A Discomforting Witness: Bikash Bhattacharjee’s Doll Series
Bikash Bhattacharjee (1940-2006), or Bikash Babu as he is fondly remembered, was born in Kolkata and grew up in a politically charged atmosphere which significantly impacted his art. Having lost his father at a young age, he moved to live with his uncle in Northern Kolkata - the streets and inhabitants of which would constitute his works till the very end. The struggles of his own childhood made him sensitive towards the struggles of others around him.
Until the 1960s, he painted abstracts and sketched the rooftops of Calcutta. However, from the late 1960s until the mid 1970s his work was marked by surrealist series with an undertone of subhuman and/or demonic settings. In his later works, photo realism became dominant, like in the painting Dawn. He is credited with reviving realism in the Indian art scene at a time when artists tended towards abstraction and distortion. While he was a versatile painter using a variety of mediums like watercolour, conté and acrylic, he is most known for his oil paintings.
Bhattacharjee gathered his visual and intellectual ideas from the streets and people of Kolkata. His experience of witnessing poverty, violence and the appalling conditions in which people lived, gave him a unique perspective and set him apart. He is famed for his portraits of men, children and especially middle-class women in public and private spaces as well as prostitutes. His portraits echo the political chaos rampant in his time and its impact on the people, giving them an air of uneasiness yet invoking a sense of familiarity.
In the early 1970s, Bikash Bhattacharjee painted a series called the Doll Series. This came at the height of political turmoil in Bengal where the Naxalite movement had gripped the state. In these paintings, a doll is used as a central motif juxtaposing the innocence of a child’s plaything with the violence and terror looming the streets of Calcutta. The doll is seen rummaging through chests of drawers with the Little Red Book resting on the side, as was the case in a lot of Bengali households during that time. The lifeless object comes to life on the quiet streets of Bengal, peering through street corners, hanging on clothing lines, or piled up in a heap alongside other dolls. The paintings are marked by a disquieting air and a sense of unease with dreary and murky backgrounds. This was symbolic to the political climate in Bengal where fear, agitation and dread were commonplace among the masses.
It is believed that the inspiration for this series came when a little girl asked Bhattacharjee to repaint and mend her broken doll. He used her toy as a means to represent the plight of the inhabitants of Calcutta. The use of this inanimate object to depict real human emotions and shake the viewer is what brought this series a lot of appreciation and acclaim.
Research and writing by Sahar Basharat
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