Reading between the Lines

Vaishnavi Ramanathan provides a brief survey of artists from Chennai who use words and scripts in their works.

- Vaishnavi Ramanathan

A significant number of artists from Madras/Chennai incorporate words and scripts in their art1. One reason for this is the dominance of the line, an element that forms the basis of writing and art, in the Madras Art Movement. With artists wanting to ‘write their paintings’ in the Madras Art Movement, scripts manifested both directly and indirectly in artworks. Moreover, the script is an expression of language which has played a key role in shaping Chennai’s profile; in the 1950s, both Telugu and Tamil speakers claimed the city belonged to their respective states. The city is also associated with Dravidian ideology, which among other things, argues for the cause of Tamil. In its name too, Chennai bears the mark of linguistic and cultural politics. Given these factors, it would be relevant to examine the use of scripts and words by artists from Chennai against the broader context of language.

K. C. S. Paniker’s Words and Symbols series from 1963 is considered a point of reference amongst artists using script in the city. Consisting of script, mathematical symbols and diagrams, “Paniker vehemently reiterated (the words) were not meant to be read but conceptually to meld with the aesthetic.”2 One can read the decision to use an illegible script from a modernist perspective and the desire to forge a vocabulary that would at once be rooted in local and international contexts. One can also read between the lines of Paniker’s choice to abstract script against a linguistic backdrop.