Canvas as signature

Canvas as signature
Suresh Menon

It is nearly half a century since French movie director and critic Francois Truffaut's `auteur' theory was first enunciated in the pages of òf40óCahiers du Cinema. The auteur was the `author' of the movie he made. Satyajit Ray, who made his first film before Truffaut's article appeared, was an auteur; the term didn't exist then, but the concept clearly did. A medium that is so dependent on the combined skills and vision of so many people, from actors to editors to cameramen to script-writers to music directors, is thus capable of being seen as one man's work.

It doesn't take great imagination to realise that the imponderables in the making of a movie are many. The gap between concept and execution is likely to be greater in this art form (for art form it is, although we will not go into the arguments here) than any other. The choice of the actor, where he stands in relation to other actors, the background against which he stands, the kind of shot that is taken -- each of these has a message regarding the movie. Multiply that by the number of actors, the range of situations, the possibilities in the camera, and you have a set of permutations that would require a Ramanujan to calculate. And all this before the editor comes into the picture. He can give the movie a texture that might not have existed at the time of the shooting. And the music director can give it a feel beyond that.

The great director (as auteurs usually are) has to take credit for the movie he makes. When a Satyajit Ray writes, scripts, edits, directs and provides music for the same movie, he comes as close to being in control of it as any man will. Other arts do not have a formal auteur theory, yet it exists by implication.

The performing vocalist is an auteur regardless of the accompanists. A flute recital by Hari Prasad Chaurasia belongs entirely to him. He is its author. It is the same with a sarod recital by Amjad Ali Khan or a tabla recital by Zakir Hussain. Writers are auteurs, by definition. Editors have made a difference sometimes, but òf40óA Suitable Boy is Vikram Seth's work just as òf40óSwami and Friends is R.K. Narayan's. A Thomas Wolfe standing upright and writing and throwing the pages to the floor as he finishes might have needed an editor to put it all together, but the work is still his.

All this is by way of leading up to the artist Manjit Bawa, and the controversy over the ``authorship'' of some of his paintings. Bawa's studio assistant Mohinder Soni claims that for the last eight years, he was ``Bawa'', doing many of the drawings, filling in the colours, and occasionally even conceptualising and executing whole series of paintings. Bawa's letter to the auction house, Christie's in New York, asking it to withdraw a painting of his which he said was forged has lent credence to Soni's claim. Suddenly, there is an unreal air about one of India's leading painters. Just how much of his work did he do, and how much did he allow his assistant to? Is there an ethical question here?

Some time ago a gallery in the south went out of business. The whisper was that it was knowingly or unknowingly passing off fake Husains as originals. There is a delightful story attached to one of the paintings. No buyer who has a Husain would like to keep it a secret and apparently one such, an industrialist, threw a party for friends to introduce them to his newest acquisition -- a Husain original. One of the guests walking past the ``painting of honour'' recalled having seen it before. And then it hit him. He had an identical one at home! One of the two was obviously a forgery. With many artists having placed themselves out of reach of the common man (a Manjit Bawa, for instance, costs as much as five lakh. A Husain might fetch three or four times that amount), there is a thriving business in fakes. Another gallery in the south is known for offering its patrons a ``Yusuf Arakkal'' painted by someone else, but at an affordable price. It is like the proliferation of fake consumer goods with the legend``Made in Japan'' on them.

Of all the arts mentioned here, painting is perhaps the one that is entirely the painter's. The painter is the auteur however you look at it. True, there is the question of the canvas, and the paints and the brushes, all of which may be manufactured outside and are, therefore, out of the auteur's control. But a painter's concept and execution are closer together than any other auteur's. If Manjit Bawa passed off works done by his assistant and sold them as his own, he is cheating, disguise it how you will. The auteur painter has to do his work from start to finish -- you cannot have a ``painting editor'' who does the work.

There is an argument that artists like Bawa can turn to -- Rembrandt. The Dutch master often let his students fill in the paint after his initial work. That is why there is still confusion over the authenticity of some of his works. The other argument -- if the buyer likes it, why should it matter who painted it -- melts away when you consider the fact that the payment is for the name, not just the work.

Bawa has said he dismissed his assistant when he discovered that many of his works were being copied on the sly. That sounds like the painter had created a Frankenstein. The assistant's crime was that he went beyond his brief; it was a temptation he could not resist. All art students go through the discipline of copying the masters. This is an exercise. But if an attempt is made to sell those as originals, then obviously that is cheating. Manjit Bawa's hands are probably clean in the forgery business. But it is clear that he is paying the price for allowing another man to fill in the colours.

The movie auteur is protected because even a successful copy of his style is seen as a tribute. The painting auteur cannot be given that luxury. His work must be his work -- or it will bring down the value of everything he has done.

Suddenly, there is an unreal air about one of India's leading painters. Just how much of his work did he do, and how much did he allow his assistant to?