Keshav Malik

Of the artists of the day-and there are only a few who have a direct relevance to society-Lee W'aisler is surely among the most original. He speaks to the soul of society. By instinct steeped in the love of all times, he has the travails of his own century at heart.

Innocent on one plane, his is the art of deeply felt experiencing. And, while it partakes of politics in the widest sense, it goes far beyond that. His work demands of itself commitment and belief, but not of a narrow spectrum. In his work, form and idea exist separately and yet conjointly. Together, they make content. Since they exist in equilibrium, we have a communicative aesthetic statement.

To Waisler, the purpose of art is to capture the essence of things through a unity of representation of life set down in a form which recognizes the cooperation and symmetry of all the parts of the whole. The accomplishment of this unity in his work arouses the profoundest of feelings and emotions in those who contemplate such an art. It is the measure of his success that he provides our souls with work worthy of such contemplation.

Waisler is not one of those artists who are driven by a search for their own individuality, and who thus enjoys the libertinage of an aesthetic that knows few restraints. He is not obsessed with techniques but is at pains to put them at the service of communication. Accordingly, his works operate under the disciplines of form and communication, form serving as a vehicle for communication. Thus, even while exploring the realm of form, and/or of materials, he never loses sight of the communicative objective: that is, the content of ideas.

Understanding is not limited to a purely subjective response. The sensate reaction is obviously very much there as a deeper communication. In other words, the communicative power of this painter is absolutely intact, which often is not the case in art today. His pictorial representations, of objects or events or ideas, are not reduced to sensations alone, even while they partake of them. Waisler's relationship to the public, therefore, is real. It is not merely a private act of art. His work may be said to be a religious experience, in the sense that it elicits deep feelings in us and binds us in union. There is human contact in the delights of many textural effects, but the communicative values are paramount. No self-conscious obscurantism for him-the tonal and emotional affects in his work are instrumental in touching off flashes of insight in the attentive viewer.

His genre searches for nobility and is not a pother of clever tricks; for behind all this is the honesty and integrity of the artist. But the order of honesty and integrity obliges the viewer to be equally true to himself, that is, if he is to be really in rapport with the art. From his own soul Waisler knows that culture depends upon communication, communication upon the employment of symbolism, upon the lying together of meanings, this with that, this standing for that. Connectiveness being all you observe evidence of it in a large number of his works, whether paintings, sculptures, or works based on burning topical themes. The artist's overall emotional or spiritual environment is the whole globe, even while in the background lies his own special life circumstance, a springboard to the vaster life space of the human community itself.

Waisler's own life circumstance-and it is pertinent-is affected by the events of this century, which have brought mankind to the brink of the abyss. But the horrors he has glimpsed through his imagination are not merely horrors of the hell without; they are also-and primarily¬ the horrors of the hell within, the chaos and insanity within the heart of man. It is this glimpse of the hell within that so frightens the sensitive. Thus he is involved, alarmed, and concerned with the spiritual confusion. It is as though he stared long at the demonic obsession and the power¬mad cults that have seized millions of apparently decent men and women in present and past generations. And what has he to offer against the madness? Only his moral protest-a higher, purer vision that stands up against the sorcery of nihilism.

Lee Waisler's life and art, in other words, are oriented towards giving our existence unity and meaning. But his are not conventional ways of achieving unity or meaning, but the plea for raising our sights higher, of bringing back pity into the human heart. This is an affirmation of faith, one that emerges out of the crisis of existence, as it now touches humanity at every point of our being. Here may be the dynamic that empowers Lee Waisler's soul, even when at first glance we do not read all this in his work. Look closely, and the true source of his life energy is unmistakable.

You may well enjoy Waisler's works on various planes, but behind them invariably is the man himself. If you narrow your focus-which perforce you are obliged to do with works of art, for purely professional reasons or for the sake of a simpler enjoyment-you must remember his larger intentions.

