Goutom's homage to liberation war

Miniature paining is something else. It is not, as is popularly believed, a miniature version of a "standard sized" painting - everything remaining in the same while the scale gets diminished, and so on. Miniature paining rather has to do with choosing a limited space to work on and going for compactness, while the vision adjusts itself to a more intense expression. It is more an exercise in intensity than minitiariztion. Sometimes, a miniature painting, ironically, expands our vision - as in Goutom Chakraborty's miniature, particularly the series he has titles The Red Hot Iron Bar - since the compactness with which he accommodates an emerging vision, a history or legend only challenges our ability to interpret them in the light of our experience.The Red Hot Iron Bar takes as its theme nothing less than the war of liberation whose dimensions are epical and timeless. Yet, they are accommodated within the space of a few square inches. As we look at the painting we are devastated, saddened, elated, or inspired - and all these emotions interact to expand the range of our experience. For a good many of us, it is revisiting a time that was, to use a Dickensian description, the best and the worst of times, but for Goutam and the young men and women of his generation, it is a reconstructive trip to a history which will forever inspire them. Goutam was too small to remember anything of the war, except may be a vague recollection of a fear or a shock. But he has seen Jahanara Imam, and has shared her dream and her vision of a Bangladesh where war criminals and the merchants of death would not roam the street free, taunting our independence and the liberation war itself. Goutam has also felt mother Teressa's compassionate hands reaching across borders of human misery and heal the wounds of a traumatized people. He mixes up their vision with his reconstruction of war and comes up with splendid works that recreate the turbulent time and beyond in poignant details.

These miniatures, twelve in number, were meant to be a year round tribute to the war of liberation - each for a month, and would be ideal material for a calendar.

There appeal lies in their emotive composition, their sense of history, tragedy and pride. The stories opens with an eye - the eye of history or destiny, and ends with a tribute to Jahanara Imam, the eternal mother who best captured the spirit of our liberation war.

An interesting aspect of Goutom's series is the presence of a red hot iron bar across each composition, sometime straight but often bent. This iron bar is his symbol of the state of mind of the Bengalee in 1970 and 1971 - burning intensely with a red glow, hot and glowing, ready to be bent into any shape. The war was the shaping agent and when the bar was cooled off it became hard, like the erect spinal cord of the people. The paintings themselves however show the bar in its red hot state - and apparently it creates such a contrast with the pregnant figure, with the three women who had lost their honor during the war but not their dream, the Mother Teressa who is grace itself with a human face. But ultimately the bar is not really a contrast - it is a part of the whole structure of Bengalee nation. It is the essential element of its composition.

The twelve paintings contain some of the favorite images and motifs of Goutam - the banana leaves elephant trunks and legs, faceless figures. They combine in newer configuration, however, in keeping with the leading themes and concern. The same colors predominate-green, purple, and blue; only here they are highlighted because of Goutam's treatment of space. In these twelve paintings, he leaves some white, empty space around the edges. This white space draws attention to the figures and images. perhaps because of their blankness.It is a refreshing experience to look at Goutam's Red Hot Iron Bar paintings, but reassuring too. For, one realizes that emotion remains, memories remains even after such a lapse of time: therefor the earlier expectation, the dream and visions - the too, remain. And we can go on building on these dreams and memories.

S. Manzoorul Islam

Art Critic and Professor of English University of Dhaka

Free verses accompanying the paintings in this series are written by Goutam Chakraborty