‘Celebration & Prayer’: A new book in which poet Ashok Vajpeyi paints a portrait of S.H. Raza in words
A new book, ‘Celebration & Prayer’, offers behind-the-scene insights into the modern master’s art, life and belief
In a letter written to artist Janine Mongillat, while he was courting her in Paris, Syed Haider Raza, one of India’s foremost modern masters, had promised her, “I will bring my time." Raza had arrived in France on a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Art in 1950, where he first met Mongillat, who later became his wife. These words, written in a stream of consciousness, have acquired immense significance in retrospect. Raza—a colourist par excellence, who brought a certain spirituality to his work—is one of the most celebrated artists, worldwide, today.
Feted during his lifetime and beyond, he became the first non-European to be awarded the prestigious Prix de la Critique in 1955, which made him part of an exalted league, including Akira Kito and Jean Dubuffet. He was honoured thrice by the French government with awards such as the Commandeur L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2007), and with the Padma awards by the Indian government. His works continue to set records at auctions. Seven years after his death in 2016, Raza’s acrylic on canvas, Gestation (1989), was sold for ₹51.75 crore (inclusive of commissions) at Pundole Auction House, making it the most expensive Indian artwork at an auction sale at the time.
And now, a new book, titled Celebration & Prayer (Speaking Tiger), authored by Ashok Vajpeyi—one of the artist’s closest friends and managing trustee of the Raza Foundation—comes with behind-the-scenes insights into the evolution of a young boy from a small village of Madhya Pradesh into a philosophical painter, who was deeply influenced by Gandhian values and metaphysical ideas. The book is not just a scholarly work, elucidating on the different ways of look ing at the artist’s practice—rather Vajpeyi writes from his knowledge of Raza’s mind. Unlike the academic tomes written about the artist, this one is peppered with conversations, reminisces and observations. Vajpeyi’s key focus is the plurality of Raza’s vision.
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Born in 1922, when he moved to Damoh in Madhya Pradesh to attend high school, “he encountered two cultural traditions in proximity: the Islamic and the Hindu. His father taught him to observe namaz and appreciate the poetry of Mir and Ghalib. He listened to the singing of Ramcharitmanas in the neighbourhood Hindu temple and enthusiastically watched episodes of Ramlila," Vajpeyi writes. Raza’s interest lay more in spirituality than religion. He engaged with the values enshrined in Islam, Hinduism, Jainism and other religions of the world—for him, ideas of generosity, compassion, non-violence were far more important than rituals.
Vajpeyi returns to Raza’s syncretic outlook repeatedly, and this reiteration becomes particularly important at a time scarred by aggression and intolerance. For instance, Vajpeyi writes that after Mongillat’s death, when Raza moved back to Delhi in a new home in 2011, he would visit a temple, a mosque and a church every week.
Even though Raza lived in Paris for nearly six decades, he found his centre, represented by the iconic bindu in his practice, back home. He retained his Indian passport even while living overseas. He would return regularly to visit villages, cities and caves to draw on the colour and metaphysical ideas rooted in India. Raza carried the homeland within him. Vajpeyi writes about his painting, Maa (1980): “It is, as if, the surrounding scapes of France were being replaced by an imaginary homeland that seemed more clearly located in the motherland."
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Even though Raza’s works feature geometric forms in recurring themes of the bindu, purush-prakriti and the panchtattva, these are not dense or solid, but pulsating with energy. “I have no apology for my repetition of the form of the bindu. With repetition, you can gain energy and intensity—as is gained through the japmala, or the repetition of a word or a syllable—until you achieve a state of elevated consciousness," Vajpeyi quotes Raza. It is this inner voice of the artist—“a geography of the soul"—that Vajpeyi evokes in Celebration & Prayer.
The book also places Raza in the context of the Progressive Artists Group, which he co-founded, how many artists in the group with west ern training managed to create a distinctive language to respond to a newly-inde pendent India—be it through their engagement with fiction, cinema, theatre and other performing arts. Raza, for one, engaged strongly with poetry. One of the most interesting sec tions relates to his tryst with Hindi poetry, which brought Vajpeyi and Raza together in the 1970s, with the former regularly sending the artist books of con temporary Hindi poetry. Raza would keep a diary where he noted down ideas, thoughts, and lines he liked. In the last phase of his practice, he inscribed lines of poetry in Sanskrit, Hindi and Urdu in Devanagari script on his canvases.
The other arresting chapter is Life, Art and Gandhian Light, which looks at the influence of M.K. Gandhi on the artist. After Partition, Raza chose to stay back in India even though his family and first wife migrated to Pakistan. Vajpeyi cites a conversation with Raza about this decision, where the artist confessed he thought he would be “betraying the Mahatma if he left the nation." He believed in the ide als of truth and non-violence espoused by Gandhi. On his return to Delhi in 2011, Vajpeyi suggested that Raza do a set of paintings inspired by these ideas. “One late afternoon in 2013, I found him doing a canvas in very subdued hues… . The painting in question had Gandhi’s last words as he fell dead from the bullets of his assassin: ‘Hey Ram’. It has a signifi cant use of white, indicating both purity and hope but that also engulfs the can vas with a mist or cloud of sadness ," Vajpeyi writes. Raza was also a believer in Vinoba Bhave’s idea of swadharma, that everyone must find their own dharma, or call of duty, and abide by it. For him, this dharma was art, and he followed it till his last breath.
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