David Paynter and L.T.P. Manjusri

(Part one of this article appeared in Midweek Review yesterday.)

by Laleen Jayamanne

Eclecticism and Abstraction

It would appear that a book or two might be written about the lesser known history of 20th Century Lankan modern art and visual culture, which seems to be much wider than the art historical accounts of 43 Group Modernism. There must be many others as well. For example, one comes across the name of H.A. Karunaratne as an abstract painter influenced by Euro-American abstraction as having held a solo exhibition in 1956 at the USISC. What response did this exhibition receive in that momentous year of the triumph of Sinhala-Buddhist Nationalist exceptionalism after Sir John Kothalawala’s pro-American government was defeated. Then there is the Ian Goonatilake collection bequeathed to the University of Peradeniya and now languishing in the basement of the library, stored under poor conditions, awaiting a dedicated gallery. While it is well known that his collection consists of a large number of George Keyt drawings because of his wide taste and sympathies his collection might hold potential for considering a somewhat decentred (less linear), art historical narratives of the twentieth century. The blatantly self-interested, thin accounts that pass as recent art history can thereby be displaced by more careful art historical research with rigorous conceptual frameworks. The history of the use of colour in the move from the Buddhist temple paintings to the easel and then from easel to Christian church walls and back as in the case of Paynter would be fascinating to explore within a theoretical framework. Such a framework might explore the generative philosophico-aesthetic discourses on the links between colour, affect and thought, for example. There, colour is considered to be the most immaterial manifestation of matter, haunted by spirit. Colour within such an optic is a force of metamorphosis.

Christian Themes

Christian themed art also would have to be explicitly taken into account in the narrative of Lankan modern art when studying Paynter’s work. What links might there be, say, between Richard Gabriel and Paynter who composed Christian religious scenes in murals in chapels, too. It is certainly noteworthy that in the large murals he created in the Trinity College chapel in the ‘30s, Paynter’s Jesus and disciples are presented with brown skin tones. This fact alone is the decision of an original artist because it was decades prior to the radical Vatican 2 reforms of the ’60s, which lead to adopting vernacular forms and realities in Catholic Church ritual. The vegetation and light in the landscapes of some biblical scenes are those of Lanka of the East coast, I am told. Chandrajeewa, too, has done a large scale series of 46 bronze murals on the history of Christianity in Lanka around the Basilica on a hill top at Thewatta (surrounded by rubber trees, as I remember from my school visits there for church feasts) near Ragama though he himself does not subscribe to any religious faith. Barbara Sansoni’s Christian murals would be of interest in such a context. A national collection can create digital installations of site-specific religious work such as these to educate Lankans about the religious diversity of our art and culture as well. Inter-faith dialogue would certainly be enhanced by such educational ‘tools’ made available to school-children especially, but also to the more ethnocentric and parochial Lankans. It could then also be a point of entry to understanding something about our long colonial history and religious violence of the Portuguese who converted Lankans at gunpoint. Both my parents and grandparents came from the thin strip of coastal fishing villages (just a stones throw from the Colombo harbour), starting from Uswatakeiyawa, Kapungoda and Pamunugama, all mostly Roman Catholic, during my childhood. The largest buildings in each of these villagers were the local churches built on Italian models with large statues of white saints, mother Mary and Jesus. There were a few French parish priests who also spoke fluent Sinhala.

A Queer Aesthetic: Exploring the +

Evolution 1973 L.T.P. Manjusri (1902-1982)
Water colour on Paper 36.5 X 31 cm
Image Credits : http://www.artsrilanka.org/retrospective/manjushri/19731.html

Is there an embryonic queer sensibility, and a radical aesthetic, in Paynter’s ‘Offering’ (1926), of an ethereal youth, standing naked in a dreamy, somewhat Pre-Raphaelit landscape, with raised arms, delicate hand gesture, holding a white flower, for instance? Perhaps, there are ‘elective affinities’ to be drawn between Wendt’s homo erotic photography of young men and some of Paynter’s work. Or, are their differences more productive for exploring the diversity of queer aesthetics well before such a term was invented to address social reality of LGBTQI rights? Paynter’s ‘Apres Midi’ (‘Afternoon’, 1935) is an astonishing work full of surprises, even now. The inclusion of the title in French immediately evokes the 1911 ballet ‘Afternoon of a Faun’ choreographed and performed by Nijinsky in his lover Diaghilev’s company, Ballet Russes, in Paris, with Debussy’s music. Apart from that notable allusion to a highly sexualised performance that shocked the traditional ballet audience, the two Lankan figures, one facing us, and the other, appears to be his double, a mirror image, though all we do see is his back view. There is an essay to be written about this doubling and elegant most subtle ‘performance of narcissism,’ in the sense of an exploration of a queer subjectivity, the very formation of a sense of ‘self’ based on similarity rather than sexual difference. The facial expression of the slim tall figure (so unlike Nijinsky’s muscular compact short body), is thoughtful, as he looks at ‘the other’ and his features suggest that he might be a Lankan of Malay descent perhaps. As with ‘Offering’, here too the male figure holds a red flower, reminiscent of the distilled eroticism seen in Moghul miniatures. In Paynter’s tropical ‘Afternoon’ there is a more every-day feel as well because of the towels and informal postures – are ‘they’ about to swim in the river behind them? The blue green bamboo grove creates a lush tropical heaven for ‘the couple’. Might we think of it as a queer self-portrait perhaps? If so it’s quite different from his earlier, personal ‘Self-Portrait’ (1927), where the ‘self’ is decentred, seen in a mirror image, while a vase of overflowing pink lotus blossoms occupies the centre. As early as that, he is painting the iconic flower in Buddhist iconography, rather than the readily available English roses of Nuwara-Eliya which is where the Paynter Home was located.

