct Greek temples, amphitheatres and Roman arches - models of classical Roman/Greek architecture, made from animal skin.

Room for lies: Sunil Padwal (Mumbai, India) brought together daily-life objects of the past, filling the walls with murals of nostalgia.

Visiting the room made me feel as if I had entered an old persons' room, full of memorabilia collected over a life-time.

Secret Dialogues: During my visit, the artist C. Bhagyanath (Thalassery, India) was in the room where his works were displayed.

He works on semi-transparent sheets, creating line drawings on each layer, so that by overlapping the sheets, they create a narrative. Depending upon the work, the layers can vary from 2 to 6 or even more. Most of his works at the Biennale were drawings with carbon, with an occasional use of red colour.

He explained his work as, “… a story about layers, about how we add to what comes before to express the relationship between mind and body, human and animal, inside and outside."

Where the flowers still grow: Bharat Sikka (New Delhi, India) presented a series of photographs and some daily life objects from Kashmir to express his feelings of living in a war zone and how people try to continue to live in spite of everything.

I thought that the photographs and objects he had selected were interesting. For example, among the objects was a box of ammunition that could have belonged to militants or to the Indian army. It also made me think of army persons who live far away from their homes and families and how the violence and war experiences change them.

In this installation, I also felt that a row of dusty, worn out shoes laid out in a corner of the room, was incredibly moving.

Tears of Taj Mahal: Ouyang Jianghe uses calligraphy to create textual sculptures. I love the idea of sculptures of words. It reminds me somehow of the white-books sculptures of the Italian artist Lorenzo Perrone, though the two have completely different concepts.

Jiaghe’s sculptures are hanging scrolls on which he writes. He feels that the meanings of the words are not important, rather it is the complexity of language.

The Pavillion: The Pavillion was a hall at the Cabral Yard where they held meetings, interviews and events of the Biennale. Tony Joseph (Calicut, India) was the architect of this pavillion. I loved the ceiling of the hall covered with saris and lit by lights in changing colours.

Sathe Nagar here: Different artists from Sathe Nagar community in Mumbai had created this architectural installation next to Cochin Club near the beach of Fort Kochi. They organised a series of events, performances and meetings in the installation. It included photographs, videos and soundscapes to present the life in Sathe Nagar.

The installation included some written panels. For example, a panel  talked about the lives of immigrants who have left their families behind in the villages. It started with, “Majhi Maina Gavavar Rahili, my Mynah, my love was left behind in the village, my heart stirs restlessly remembering her, her attractive body, her moon like face, good natured and large hearted, she is to me, what Sita was to Ram…”

Kissa Kursi Ka: A series of installations on the theme of chairs was organised at Heritage Art gallery near the Jewish Synagogue in Mattancherry. The installation by Gunajan Gupta had the background of traditional arts from Kerala and other parts of India. It explored the links between art and design.

CONCLUSIONS

Kochi Biennale 2016-17 with more than 90 artists from a large number of countries, was a wonderful opportunity to see how the ideas and concepts of art are evolving. My conclusion was that art has blurred boundaries.

I felt that short abstract videos, like an installation that explored the rain drops falling on a window pane, was easy to consider as art – because it was about sensations and emotions and not about a story. But “Inversus Mundus” was very clearly a film with episodes and short stories or ideas. I could have seen it as a part of a film festival. So there was this blurring of boundaries between the art-forms that seems to be part of the contemporary understandings about art.

I was also not sure about computer generated art, such as the three-D printed sculptures. I felt as if the artist had cheated by using the three-D printing instead of actually sculpting. Probably, this only means that I belong to an older generation!

I want to conclude this post with another image of an art installation that I liked. It was called Fish Cemetery. It was located on the Fort Kochi beach and was not part of the Art Biennale. Its objective was to creare awareness about environment. It was by Manoj Brahmamangalam and Pramod Gopalakrishnan.

***

Actors Prepare - From Ravan to Mahatma Gandhi

I love watching actors get ready for their roles. I find fascinating the process of putting make-up and costumes and to see the person change form in front of me. Over the years, I have had some great opportunities to watch the actors get ready for their roles. This post presents some of my favourite images of the theatre actors from India, Italy and some other countries.

India - Actors of Ramlila and Other Sacred Stories

Let me start with some images from India. All these images are related to Ramlila, the enactment of Hindu epic Ramayan. During the days leading to the festival of Dusshera, hundreds of Ramlila plays are organised across big and small towns in northern and central parts of India.

The first image above is from the Bhaona enactment of Ramayan at the Majuli island in Assam (India). The actors were getting ready for the "Sita Swayamvar" scene, where princess Sita has to choose her bridegroom and different kings have come from all over India, hoping to marry her. The image shows the actor playing Lord Ram help one of the actors playing the role of a rival king, get ready.

