By Kanishka Hevavisenthi

(A review of: ‘Between Abstraction & Empathy in Sarath Chandrajeewa’s Visual Paraphrases’ by Santhushya Fernando, Laleen Jayamanne and Sumathy Sivamohan)

‘In the early 1950s… the US government passed a law which allowed income-tax relief to any citizen giving a work of art to an US museum: the relief was immediate, but the work of art did not have to go to the museum till the owner’s death. The purpose of this measure was to encourage the import of European works of art. (There is still the residue of the magical belief that to own art confirms power.) In England the law was changed – in order to discourage the export of art – so that it became possible to pay death duties with works of art instead of money. Both pieces of legislation increased prices in salerooms throughout the art-loving world.

There was another reason…By the early 1950s the amount of money available for investment had increased to an unprecedented degree. The reconstruction after the war, the stimulus of rearmament, the consolidation of the developed economies at the expense of the underdeveloped ones, had all led to a situation where there the possibilities of foreign and colonial investment had changed since pre-war days. The sums involved were now too vast for the average private investor to take private decisions: now he simply handed his capital over to a highly-organized investing group. Monopoly capitalism becomes anonymous in character for the average investor no less than for the average employee. Consequently, there were investors who were looking – as a side-line – for a field of investment which offered a chance of personal interest and excitement, whilst remaining comparatively safe. Some of them found art. And so, art, at about this time, took in certain lives the place that was once occupied by South American railways, Bolivian tin, or tea plantations in Ceylon. Within ten years the prices in the art salerooms increased at least tenfold.’ – Berger, John, The Success and Failure of Picasso

The Island” carried a 3-part series entitled Between Abstraction & Empathy in Sarath Chandrajeewa’s Visual Paraphrases” by three very lost academics, lost in the word wars providing dissimulatory droning to camouflage imperialism’s long-range missiles and monetary debt-gouging. We do not wish to focus on Chandrajeewa’s art or what these academics have written on his art, or the views expressed in the past on art, film and politics by a gang that includes one pro-Eelamist academic, and another domiciled on stolen land in Australia, although there are many commonalities between the artist and these two critics – the third academic is a thankfully unknown number.

They have all valorised the Nuland- and Chung-inspired Galle Face anarchy, NGO art and films. Chandrajeewa has served his political masters well, for perennially devalued silver, such as Premadasa’s Gam Udava and Mangala ‘Innocent’ Samaraweera’s Ahinsakayange Aramaya” (which when demolished was greeted by the studious silence of the NGO brush-wielders and chisellers). Chandrajeewa and these academics congratulated the blindfolding during the anarchy of the statue of SWRD Bandaranaike (carved by the great Soviet sculptor Lev Kerbel and donated by the USSR). Both Chandrajeewa and the lost Australian academic defend this infantile iconoclasm – the sculptor by even claiming to be a student of Kerbel (who carved famous statues of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin).

These academics having long said goodbye to such an emancipatory heritage, prefer to deploy an eye-watering mythical jargon in their writings. Rather than examining how a common national language can be forged, understanding the vital indispensable role Sinhala Buddhism has played in the country’s survival as an independent entity, and seeing how Tamil and Malayali and Malay and Arabic can be bridge languages to link us to the wider world around us, they deride Sri Lanka as an ethno-nationalist state”. They insult the masses as ethno-centric parochial Lankans”, decrying our Sinhalization and Buddhisization”, ethno-religious supremacy”, and virulent Sinhala nationalism pursuing cultural purity”, etc. They join in the hallelujah chorus of US envoy Julie Chung, becoming spokespersons for an imagined Malaiyaha” at the expense of an impoverished peasantry marginalized by the English genocide and occupation of the Kandyan highlands of Sinhale.

In the third part of the series published on 22 April 2024, the writers say In Sarath’s exhibition Visual Paraphrases there are three abstract paintings titled Unwritten I, II, III …” The writers claim that It is no accident that Unwritten III was purchased by H.D. Premasiri, sponsor and Chairman of the famed book shop happily named Sarasawiya (University).”

Let it be understood that Premasiri’s renowned publishing house and network of bookshops are named Sarasavi”, not Sarasaviya (University) as vulgarized by these three critics.

