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Sylvie Bantle and Alexander Devasia

a creative introspection

( In 1901, India lost by untimely death, one of the most forward
looking literary figures of his time.The writer died out of poverty
and illness just as he entered his thirties.=Muddana=, Nandalike
Lakshmi Narayanappa, who foresaw with fascination, the demise
of poetry and the surge of prose as medium of creative
writing of promise. Even before Hemingway could think of
introducing to his rambling narration, to break its monotony,
a male female interlude as the means, Muddana, used the technique
in his Halhe Gannada work (old Kannada) Shri Ramashvamedham
(the story of Shri Rama´s horse sacrifice in prose) to review
the growth of story narration with wife Manorama, ( Pleasing
Heart) which remains to this day known as =Muddana
Manorameyara Samvada=, the conversations of =Muddana
and Manorame=. As if re-enacting the event, I present here
Alexander Devasia, the painter in dialogue with his Pleasant
Heart, Sylvie Bantle. The Indo-German creative couple
(Sylvie as writer and Alexander as visual creator).
They work together in documentary and short films.
It is not the first time even in Europe, a couple shared in a
creative joint venture. I must recall my late unadapted
aunt Hildegard and uncle Harald Joos, who worked
together on a single canvass until the younger Harald
passed away a few months earlier, a couple of years ago
here in Vienna, leaving Hildegard to follow him later.
Sylvie and Alexander would be in Vienna privately on
stage during the Christmas, presenting =vararuci=,
an Indian intellectual of Maurya Chandra Gupta´s
(about 4 century before Christ´s) time as a shaman hero
of untouchable =parayas= of Kerala! So that is how is life,
it is not all painter or writer, the creator but the creator
and the audience combine. The audience can enjoy the
feast only according to its ability and of course taste.
As they say = I can only bring the dog to the water,
the drinking is dog´s job!=. Here then, the curtain goes up,
enjoy yourself. -sutradhara,Kulamarva Balakrishna)

Sylvie - Alexander

Sylvie: Alexander, where shall we start? As your wife I know you now since around 8 years, and much longer as a friend of the artist. Let's begin with your exhibition »Suspending Images«, which I saw in March 1998 in the Pundole Art Gallery in Bombay.

Alexander: Yes, the »Suspending Images« was a good exhibition. Ten rooms, represented by ten different worlds of human lives in their surroundings. For example, in the 'War Museum' there are many war objects… All these kinds of things I painted 3-dimensionally, I used a very structural way, and the hanging objects are given a very clear shape.

Sylvie: Some months later you came to Europe, to Germany, for the first time in your life. There I observed a big change happening in your artistic work. What were the influences for this process?

Alexander: When I came to Europe, staying with you in Munich in Germany, I was a little bit confused how to start a new life in this new situation. Coming from India to settle in Europe was a completely exciting experience for me as an artist… different life, different language, different culture, everything so different to my mother country, India…

At first, this experience was like a break in my creativity. How shall I start here as a painter? Okay, I didn't touch the brush for some months; I was thinking and looking around, museums, galleries… I only did some drawings to get new motives, new motivations. Then slowly I started with the series »The Dream of a Traveller«. Using the present situation as a mirror reflecting my past experiences, I came back to paintings in oil on canvas.

Sylvie: I felt very strongly that »The Dream of a Traveller« reflected your inner feelings. Did you feel like a traveller, because you didn't feel settled?

Alexander: Yes, a kind of a traveller… like being between two worlds.

Sylvie: If I remember some motives of this series, I get the idea that this traveller was searching for something…

Alexander: Yes, that's true.

Sylvie: Can you say, what was the objective this traveller was searching for?

Alexander: Getting a place here, getting a ground! In the beginning you are in a floating mood, not catching up anything… It needs a ground. For that you have to express your feelings that time…

Sylvie: After »The Dream of a Traveller« you started a completely different series, again a big change happened very significantly. Has this traveller found something to feel more settled, settled inside? Was his searching over?

Alexander: Yes, slowly I grounded here. I already had some exhibitions in galleries in Munich and other places, more followed, which were quite successful, like »The Dream of a Traveller«.

Sylvie: Your completely different series after »The Dream of a Traveller« was the »Wind«, very abstract paintings, which I liked very much…

Alexander: Yes, after one year in Germany we travelled a lot through Europe… France, Spain, Italy… especially the cave paintings that I saw made a great impact on my mind. How these old cave people were drawing!

Sylvie: That means, the reflections of what you experience is strongly affecting your art. The consequence of such impressions was the »Wind« series?

Alexander: Yes, of course!

Sylvie: Again later – that's now some years back - we spent the winter in Sicily. Because of the cold and the dryness, the sky and the sea were a deep blue. The whole day we saw this great deep blue sky and this deep blue sea around… When we came back to Germany you started with the »blue« series. From that time, I feel the character of your paintings were flowing more into the next series. After the »Blue« came the »Rain«, which was also dominated by the colour blue. Then you were floating to the 'Sky and Cloud', you call the series »Mekham«. From there, now you reached the 'birds' series…

Alexander: »Song of the Crowd«!

Sylvie: Yes, and all these paintings are dominated by the colour blue…

Alexander: I love blue! I always feel inside that the blue is a secret… something mysterious behind, a miracle, because it is not revealing its truth. Blue is a secret! When I go deep and deep into the blue, I can find some meaningful essences, precious but without any fulfilled success… how can I explain? A secret, unrevealing… These journeys into the blue are never ending.

Sylvie: Probably, because blue is a kind of an 'eternal' colour, of something endless? When we look to the sky, we see blue, but in reality it is endlessness that we see.

Alexander: Yes, there is really a secret in the blue. Mind and passion, everything you can express through the blue.

Sylvie: Perhaps, if soul could have a colour, it would be blue…

Alexander: For sure, the soul has a blue colour!

