Page 54 - Studio International - May 1966

(And Geoffrey says: 'In search of an ideal landscape is a
development of my Great U.S. landscapes.')
Geoffrey is a very serious painter, a perfectionist. 'My
work is not much of a pop success; but it's gratifying that
some people of unquestionable integrity have found it of
interest.' Integrity and perfection are key words in his
vocabulary, but he has invented a compendious way for
expressing his artistic creed : `aesthethic.
Of the three, Rama Rao undoubtedly retains the closest
ties with India. He acknowledges this himself. He has
explored Indian miniature painting 'in search of the
lyrical quality of the thought and the exquisitely subtle
interplay of transparent and opaque colour.' Certain
Indian motifs recur in his painting: the eye of Shiva, for
instance. He shares the oriental attitude to nature: 'I
visualize beauty in everything I see ... the thin flash of
colour over a cloud, a rusty piece of iron ... I want to
canalize this way of seeing into painting.' Above all he
loves the movement and flow of things: the shapes that
form in clouds, the way rivers encircle mountains and
divide meadows and plains.
Rama Rao came to painting from lithography. This
enabled him to achieve the transparency of colour (by
washing down his paint) which he discovered in the
water-colours of Abanindra Nath Tagore. 'The silkiness of
Abanindra Nath's water-colours I want to achieve in my
oils.' This I find the most attractive aspect of his work. He
also uses colour in a way foreign to the west, by employ-
ing contrasting rather than complementary colours, with
lqbal Geoffrey a predominance of pink (a technique practised, I learn,
In Search of an Ideal Landscape 1965 in the folk painting of Bengal). This to western eyes is his
Oil on canvas 48 x 48 in.
most distinctively Indian quality. His love of movement
is translated into paint by convoluted forms, sometimes in
knotted clusters, sometimes in large, opaque or translu-
cent bands.
One has a feeling in looking at Rao's paintings that the
forms have a significance which escapes the western ob-
server, unfamiliar with the iconography on which he
draws. This may explain why his compositions read as
Rama Rao Landscape on the way to Oxford 1966
Oil on board 18 x 24 in. abstract seem repetitive. The main interest of the picture
Collection: The Nuffield Foundation
centres on the lower half; there is a strongly marked
horizon and the upper part, a sort of 'sky', is often un-
interesting, relieved only by a circular form (the `eye').
In the Bear Lane exhibition there were only one or two
wholly satisfying compositions—his best work is appar-
ently in America. The colours, too, are often of a some-
what sickly sweetness, which would not, presumably,
disturb someone familiar with the tradition of Indian
painting.
If there is any lesson to be learnt from these three exhi-
bitions it is that the western observer has to be wary of
superficial resemblances between the art of the west and
that of artists who employ western forms while retaining
something of their native idiom. Where a style is totally
foreign, there is little danger of misinterpreting it: it
must be understood in its own terms. The danger of an in-
ternational style is that, instead of providing a common
means of artistic communication, it may set up unsus-
pected barriers. The notion that a painting can be under-
stood at its face value, that we need bring no previous
knowledge to bear on it, is one of the great fallacies of
modern criticism. q