Child
prodigy’s select works draw crowds at show now a month old
Kochi, Jan 16: A predominantly yellow-orange-and-black painting of
sunset by Edmund Thomas Clint has an interesting backgrounder story that is
largely unknown to the public, who are all the same fascinated by the artwork
at the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB).
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| painting of sunset by Edmund Thomas Clint |
As the exhibition of select works of
Kerala’s late art genius completes a month at Cosmopolitan Cult in Mattancherry
today, the newly-opened gallery continues to clock a steady stream of visitors
at the historical Jew Town otherwise known for its shops selling ethnic
exotica.
K J Augustin, now 79 years old, fondly
remembers Clint’s weekly visits to his house in coastal Kochi during the late
1970s. “I used to take him around,” he says wistfully about the prodigy who
went on to do no less than 25,000 pictures before his death in 1983 when he was
one month short of turning seven.
One Saturday evening, Clint was at
Augustin’s house at Mundamveli, looking out silently through a window that
opened to the western sky. The sight of a four-year-old boy sitting quietly and
watching the nature for long caught the attention of the chief hostess Saramma
Augustin.
“What are you watching, my kid?” she
enquired. When Clint replied it was the sunset, Saramma replied half-jokingly:
“Then why don’t you paint a picture of it and gift me?”
Next weekend, Clint was back at Augustin’s
home with an artwork. The tiny talent had reproduced the past week’s sight “in
greater glory”, recounts Augustin, who had worked with the prodigy’s father M T
Joseph at Central Institute of Fisheries Technology at Wellingdon Island here.
Thus was born one of Clint’s most
celebrated works, showing the dusk-time sun poised to sink in the sea beyond
silhouetted bamboo thickets on the right of the frame and knots of grass below.
“This is no ordinary work for his age,”
notes senior artist Balan Nambiar, about the painting whose high-quality print
is now on display among 60 others of Clint at the exhibition being held as part
of the Children’s Biennale of KMB’14. “It is very tough and rare for a toddler
to give a perspective view to a painting. One has to be a genius to do it at
age four.”
Septuagenarian Joseph, who notes with
gratitude the role of a late colleague G Madhavan in first spotting the talent
of Clint when the boy was hardly a year old, comes with a post-script to the
‘sunset painting’ story. “When Saramma received the gift, she asked Clint a
naughty question: ‘What if I tell the world that this is my son’s painting?’ At
this, the boy asked her to return the painting. Only to soon give it back, but that
after scribbling his name ‘Clint’ on one corner of the work.”
KMB’14
Director of Programmes Riyas Komu, who is the chief organiser of the Children’s
Biennale, says that his team took immense effort to ensure that the prints at
the exhibition were technically on par with the originals.
“If
drawing 25,000 paintings in such short span of life is in itself a major
achievement, the boy’s parents too deserve credit for having stored them over
the past three decades,” he adds. “The aim of the show is to proclaim the
genius of Clint to art circuits far beyond his native Kerala.”
KMB’14 artistic curator Jitish Kallat
describes Clint as one who had “a child’s view and a grown-up’s vision”.
Bose Krishnamachari, who is president of
the Kochi Biennale Foundation which is organising the 108-day contemporary-art
exhibition, notes the sharpness of even some texts accompanying some of Clint’s
paintings at KMB’14. “For instance, look at that work. ‘Midukkan Meen’ is the
caption given to a smart-looking fish the boy has sketched,” he reveals.
Clint’s mother Chinnama Joseph reveals that
the boy learned to write Malayalam by when he was two years old. “He was
initially drawing the letters of the alphabet,” she adds, recalling the
appetite the prodigy soon developed for reading books in both his mother tongue
and English.
MBA student Visakh Anand notes how
Chinnamma, as their neighbour in his childhood days, would give boys of his age
paintings of Clint as specimens to reproduce.
Krishnamachari, who his an accomplished
artist based in Mumbai, is all praise for a Clint sketch that shows
mythological king Ravana sitting in a dejected posture on the evening of the
death of his son Meghanath at the hands of Lakshmana, a younger brother of Lord
Rama.
“Notice the sword lying behind Ravana,”
says Krishnamachari. “It is not only symbolic of the Lankan king’s imminent
end; the weapon balances the picture. Only a master can do it.”
The KMB’14 Clint exhibition also has
paintings that “match the expected artistry of a normal boy of his age”, notes
Balan Nambiar, who is also known for his teaching skills. “Those on flowers and
flowerpots are examples.”
Contrasting with them in eminence is a
painting of a crowded temple festival with caparisoned elephants lined up
behind the pagoda-like entry gate of the typical Kerala Hindu shrine. “That was
done after we took Clint to the Ernakulam temple ulsavam,” chimes in Joseph,
who lives in Kochi. “Look at the people in it — the men have step-cut hair that
was in vogue those days.”
The other Clint works at the KMB show
include that of vintage state-owned transport buses and peacocks in a chaotic
sky besides on an artist performing ‘Thira’ folk dance — it turned out to be
Clint’s last painting.
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