ENVIRONMENT-NURTURED AESTHETIC SENSIBILITY When Mathematics (the science of magnitude and number, and of all their relations) is introduced into noise (an over-loud or disturbing sound), the latter becomes Music. When Music (the art of expression in sound, in melody, and harmony, including both composition and execution) is breathed into prose (matter-of-fact spoken and written language), the latter becomes Poetry (the musical art of sound and sense). An unseemly array of unrelated sights gives birth to a Painting or a Drawing when it is fertilised by the sperm of Poetry: a form of superior order imposed on a jumble of confused images expressed in rhythm and metaphor. 70% of our apprehension of the (outer) world is by means of the faculty of seeing engaged in everyday encounter with ever-changing visual images. When we are able to make sense out of a chaos of sights we are apparently involved in the act of drawing our own impressions of them on the canvas of our minds. By this token, as Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy has succinctly stated, an artist is not a special kind of an individual, but rather every individual is a special kind of an artist. Although Art is human skill and agency (opposed to Nature) yet Art is the natural endowment of all humankind. In other words, Art is an accurate index of sublime Humanity. No wonder, in Indian mythology, the chief avataras (reincarnations) of Lord Vishnu [The Sustainer God in the Hindu Trinity], Rama and Krishna, are credited with the power of having complete mastery of 14 and 16 arts, respectively. This brief exposition should be helpful in cultivating a holistic appreciation of Art, in general; and in viewing the work of Prabhinder Lall, in particular. I would like to first identify the factors which have been responsible in shaping this Artist’s aesthetic sensibility in order to uncover all that is “special” in his Art. Though born in district Nawanshahar (Punjab), Prabhinder Lall was brought up in Chandigarh from a very young age, and received his schooling and art education here. Chandigarh is distinguished not only as a harbinger of Modern Urbanism in the world, but also as the “City Beautiful” with a creative climate sprung from an ambience distilled from its three planning postulates of Sun, Space, and Verdure, as enunciated by Le Corbusier, the world’s greatest Architect-Artist since Michelangelo. Prabhinder Lall has assimilated a good measure of the stated Elements in his psycho-biological system. These Elements slowly and steadily found their apt formulations in his mind by a constant exposure to the work of his architect father, RS Lall, who has contributed significantly to the building of Chandigarh in terms of brilliant architectural designs. Architecture is by far the most comprehensive of all fields of human endeavour. That’s why it has been called the “Mother of All Arts”. Its Elements: Space, Structure, and Form are such as are inescapably present in all forms of Creativity. Chandigarh’s hallowed holism and what he received from his home environment are Prabhinder Lall’s chief endowments which make him a “special kind of an artist” as an “individual” twice blessed. I have carefully picked up some of the most representative of his works done between 1980 and 2008 to view Lall’s artistic growth in terms of his response (albeit, unconscious) to Chandigarh’s creative climate, the development of skills, and the maturing of his perception of the visual metaphor. The reader/viewer will do well to contemplate his other works, included in this brochure without any comment, in the light of the foregoing exposition and the critique that follows. The work dated 1989, “Untitled”, done in acrylic and ink on paper, speaks volumes for a jubilant derivation of the subject-matter from the salubrious environs of Chandigarh. The two cylindrical columns, bold and massive as they are, bear kinship with the monumental portals of the High Court building designed by Le Corbusier. The off-white wall against which they appear underscores the importance of Space in the architectonics of Creativity––as much of the Built-Environment as of the painted canvas. The central feature, an irregularly-outlined painting, reminds one of how Le Corbusier made Art an integral part of Modern Architecture. The foreground is a nebulous agglomeration indicating the exciting Act of Creation rather than the created artefact. The left-side column is sheared along with a poster stuck on it––to underscore the urge to sever human aesthetic sensibility from the placental membranes of the environment which have given birth to it. The whole work pulsates with a superior order such as is the raison d’ etre of all sensible existence. In “Mother and Daughter” (1993) Lall experiments with the use of air-brush. The air-brush was the tool which he was using during his Training in Applied Art. The figures are realistic, but delicately stylised. Here the Sun (symbolised by the vast sky) is predominant. The hills and the water-body, and the brick inclined wall are all familiar images of the Chandigarh ambience. It is an uncluttered orderly work. Human figures depict the urge for kinship with Humanity. “Feminine Beauty” (1998), done with ink on canvas, shows skilfully the inherent human urge for an uninhibited appreciation of all aesthetic enchantment that the human female casts on the male psyche. The leaves, along with the exposed breasts, fill the hard-edged reality of manmade environment. The shadow of the figure on an incompletely-built wall is reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s “Tower of Shadows” which forms part of the Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex. The planes suggest Space; the blank background, the Sun; and the leaves, the Verdure––in artistically-transmuted visual imagery. 2004 Work, done in acrylic and ink on paper, divides the rectangle into six squares. Each has the ambience of a sky charged with the energy of newborn stars. Each is differently rendered, with focus on the middle part bathed in luminescence. The squares are held together by the boldly-bordered container rectangle, but related to each other by their identical geometric shape. This manmade-natural relationship between the elements of Creativity is heightened by the presence of carefully-sited straight lines, horizontal in each of the two left side squares, on the right side. This breaking of the pictorial space is not unlike the splitting of the nucleus––in order to unleash elemental energy that creates a myriad forms, endlessly. “Vanishing Green” (2006), done in acrylic colours, extends Lall’s repertoire to refreshing new vistas of artistic perception. Combining the geometrical shapes with bravura of brushwork, he conjures up images of Modern Urbanism with its characteristic fast-paced life-style steeped in colourful confusion. I see in this work the important fact of transition from the regimented stylisation of his earlier works to the gay abandon of a highly-relaxed method of painting. The former warrants utmost executive control, the latter exploits an utter lack of it. One ends up in mechanical precision; the other expresses savage spontaneity. “Sun Bath” is a very large board, which has been painted in oil colours. The exaggerated size is chosen to provide a vast arena for some kind of activist painting. The relatively small size of the Sun-Bather heightens the scale of the surrounding landscape. The brilliant hues, which accentuate the open (and somewhat sombre) environs, express joie de vivre that springs forth automatically, once conscious control is suspended in favour of the unique playfulness of the Act of Creation. Patches of sea and sky turn the landscape into an island which suggests that Life is a signature of an individual’s uniqueness, and achieves its zesty fullness only when it is cut off from all mundane existence. This work marks a turning point in Prabhinder Lall’s career, and arouses one’s hope of seeing him explore exiting new horizons of significant Creativity in the years to come. DR SS BHATTI, Principal (retd.), Chandigarh College of Architecture; AIFACS-Honoured Veteran Artist Ex-Dean, Faculty of Design & Fine Arts, Panjab University; & Former Official Art Critic of The Tribune, Chandigarh. E-MAIL: ssbhatti24@yahoo.com PHONE: +91-172-2773258 [R]