S Nandagopal was clear about one factor since his youth — he didn’t need to add his father, Cholamandal Artists’ Village founder KCS Paniker’s title to his. Firmly rooted in his seek for individuality, the implicit stress that comes with being a stalwart artist’s son was the very last thing that might deter him from his creative explorations.
It has been two years for the reason that steel sculptor’s demise. Envisioning it as a retrospective documentary which chronologically traces his creative journey, his daughter Pallavi Nandagopal has directed The Mythic & the Magical and produced it along with her mom Kala Nandagopal. The manufacturing that was screened final weekend on the Crowne Plaza, Adyar, takes one via the inspirations, influences and philosophies of the 2-time National award successful sculptor.
Artistic evolution
“Art can only come from art,” says Nandagopal in a video footage of his 2016 discuss at Chennai Mathematical Institute. Legends, mythology and his predecessors’ works had a outstanding impact on his course of. Two of his inspirations throughout his preliminary days have been PV Janakiram and Dhanraj Bhagat.
“I felt threatened because my first sculptures looked like Janakiram’s,” Nandagopal confessed. “This led me to discover my own process.” The self-discovery occurred with custom as his springboard. Heavily abstracted legendary beasts starting from the minute to the monumental are a good portion of his work. He desired to be Indian in spirit and a world up to date on the identical time, in his personal phrases. “You cannot ignore 4,000 years of history,” he maintained. It wasn’t simply the previous that impelled him. His affiliation with British Modernist sculptor Sir Anthony Caro was a lifelong dialogue which steered his experiments in direction of reaching modernity.
His journey in sculpting, spanning half a century, is an illustrious one. In the 1970s, his experiments targeted on frontality and linearity. Though a lot of his early work remained monochrome, his 2014 exhibition, The Metaphysical Edge, a set of 28 work in colored gold and silver inks, was a departure from his traditional medium of copper and brass.
As he was considered
“The film unravels the journey of an artist, his challenges and struggles and places his contribution in a historical perspective,” Pallavi Nandagopal says concerning the film. “An artists’ work is inextricably linked to his life and environment. And my father was nourished by the motivating environment he grew up in, in close proximity to his father and other contemporary artists.”
Corroborating this, Geeta Doctor, who has noticed Nandagopal’s work over time says, “He was a reserved person and it was not easy to engage with him on matters apart from art. He preferred his solitude and his wife Kala was instrumental in letting him be his quiet self.” And to her, this has come via vividly within the movie. “The oasis that is the Cholamandal Artists’ Village today came out of the struggles of the artists of the 1970s. And Pallavi has justly portrayed her father as the artist he was.”
To PM Belliappa, who inaugurated the screening, the movie stands out in not being an emotional memoir however an goal and unbiased manufacturing. “It shows his clarity of thought, starting from not wanting to be overshadowed by his father and going on to chart his own path in the world of metal sculpting.” A shut good friend of the Nandagopal household, Belliappa’s fondness for the sculptor goes past his appreciation for the artwork alone. “We used to meet every month and the four of us, Nandagopal’s family and me, would chat and gossip over dinner.”
In his 2016 discuss at CMI, Nandagopal stated “An artist knows whether he really counts when he’s been six feet under for 50 years, and not during his lifetime.” It’s a protracted method to 50 years however the legacy left by Nandagopal is shimmering shiny within the artwork world.