Sylvie: I'd like to locate the blue… The paintings before, even the 'Wind', were more in warm brownish, yellow, red, ochre colours, that means you used very earthly colours, also green. Every colour came from the ground, from the earth. By starting with the 'Blue' series some years back, you went to the space above the earth, the air. Is this now the location that you travel through, or that you have reached?

Alexander: Now I don't portray the normal life. Let's say, I always like to paint the reflection of reality. Between dream and reality. That is my inspiration to paint, between these two worlds. An imaginary world I like to create, something mysterious.

Sylvie: In this between-world you have discovered the birds, which inhabit the air… but how did you find the motive of the crowd?

Alexander: It's by the way of process. When I am doing something, I get into new motivation or new moods of forms to create. Here in my paintings the birds are chained, crying birds, loud… in crowds.

It is the inescapable situation in our private lives as well in politics, as emotional beings. We can't escape from our daily duties or normal things, as humans we are in bondage, chained to each other. Like the birds in my paintings. They can't escape from each other. As beings they have a place to stay, but they are all linked.

Sylvie: I have a certain feeling, especially with this 'Song of the Crowd'… Could you give to these works an attribute, which characterises these paintings, expressions, feelings, in one word?

Alexander: It is a imaginary world.

Sylvie: Somehow I find melancholy in all these paintings. You titled it »Song of the Crowd«, but for me it has an expression of silence.

Alexander: Yes, that's true. The western life gave me a feeling of isolation - even though I got to know many people. That automatically comes to the painting without saying anything.

Sylvie: That's why you put your head in three of these paintings to express this feeling, in the 'Voyage', 'Joval' and 'Mystery'. This really gives me the impression that you are isolated in this crowd.

Alexander: Yes, without any big sound to offer to others.

Sylvie: Do you think this is a very personal experience or a human experience in general?

Alexander : No, it is very personal.

Sylvie: Again, back to the melancholic feeling. Which situation causes melancholy? When do we become melancholic? If you have or had to say good-bye to something, have to release something, which was a hope, a dream, or a vision, which became an illusion, but it is no more in our life. When we think of it, we remember it with a bit of pain… that I feel is creating melancholy.

Alexander : The modern life somehow is killing the inner sensitivity and the truthful contact with other beings. There is a lot of uncertainty in our lives; especially in modern life there is no security. Anytime something can happen, if you are travelling in the train, sitting with friends comfortably in the café, something can blast away our body. This is the unseen tragedy of the present time.

Sylvie : This pain, the melancholic pain… you remember your beautiful childhood, very vivid time as a youngster, time as a student…

Alexander: That is all past! The past makes our present life more vivid. My childhood and youth were mixed with many emotions, which supported me in later life. Living in a certain time as a human being on earth, I feel so happy to experience it all. For example, this painting 'Joval'. This little fishermen's island in Senegal, to where we both travelled, was fascinating for me, because it is a man-made island, made only out of shells. I felt that this is unique in the world. Why did people do this? The ancestors of the people still living there built one island for the living and one for the dead, a cemetery, both connected with a small wooden bridge. It made me wonder so much that these people are born on the shells, go on living on the shells and are buried in the shells.

Sylvie: Then we come to your last painting of this series…

Alexander: I don't know yet, perhaps I should continue…

Sylvie: Right now this painting, which you call 'Mystery', is the last one in this series. In this painting I get a different feeling… In the 'Voyage' half of your face is a skull, the other half is alive, your red face in the 'Joval' is also strange, not real… are you buried in the shells, are you dying, or are you trying to be born…

Alexander: …Pain!

Sylvie: …For me it is not clear, is this face going to die, or…

Alexander: …It also could be rebirth!

Sylvie: Now in the 'Mystery' your face is totally different in expression. It is very peaceful. If I imagine, I am this person in this silent water… this silent water is melting into the sky and this cloud of birds above me… Here, in this painting, the melancholy has disappeared. It is just peaceful…

Alexnder: Yes, that's why I called this painting »Mystery«.

Sylvie: So you got reborn in the shells of 'Joval'! Now you come out with your head and are just wondering about it…

Alexander : Yes, I think so! Every experience in life, shocking or good, at the same time gets reborn into new life. Through a long travel or doing a long series of paintings you can get this new-born feeling.

Sylvie: I'd like to know one thing. In several paintings of this series, I noticed a certain shape for some clouds… like the clouds painted by masters of the middle ages. At the same time, you painted other clouds and the sky differently, in your own expression. You mixed two styles of painting the sky. What was the reason to paint some clouds in the style of the old masters?

Alexander : Actually, since my childhood I have been fascinated by the moving sky. It depends on the atmosphere I want to create. How the old masters observed the sky is another way to look at it. That inspired me and gave me another dimension to see.

Sylvie: It is like a little relic of an old age that you put there, just in the form of these clouds.

Alexander: Yes, certainly.

Sylvie : This connection to the old masters was important to you, to bring these two ages together?

Alexander: Of course! I am very deeply rooted in tradition, Indian as well European. That reflects in my mind time and again; when I do something spontaneously, it is there…

Sylvie: Some kind of feeling of solidarity with these old masters?

Alexander: I salute and respect the old masters who have given something precious to us.

Sylvie: How is your feeling now in the process of this series? Did you reach the end of a circle, or do you think the end of the circle has yet to come?

Alexander: No, no, I feel like moving on as a river. Stagnant water stinks, it has to move on. It is a journey. Right now, I cannot say what will be the next stage? Will it continue as the same, or change? I can only say now that I feel like flowing water, which has to be filtered and filtered again. I am not holding on to a certain technique, that is not my feeling. Whatever I am doing, I am fully there. That is important to me as a painter.

Munich, 19th of July 2006