The most comical part of this piece is how the three academics earnestly ‘inform’ the ‘Anglophile reader’ who may not know this history: Sarasawiya has also published one of the most significant cultural magazines or newspapers and also sponsored the very first film festival of Sinhala films, raising its cultural prestige among the intelligentsia of the country”. What type of wrong information are these anglomanic writers give to ‘the Anglophile reader’?

Sarasavi (or Sarasvati) is the Hindu goddess (or patron) who represents learning, knowledge, wisdom, creativity, music and art. Sarasaviya was the term coined by Munidasa Cumaratunga for university instead of Vishva Vidyalaya. He may have been influenced by Sarasavi Maduwa (Sarasvati Mandapaya or seat of learning) as in the verse in the ancient Sinhala classic Kavyashekaraya. The second verse of ancient Sinhala classic Kawsilumina pronounces let people become poets even with a fleeting glance of Sarasvati.

Sarasaviya newspaper, exclusively devoted to film was launched on 10 April 1963 (Meemana Prematillaka as founding editor), by Associated Newspaper Company Ltd (ANCL – Lake House), and the Sarasaviya Film Festival was first launched on 9 May 1964 by ANCL and the Sarasaviya newspaper (Wimalasiri Perera as its editor). Maestro Amaradeva sang its theme song, Jagan Mohinee -Madhura Bhashinee – Charu Dehinee- Sarasvati Devi Wande” (a eulogy to goddess Sarasvati-lyrics by Wimalasiri Perera, continued in every subsequent festival. During this period Sarasavi Bookshop was owned and managed by Premasiri’s uncle, as a solitary institution adjoining the old Nugegoda post office. Premasiri was a child at that time. Fortunately, these academics and art historians do not attribute (construction of) Sarasavi Uyana (University Park) Railway Station at Peradeniya and (floating of) Sarasavi Hardware Stores at Maharagama to Mr.Premasiri!

(Inadvertently we copied the preceding name -Wimalasiri Perera – the then editor of Sarasaviya newspaper as the lyricist of Sarasaviya Film Festival theme song sung by maestro Amaradeva.It should be corrected as the lyricist of the theme song was Sri Chandraratna Manavasinghe and NOT Wimalasiri Perera.

We apologise to our readers as well as the management of ANCL, present editor of Sarasaviya and the family members of the late Sri Chandraratna Manavasinghe for any inconvenience caused.)

In their concluding remarks the writers say In writing this piece we also worked alongside each other because it appears to us as a respectful way to collaborate, to make tracks in unfamiliar zones”. What they have done by attributing the Sarasaviya paper and Sarasaviya Film Festival to Mr. Premasiri, which they say was done by working alongside each other” only amounts to collaborating” to distort history, and deceiving the Anglophile reader” as well as implanting landmines in familiar zones. By attacking Sinhala-Buddhist Nationalists” in everything they write, while harping on linguistic violence and ethno-nationalism”, they are not ashamed to state their allegiances to frigid St. Bridget’s, to the brilliant lineage of Christian Burgher artists of Lanka”, while tracing their (Tamil) Christian cultural lineage” and Negombo Roman Catholicism!

As educated by her native informant Chandrajeewa, one of the authors marooned in Australia, defends David Paynter, saying he was discriminated against because he was a Lansi Catholic”.

We have elsewhere examined the reactionary role of the still-European-dominated Roman Catholic Church, their opposition to ‘free’ education, their portrayal on election posters of churches burning back in 1948 if ‘Communists’ won elections, the refusal to bury Catholics who voted for the ‘Communists’ (hence denying their children access to schools etc), their opposition to schools takeover and occupation of school premises, involvement in coups-d’état and terrorism, etc.