I have some wonderful memories of watching Ramlila as a child at the DCM grounds near Rohtak Road in Delhi. I was especially fascinated by the figure of Ravan, the Rakshas king with ten heads, who kidnaps Sita. His booming laugh made me feel afraid, but I also felt a bit of pity for him.

The image below is from Ser Jatra from Puri in Odisha during which actors wear masks and go in a procession. The image shows the actor playing Ravan getting ready with a ten-headed black mask, along with an actor playing Arjun (from the epic Mahabharat).

In Delhi, one of the oldest Ramlila traditions is from Chandni Chowk in the old city, started during the reign of Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar. This Ramlila play takes place in the open grounds at Ajmeri Gate, known as Ramlila grounds. The actors of this Ramlila get ready at a Dharamshala near Esplanade Road in Chandni Chowk. The image below shows the actor playing Lord Ram's younger brother Lakshman, get ready. The make up man is Mr Shyam Chandra Trikha who has been doing make up for this Ramlila for the last 25 years.

Often people playing actors say that for them playing a role in Ramlila is a kind of sacred benediction.

The last image of the Ramlila actors is from Kochi in Kerala, at the southern tip of India. The Kathakkali actor is getting ready for a temple dance-drama performance. Kathakkali has specific rules about the colours to be used for the make-up of different characters.

The next three images are of characters from other sacred stories of India. The first is of the Goddess Durga and is from the Ser Jatra in Puri in Odisha. The person getting ready to wear the Durga mask is a man, Mr. Bhimsen Mahapatra.

From Sikkim in the north to Kerala in the south, India has a wonderful tradition of using masks in the traditional theatre and dances. The use of masks provides ready-made faces for theatre, thus avoiding the need of spending hours on make-up. The next image has the masked Buddhist monks from Sikkim in the traditional Vajra (Lightening) dance.

The last image is that of Mr. Sunil Kumar getting ready to play Yamraj, the god of death, for the Ramlila procession in Chandni Chowk (Delhi), where he is going to sit with a noose around the head of an actor playing Markandeya.

The story of Yamraj and the boy Markandeya, where the boy is saved from death by Lord Shiva, appears in two sacred texts - Bhagwat Puran and Mahabharat. I ask him, why there are Yamraj and Markandeya in a Ramlila procession, since they are not a part of the Ramayan story? With his flashing eyes and a shining scimitar, Sunil Kumar does look a little scary, till he smiles at me benevolently, shaking his head. He would make for a wonderful image in the procession and their audience knows their story, so it is does not matter if he is a visiting celebrity from another sacred story.

Actors prepare in Europe

The next few images are from Bologna (Italy) where I had my first experiences of watching actors prepare for their roles.

The next image is of Mario Barzaghi, an Italian theatre actor and dancer who is also a trained Kathakkali dancer, getting ready for his role as Hanuman from the Indian epic Ramayan. This image can give you an idea of hours of preparation needed for the make-up and putting on of the Kathakkali costumes. The day I had clicked this picture, he was going to enact the episode when Hanuman flies to Lanka in search of Sita.

It is said that early Romans and Greek actors did not use any make-up or costumes. The use of the masks in the plays came much later. The traveling actor-comedians of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte in the 16th century had developed a set of stock characters, such as Arlecchino, who used masks. The image below shows some medieval puppets from the Bargellini museum of Bologna, wearing iconic costumes and masks of the Commedia dell'Arte era.

Introduction of electricity in the 19th century provided better lighting for theatre. Thus actors had to change their make-up techniques to adapt to the lights on the stage. In 1890 Carl Baudin used a mixture of flesh-coloured paste of zinc white, yellow ochre, vermilion, and lard, which was given the name of grease-paint. Even today often we use the term grease-paint to talk about the make-up of actors but with time, now we have much better water-soluble make-up. Rather than flashy and gaudy colours, modern theatre prefers the natural look with its own techniques of make-up.

The next three images are all from cultural events in Bologna showing actors putting on the make-up with water soluble colours to paint rainbows on their bodies.

The last image above has my friend Jana Daniela as the make-up artist. Jana herself is a cinema actor and has used amazing make-up for her role as a zombie in a recent film.

Actors From Americas

The next image shows animal-masks used by a Brazilian dance group from south America.

The second image from Americas is from Washington D.C. (USA) where the two actors of Indian origin, Subodh Sen and Natwar Gandhi, are getting ready respectively for the roles of Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi for the play "A Tryst with Destiny", about the independence of India.

Conclusions

Selecting images for this post was immensely pleasurable. I loved going through my image archives to search for them, and in the process, rememberd many of those performances and the persons behind the make-up.

The concluding image of this photo-essay is of Mario Barzaghi getting ready to play Hanuman for the Kathakkali performance.

***