The chosen of his works are plainly splendid ones in which great dignity is combined in a rare way with a transparent gaiety of spirit. A large number are radiant, lively, and absolutely stable-all objects of physical beauty-at moments possessed of a light that only a clear sky can give. With his use of unusual materials, like sand, glass, and walnut wood, pictures made of only colored paper or oil on canvas can look labored by comparison. Remember, his painted compositions and sculptures are not just decorations, but they could be. For how can objects that are so independent, so sure of themselves, and so beautiful to look at be simplistically or mindlessly decorative? Much of this intense painter's work appears realized in such a natural and unforced way that it defies analysis-or, let us say, it makes it difficult for us to pin down exactly why the works succeed as they do.

Here we may add that artists consciously or unconsciously reflect the form and image of the age they live in. But in the case of Lee Waisler. while he too is bound to express himself within the context of his immediate past and present, at least there is no narcissistic self-worship. Rather, he is the upholder of a humane morality, a dislike of cant, and an unbiased intellectual curiosity, such as he brings to bear upon the culture of India.

Waisler therefore ought to be considered a product of the maturest of the aesthetic, moral, and philosophical attitudes of the West. Of course he was born and brought up in the course of the decline of the West; yet the self-critical, free spirit nonetheless works strongly in artists like himself. These very attitudes are expressed through colour and form and have far-reaching effects on his style, or styles. The artist is apparently highly conscious of a constructive process, which gives scope for the activity of his deeper mind. Here is a method of trial and error, one that involves successive acts of judgment. Waisler is not a conventionally figurative painter, but evidently he too needs the experience of looking at s omething or other. This became transparent in the keen interest he displayed in objects and people in India. His inventions are thus fed by his sensations of objects viewed. And he is extremely canny. Though sheer expression is not what he is after, he does express himself, his reason and sensation being in a just balance.

While extremely analytical, Waisler never seems to allow his intellect or reason to confine his sensations within a theoretical box. He also has the capacity for a tempered approach, which is cautious of extremes but not at all given to compromise as a solution to working through those cultural soul problems.

The fascinating thing about Waisler's highly organized, honed-to-the-bone, and yet marvelously vivid works is that they fulfill so many of the objectives that an artist may strive for personally, earlier on in his career. His paintings are not framed windows onto space; they are objects in their own right. They are classic in a fresh definition of the term. We must be clear about this because it distinguishes Waisler's work from some other kinds of modern nonfiguration. In several of his mature works, the artist is not seen trying out anything fanciful; rather the works appear to be the culminating examples of his very life process, and his thought. His work is not at all impromptu. On the contrary, it carries the authority of the imagination, being a classical structure in which all elements of intuition and reason play their part. Whatever alterations may have been made during the progress of his work, we are allowed to see only final statements. We can only guess at how many of the first steps were made where parts fulfilled their role with equal emphasis. In his works we are not allowed to wander off or through, as in loosely handled genres, so well are they resolved in all their parts.

The later works especially represent Waisler finally liberating and using colour directly as the element of classical structure. In line with all good painters, he is ultimately concerned with light. His light is spiritual, as well as a spiritual experience.

In some of his work the use of black makes a picture so very mysterious and strong, as in the one on his premonition of Kali, or Time, which sweeps away all. His whites too have a singular brightness and clarity. From light, and no light, colours are formed to move as if in a spiral dance. These can be seen as flat areas adhering to a picture plan, or, changing our way of looking, the leaves of colour shake themselves forward into space in varying degrees; and, seen in this way, the black can become a pit or a hole. Unexpectedly, the reds do not come forward so much as the green. Waisler's sequence of colours is full of surprises. They can move from plane to plane of colour, each well balanced, or they can travel in a line along the boundaries of each connecting area. There never is anything at all ponderous or ascetic about them.

Waisler's work is rich in the accumulated experience of nature, and human nature. It thus has the power to touch us on many levels. We are free, like the spirit of Ariel perhaps, to move in these, his choreographic designs; and if they move our senses, we yet remain secure, there being no danger of our falling, and the painter failing.

We are fortunate to have artists like Lee Waisler on the global art scene. They really make a sad world freer and happier.

Shri Keshav Malik has published over a dozen volumes of poetry. Art critic for Times of India, New Delhi, Malik also served as editor for 'Indian Literature', 'Art and Poetry', and 'Thought' from 1963–1975. In 1991 he was awarded the Padmashri award for Literature in English. Malik was literary assistant to India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.