| Art of Ray |
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How can one situate Satyajit Ray in his art? Our primary concern here is with his creativity — the process of creation and the person. Aristotle defined the principle of creation as nous poietikos, the poetic reason; it is a principle that can apply to the creation of the universe itself — the creative act brought into existence something that didn’t exist before. A human artist, by definition, cannot produce what the Great Creator has done — produce something out of nothing. The human act of creation always involves a reshaping of given material, whether physical or mental. What are the objective conditions of this given material, and its reconstitution in creative work? |
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Philosopher Thomas Nagel has argued that objectivity can not be studied just in universalist terms — what he terms a view from “nowhere”. It must be identified with a positional perspective — a view from “somewhere”. In Satyajit Ray’s work, there is a creative dialectic between what is universal and what is unique to his objective conditions, between the global and the local.
There is something distinctively Bengali about this objective positionality in “somehwere”. Its Bengaliness is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, multi-lingual yet Bengali-language centered. It is know as Bhadrolok culture.
An important aspect of Bhadrolok culture (the 19th century class of modern Bengali intellectuals) was a search for the “folk” elements — what were considered to be quintessentially Bengali -non-religious and secular. Another dimension was to turn to the tunes, melodies that were part of the folk culture, and to the “funnies”, harmless humor, jokes, limericks and doggerels. A few collectors traveled from village to village in search of folk ballads, folk tales and folk songs. These were published with colorful illustrations. |
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With the coming of the gramophone, these songs were put in music albums. Bengal was host to many distinguished classical North Indian musicians and dancers in the post Mughal period. With decline of the Mughals , they started to move eastward to Bengal.
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The new landed gentry created by the British became their patrons. Classical North Indian music had become an integral part of the Bhadrolok taste. We see a classic example of that in Music Room. It seemed to have reached even the folk level. Goopy and Bagha dream about becoming a great singer and drummer.
Shantiniketan
In Santiniketan Art School, Ray was exposed to the theories of art propounded by his mentors. |
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From Nandalal Bose, he learned the “Six Limbs” (Sadanga) of painting — 1) knowledge of form, 2) correct perception, measure and structure, 3) _expression of feeling through form, 4) grace in artistic representation, 5) similitude or naturalism, 6) artistic manner of using the brush and colors.
Benode Bihari Mukherjee opened another new world — calligraphy, bookjacket design, control and economy in _expression (fire within, calm without). |
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The influences of Bose and Mukherjee shaped Ray’s graphic art. He went past these influences: he virtually revolutionized India’s commercial art. He added a remarkably innovative and creative aesthetic form and spirit to it. He also revolutionized book jacket design and typography.
While working as a graphic artist and visualizer in Calcutta, Satyajit Ray wrote about the challenges he faced this way:
“We are creating a Calcutta style borrowing elements of Indian folk and decorative art...[in order to do this] I needed the background of Indian classical art, Eastern Art-Chinese and Japanese, Western art — from early Egyptian, cave-paintings, rock-paintings, down to the post-impressionist, or even the later ones. |
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Ray’s film art was profoundly influenced by this early experience with graphic art. He would sketch out every frame of his films before he would shoot it.
Here I would argue that he essentially reversed the artistic process he learned from Bose and Mukherjee. The two teachers would look at a tree or landscape and try to grasp the inner power that animated it. This, they would capture and convey in their art: sketches and painting.
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| Ray did the opposite. He would imagine what would animate a frame, sketch it out, and then match it with a naturalistic film image. Wondering how Ray differs from both American and European cinema, a critic had this to say: |
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The secret of his power lies in the facility with which he penetrates the skin of each character, and fixes what is in their minds and hearts, even a half-formed thought or feeling, a passing fancy- a look of the eyes, a trembling of the finger, the shadows that descend on the face of a faint smile, a silence more piercing than a cry.”
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| Ray, I would say, is able to achieve such a nuanced and penetrating vision because he intensely conceives every shot to probe its interior (the inner), imagine it, and sketch it out. Then he will give it a film form. |
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