Born: 16 February 1939. Faridpur, Bengal. Education: 1955-60 CGAC. 1965-7. French Government Scholarship to L'Ecole Nationale Superior des Beax-Arts, Paris.
The pulse and rhythm of Jogen Chowdhury's art comes from a filial affinity to nature and milieu. In Chowdhury's more recent works the sensory experiences of cloth, bolsters, sofas and the human body are cross-projected to produce an uncanny world of tran-substantiated tumescence and flaccidness. Mnemonic displacements and personal associations add to the symbolic ambivalence of his motifs, making his images come closer to inexplicable experiences than to explicit signs. In the postures of some figures we feel an animal sentience, in the ripe anatomy of others we savour a fruity succulence. The figures are wrought by a combination of decorative willfulness and expressive distortion and are imbued with an effusive sensuality. Chowdhury's art is rich in suggestions; it is to be apprehended without bracketing our fund of knowledge, experience or memories, but also cannot be narrativised without trivializing it, without depleting its sensory particularities.
Jogen Chowdhury is known for his ability to successfully marry traditional imagery with the zeitgeist of contemporary painting, in a skillful blend of an urbane self-awareness and a highly localized Bengali influence. His early works show an attention to figuration that carries through in his current pieces. In an interview, Chowdhury commented that, in his early works, "the space projected a simple iconic presence. A spatial sequence was worked out but the space was not complex. The background seemed to vanish." Anshuman Dasgupta describes these works as more iconic and more dramatized; per contra, Chowdhury describes his later works as "now more personalized and subtle".
During his college days, Chowdhury took part in leftist literary circles, the members of which dismissed Rabindranath Tagore as a bourgeoisie and became interested in the works of Russian authors. But by and large, Chowdhury kept himself apart from cultural movements: though friends with members of the Hungry Generation, his imagery was drawn from his cultural background more than his intellectual milieu. "My background is relevant," he remarks in an interview, explaining that his life in Calcutta was "quite disturbed with political movements This has a definite influence on my worked like the Ganesha period. The Bengali business class worshipping the icon, and their corruption, how they degenerate just like the flesh." The famine, the Partition, and the food movement all cast a pall over his formative years, and a quality of darkness may be seen to inhere in Chowdhury's work. Yet as well as an indicator of sadness, this darkness can be understood to evoke an aura of mystery. It is an effect enhanced in Chowdhury's more recent works, which, increasingly, crop the central image. Chowdhury explains that "The purpose is to hide some parts. The moment I show the entire figure, the interest in the details would be lost Earlier on the figures were observed in their natural bearings which came through expressionistic stylization and the weight of reality was greater There is an effect of distancing today."
Speaking on contemporary art, Chowdhury maintains the necessity of a uniquely Indian approach to art, as opposed to the blind aping of the Western trends of installations et al. "To be global you do not have to do something that is imitative of America, Australia or England. It has to have an authenticity, which is not what blind imitation allows for."
Jogen lives and works in Santiniketan.
