Art
CREATING OUT OF CONFUSION
Tarikat Islam, who is a lecturer in Drawing and Painting at Khulna University, has studied drawing and painting at the Rabindra Bharati University in India. Parthopotim Dev was the Head of his Department, and Shatrapati Dutt was his teacher. He studied for the Master of Visual Arts, but had to overcome the theory part with the help of Shahini Dhar. "Sreoshi Chattarjee taught us about art in the west,” says Tarikat. “I was the first batch of Jorashaku of Rabindra Bharati University. I went in 2000 and stayed for two years. Although our campus was in Kolkata, I went to Santiniketan. Yet, what I was in search of was the inner life of individuals rather than the apparent and obvious. In studying the development of Tagore's paintings from his doodles, my interest in the various 'isms' grew.”
Rabindranath showed his work in Germany and France, winning much acclaim. This moved Tarikat immensely. The physical involvement of Jackson Pollock with his dripping painting work—the noise and pollution of the city--influenced the painter. Mark Rothko's colourful paintings and Vassili Kandinsky's married couples flying in the air, Kandinsky's combined deep tones with light ones to create harmony with music have all grabbed the imagination of the nouveau painter. He did not attach any title to his work. He left it to the imagination of the viewer to think and come to some conclusion on his own. "If an artwork is limited to a caption, the mind of the onlooker is limited," says the artist.
Tarikat says that he has been doing non-figurative work as a student from his college days in India. He felt that critiques and philosophers who were connected with fine arts had said that it was difficult to find a path of one's own. At that time his teacher, Partho Protim Dev showed a way out. Dev had collected his work and told his student, Tarikat, to make a collage out of them to create something new. He grew out of his confusion and fury to do creative work that would be fresh and different from the conventional Indian and European art. Some of his friends like Sanjib Gogoi was doing something new. His dean and his teacher gave him freedom to do as he liked. His teacher was like a guide in the absence of his father. He wanted his student to return to his work and not give in to idle thoughts of fear and fury at his father's illness and later, his death.
"I often work in the acrylic media on paper and canvas. This is quicker and cheaper than linseed oil and turpentine. "My house in Dhaka is in Central Road, near Ideal College. The smell of oil, the limitations of my rooms compels me to stick to acrylic. In Khulna I have space for my work. I come to Dhaka to exchange views and news with my batch mates such as Tomal, who teaches at EUDA." He has gone in for large works too, such as the one that is 17ft by 6 ft as he gets a different pleasure in working with oil.
Marchel Duchamp, the Dadaist, excelled in unconventional art, an art that shocked the sensibility of the viewer. This appealed to Tarikat. Tarikat's grandfather wrote poems with the plough. His father indulged in writing poetry. Artists frequented their home. They included Mustafa Manwar and Mustafa Aziz (who is not in the limelight today, but was once famous for his portraits of people that he came across in his travels), and Sheikh Afzal, the well-established portrait painter. With this background Tarikat was admitted to the Art College in 1976, by his father. “I copied pictures from books as a start,” says Tarikat. Staying at the hostel of the Art College, Tarikat grew accustomed to line, colour and form. He got the hang of sculpture too when he did the portraits of Rabindranath and Bangabandhu out of clay.
It was his father who took him to Santiniketan and who admitted him to Khulna Art College. This, the artist felt, was rare for a Bengali Muslim family of his time. It was his father, who brought him colours, brushes and spatula from India and what more encouragement could one ask for.
“In my village home, Akhrabari I encourage youngsters to paint. This is also like an artist residency. This is basically to develop child psychology. I want young ones to be encouraged to paint and sing—and not be obsessed by destruction. Harmony and peace are elements I would like in the life of the future generation,” says the artist who dreams of Bangladesh as an idyll—and not a zone of international intrigue and mayhem. He hopes for a creative and artistic environment for the youth of Bangladesh.
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