Then there is the painting of a group of fishermen and male onlookers after a catch. While some onlookers are fully clothed, the two fishermen in the foreground are conspicuous not because they wear only loin cloths (which is realistic) but because of the way their anatomy is modelled.

The anatomy of the two prominent fishermen are modelled in such a way that their biceps, pectoral and abdominal muscles are beautifully articulated. Lankan men who do heavy manual work have wiry limbs, sinewy muscles, a function of diet and genetics, they are certainly not moulded and fashioned quite like those on these two fishermen. Though these conspicuous muscular details are not realistic, the scene nevertheless has a powerful ethnographic vitality. The choreography of each gaze has an intensity, a realism, as each figure looks intently in slightly different directions. Their features evoke a specific Lankan era. I remember the men who looked like that in my maternal grandfather’s fishing village, Uswatekeiyawa. My grandfather tied his hair in a little knot just like some of them in the picture.

Wendt’s photographs of young men’s bodies are quite different. Their gaze is rather more diffused. It’s his play with and command of light and shade and chemical processing that sculpts their bodies, either caught straining in manual work or relaxed in posed still lives. In striking contrast, Paynter has given his standing fishermen a deep, anatomically grounded musculature that feels so contemporary in its fashioning, sculpting of desire. Thereby, he helps us (straight folk also) to understand how a Queer sensibility is crafted and invented as a fertile affective zone of aesthetic innervation, which also includes nature. These two paintings have a quiet theatrical and even cinematic sensibility (i. e. there is movement and drama), which reminds me of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s cinema, especially Gospel According to St Mathew. Pasolini however, was a flamboyantly public gay artist and poet. I feel that Paynter’s work offers young LGBTQI+ artists a vital tradition to draw from, not imitate. Some of them might have been at that Gay Pride March in Colombo sponsored by the Aragalaya recently, which I saw on You Tube. I hear Paynter the teacher say, ever so softly: ‘explore the +’. With just a slight turn, artists may change the + into an x.

These are thoughts that occur to me as I glance at Paynter’s work in the catalogue edited by Chandrajeewa, issued at the inaugural J.D.A. Perera Gallery, which houses 19 of Paynter’s work at the University of Visual and Performing Arts. But ‘The Afternoon’, sadly, is in a foreign gallery. This rare gift was given to the very institution whose Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist students and staff got rid of Paynter in 1963, through an ugly racist campaign against him, calling him a ‘Burgher suddha’!

I know that Professor Ashley Halpe, himself a painter, introduced Paynter’s art to students of Fine Arts at Peradeniya University and accompanied them to the Trinity College Chapel to look at the murals Paynter had designed in the 1930s. By the way, Prof Halpe was a Roman Catholic, who nurtured extracurricular student life on campus generously with an open house filled with painting and music every Friday, enthusiastically supported by his wife Bridgette.

What is to be Done?

I hope young Lankan art historians might take a cue from the marvellous idea of the ‘Memory Walks’ conducted by the ‘Collective for Historical Dialogue and Memory’ and go off the beaten track to find out what was made; what has been lost and the provenance of work that really should have been in a national collection but are now in private homes and overseas galleries and in damp basements, even locked away in a vault. Perhaps, only such dedicated hands-on work by scholars with intellectual and social capital and spiritual stamina might eventually convince the National Museum to open one of its majestic wings to house whatever is left of modern 20th Century art and Visual Culture of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Lanka. On the other hand, as some folk in the Aragalaya suggested, perhaps the official residence of the President, which was formerly known as the Queens’s House but has become the President’s House, can be converted like the European palaces into a museum of modern and contemporary art and the art work of the Aragalaya too.

Perhaps, an archive of photographs of work that has been sold or stolen or unavailable in the public domain can be compiled digitally just so that future generations of artists might get to know the eclectic variety of work that had been created by their multi-ethnic, multi-faith, queer and straight ‘ancestors.’ Then, they might begin to understand deeply some of the ideas and passions which animated the skilled and dedicated modern Lankan artists of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Such a virtual collection might be called following the famous idea of French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux, ‘An Imaginary Museum’ or ‘Museum Without Walls.’ Such a museum would, I hope, assemble an eclectic (non-partisan), collection of art- work with the power to nurture life in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-faith Lanka.

Here is a link to Paynter’s Apres Midi (Afternoon, 1935).

https://thuppahis.com/2022/03/27/david-paynters-open-homosexuality-on-display- then/