Let us examine this ‘Burgher’ artist, whose ‘brilliant’ art includes the murals at the Trinity College chapel. David Paynter paints Jesus and various disciples and related New Testament characters as white or at least tanned (no hint of even genetic improvement by local colour, though the lost Australian academic claims they are in ‘brown skin tones’) using some of his Burgher relatives and friends as models of the sacred. He also clothes and unclothes his homoeroticism and semi-clad Jesus in these murals. In the painting of the parable of the Good Samaritan he has one character pat the rear of the other, perhaps to indicate an uncaring Levite urging another on, to avoid helping the victim of a robbery. But on the ass! One wonders if a push on the shoulder would have sufficed. Then again, Paynter was perhaps subliminally seeking to arouse the famed homoeroticism of cloistered Trinity boys at frustrated pubertal prayer. Photographs of these boys set against Paynter’s pasty pastels show how inconsonant these ‘brown’ claims are.

One of course grows weary if not nauseated by the continued ‘celebration’ of a concrete canon of permissible heroes and heroines purportedly neglected but constantly glorified in the media, as if they are a subaltern category promising liberation. We rather dispose of the so-called Group of 1943 to the dung heaps of history where they really should belong (if any reader really wishes to know what else was really going on in the 1943 not portrayed in their celebrated art, they should read e-Con e-News’ recent rendition of that era at war to preserve English colonialism).

The expression and suppression of homoeroticism (a sophisticated word for homosexuality) is indeed a prominent theme in the art of the ‘brilliant lineage’ of these so-called exemplars of ‘Sri Lankan’ art, who resorted to a mocking orientalism to claim an anchor to the country. The neo-Aboriginal academic affects the fawning tones of a faghag (a derogatory term for a heterosexual woman who gets off by hanging onto gay men’s hems) by referring to the ‘musculature’ of their rather gender-segregated rendering of the country.

Rajiva Wijesinha’s recent effusive review in the Sunday Times of SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda’s, George Keyt: The Absence of a Desired Image notes that Keyt, whose heterosexual priapism inflicted on local womanhood mistook his pinsale for his penis, ‘destroyed an archive of Wendt pictures after his friend’s death. Though a free spirit himself, perhaps his lack of interest in male beauty meant that Keyt thought of Wendt’s pictures as demeaning and could not understand their artistic excellence.’

Wijesinha doesn’t explore if Keyt’s treatment of women sublimated his own homoerotic tendencies. We must confess that Keyt’s so-called erotic idealized art leaves us frigid like that half-baked putty breudher in December. Despite Keyts’ monetization by the Keells conglomerate, etc. – recalling modern art’s inflated role as another device to hide profits, launder money (from arms and drug dealing during our prolonged wars), and avoid paying taxes – we are aware that Keyt rather mechanically stole from the cubism of Picasso, displaying none of the Andalusian’s flair or dedication (Picasso a steadfast member of the French Communist Party until his death) even as Picasso stole from the Africans, particularly the fabulous art of the Niger Delta and Benin. Do any of these so-called artists or academics dare reflect the emerging role and struggles of workers and rural Sinhala cultivators in their so-called art, as a Mexican Diego Rivera decidedly did?

Wijesinha refers to the illustrations Keyt rendered ‘for various Buddhist publications that newspaper groups began to bring out in the 1920s, as an essential component of emerging nationalism. … the seminal work in this respect of Lake House under D.R. Wijewardene, also inspired the Times, while Buddhist Annuals were another regular outlet for a creativity based on a national vision’. But what exactly was this ‘national vision’ that Wijesinha’s relatives, the Wijewardenes, extolled.

The Wijewardenes were part of the colonial press gang that chased out of the country the still-constantly disparaged Anagarika Dharmapala, the true forebear of Sinhala Buddhism and independence. The Wijewardenes were part of the English gangs (featuring the then-power company and now educational gatekeeper and visa-seller Pearson PLC) who also prevented DJ Wimalasurendra’s vision to electrify the country through local industry.

So, what exactly is this ‘male beauty’ that the unrepentant orientalist Wendt appreciated in Sri Lanka. And what exactly was the role of these so-called artists, who we hesitantly call ‘Sri Lankan.’ What national issues did they exactly prioritize and highlight?

