To portray is metaphoric- Jatin Das

Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi put up an exhibition of 500 portraits by the veteran and well known painter Jatin Das which concluded on November 22. The exhibition “Jatin Das: Artists & Friends. Over Fifty Years” was probably the biggest ever display of portraits and sketches of various people including Raghu Rai, Gulzar, Nandita Das and Ram Kinkar. The show had works in oils, watercolour, ink, and conté. In his six-decade career, Jatin Das has worked in almost all kinds of medium starting from painting to drawing to sculptures and murals.

Making a portrait is different from other paintings as Jatin Das remarked, “To draw from nature, whether it is a leaf, an animal, or a face, is the same thing. Making an image is to approximate nature. You sharpen your observation and the coordination between your eyes and your fingers. But to portray is metaphoric. It is the impression of an actual object with its essence.

Reminiscing his days in JJ School of Art Mumbai, he observed that in his younger days “all artists sketched but today, many artists don’t even sketch; many think doing a portrait is too academic.”

Jatin Das remembered how almost 50 years ago he was commissioned to do a portrait of a couple. The lady had a double chin and she asked him to remove it in the portrait. But he refused. “likeness is not the only thing in a portrait; to bring out the impression and the essence of a person is important.”

His portraits bring out a distinct connection of the painter with his subjects. Whether the person is known to him or not, that connection at once strikes the viewer. Though all the portraits featured in the exhibition were of his friends and acquaintances yet that distinct connection of the artist with his subject cannot be ignored.

Though the veteran painter is sad about the growing commercialism in the field of art, and is nostalgic about the days when a painter’s artistic pursuit was a collective exercise and painters were close to each other as a community yet his faith in the cultural wealth of the country is unshaken. His artistic zeal is inexhaustible. That perhaps is the key to artistic creation that an artist never tires of creating and despite all odds continues. Jatin Das’ portraits reaffirm the faith in life and its reflection in artistic creation.

With inputs from Qazi M Raghib