GESTURES (TRIPTYCH),1966

A. Ramachandran

‘There is something immensely ludicrous about the fat friar-like figures arranged to devote feigned dignity, lewd beckoning, and a gesture of prayer. Yet these are not flesh and blood figures, we see, on closer examination. They could be dummies, great inflated things that are tethered to white cords, the white lines that break up the bottom of the composition so effectively. There are, therefore, two themes here: (1) the shallowness of religious life as practiced by the priests, and (2) the shallowness of the superficial vision of people who even if they read this theme right, are carried off by their own associations. We are not quite sure who the painter is laughing at’. – Richard Bartholomew