Page 41 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

38 ART AND CRAFTS

Contemporary to Quamrul Hassan, Sheikh Mohammad Sultan (1923-1994) was an
alternative artist of this country. As with his lifestyle and behavior, the distinct
unusualness of his character and his ideas of art made him an object of much
attraction. A sphere of mystery and fascination has grown around him. He has
overcome the incompleteness of his academic education through his own exaggeration
of the human body, the attraction of the naïve or unskilled beauty in the unschooled
artist and irrevocable representation of his belief in linear recurrence of the subject
matter. His huge canvases are not the reflection of any scene from reality; they seem
to reflect the internal beliefs of a man entranced in memories and dreams. In his
philosophy of life, just as his lifestyle, Sultan has created all his bonds with nature,
rural Bengal, and humankind and his art is the reflection of this belief. However, urban
training and association did not place him completely in the folk style, his art works
depicting a kind of urban folk art or a mood of popular art. From a gifted portrayer of
scenes of nature in watercolor and oil painting at the beginning, he gradually came to
be known as portrayer of the indomitable human soul in the rural environment.
Despite his similarity with Zainul Abedin’s point of view in this respect, differences
between them can easily be recognized. Zainul Abedin’s leitmotif was his firm
realistic line drawing; moreover, he is close to visible reality created by light and
shade when it comes to application of colors and his paintings are excellent examples
of the technical proficiency of an educated artist. Sultan’s lines and application of
color contains folk ‘coarseness’ and an apparent amateurishness. Folk art- like
recurrence of subject matter, dexterity in composition and the process of using
materials have taken his paintings close to self-taught proficiency and created a shade
of conflict with grammar and the discipline of art education. Despite the lack of
conventional technical skills, Sultan’s paintings are able to create strong attraction and
reaction in the viewers. He made this possible and herein lies his success. His huge
sinewy male and female figures are simultaneously symbols of the bond with the soil
and the indomitable human spirit. He removed the monotonousness of planting
saplings, tilling land, fishing, reaping harvest and other perpetual rural scenes through
the powerful presence of exaggerated human figures. This human figure is primitive,
alert, unrefined, earth’s child representing physical strength. The return of the symbol
of Adam and Eve gives the same hint. The representation of his beliefs is manifested
through the absence of modern elements of civilization in his rural scenes. In paintings
like Grabbing of Rising Land (fig. 1.21), Carrying the Burden, Retrospect, inner
conflicts and mental states have often been reflected. Nevertheless, his characters are
generally not any specific man or woman; they are eternal human symbols carrying
the message of surviving the struggle of life and not giving up. Though Sultan’s
paintings are apparently representations of scenes of reality, they create a fantasy
world far away from the on going reality, arouse man’s expectation of potentiality, and
revive a new consciousness of man’s bond with the country and its soil. Sultan firmly
held on to his dreams and beliefs, and his artworks are a linear representation of the
same beliefs. The harmony between belief and expression has given his artwork