The marooned Australian academic also comments on Heywood, forerunner of University of Visual Arts, but her information is pure hearsay. The battle at Heywood was between so-called ‘Western’ and ‘Oriental’ art, over giving undue prominence to this ‘Western’ art, amidst the usual clamour for an equal distribution of foreign trips and scholarships. The reddha-wearing Sinhala teachers were the ‘minority’. As informed by lost-native Chandrajeewa, the lost Australian says Sinhala supremacists dubbed Paynter as a ‘Christian Lansiya’. But she and Chandrajeewa forget that the ‘Western’ tribe at Heywood attacked their opponents, telling them to use ancient paint material (makulu mati, dorana oil etc.) and ancient brushes (made of twigs or locally grown reeds) without using Reeves Greyhound colours and hog-bristle or red sable brushes respectively.

We do recall Ananda Coomaraswamy’s famed An Open Letter to the Kandyan Chiefs at the dawn of the 20th century, lamenting the neglect of famed local paints in the new artwork inflicted (by such US and English multinational corporations like Dupont/Dulux) on traditional temples. One of the biggest scandals that befell the country in the 19thC, the robbery of temple lands, is only given brief mention in that letter.

Another myth propagated by the lost Australian academic is that Chandrajeewa introduced terracotta art. However, it has been there for all the world to see, if they dare, that it has been a material long used by our artisans. Maeti Vaeda (clay work) has been taught in our schools from the 1950s and 1960s. HM Ellepola Somaratna (who translated into Sinhala Ananda Coomaraswamy’s famous work, John Davy and Henry Marshall), wrote textbooks on this matter.

The hagiographers of Chandrajeewa thus claim he is a ‘rare craftsman/artist working unusually, in clay, painting and bronze, Lanka’s civilizational material culture and art, according to Ananda Coomaraswamy’. The omission of steel is curious not just because of the recent sabotage of the Ceylon Steel Corporation, developed with the support of the USSR.

The 400-years of decline of Lanka following the South Indian invasions of the Rajarata and the Anuradhapura Kingdom, were accompanied by a drastic loss of steel technology, even as modern researchers have found many wind-blown blast furnaces dating from 7-11^th centuries, producing high-quality iron & steel. This technology appears subsequently to have been lost (or hidden), and indeed Coomaraswamy himself noted the regressive methods of steel making in his report on Sabaragamuwa.

We should add that unlike Dharmapala, Coomaraswamy was a part of those Indian-allied liberals, poets, politicians and theorists, from Tamilnadu’s Bharati to North India’s Nehru to the Malayali Panikkar, who deny Sri Lanka’s long contiguous and centripetal history, and declare Sri Lanka as a part of an India that never was united until the English East India Company claimed to unite it.

These academics – calling themselves ‘doctors’ and professors’ also claims that Chandrajeewa, as Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Visual and Performing Arts (UVPA) nominated Barbara Sansoni to be awarded an honorary doctorate. (UVPA has become a factory awarding Ph.D. (honoris causa) degrees). How could he do so? It was not his university or place to do so. The Sansonis and other tourist panderers of Colombo have served to valorize handicraft rather than demanding its advancement by modern machine-making technology, even as the so-called Academy of Design is a front for the German industrial import mafia in Sri Lanka, and Mercedes Benz Co. (The foreign exchange spent on one such imported luxury car could pay for a machine to enable light industry, which could then go on to produce tools and machines etc., but this is another tale.)

The origin of the UVPA are traced back to 1893, when the Ceylon Technical College was established, with drawing and design among the first courses taught there. How the English diverted the country from the ‘drawing and design’ of modern machine-making to an effete ‘Arts and Aesthetics’ entombed in the gallery and studio, at the mercy of the arbitrary whims and fancies of Wall Street’s fund managers, is indeed a story yet to be told. Another game is to alienate Tamil people and language from Sinhala Buddhist culture.

The constant attack on Sinhala Buddhism and a united culture by the academic gangs and their artistic cavalcades riding imported cars funded by imperialism, recalls some very important historical and truly heretical citations:

• ‘Throughout the world, the period of the final victory of capitalism over feudalism has been linked up with national movements. For the complete victory of commodity production, the bourgeoisie must capture the home market, and there must be politically united territories whose population speak a single language, with all obstacles to the development of that language and to its consolidation in literature eliminated. Therein is the economic foundation of national movements. Language is the most important means of human intercourse. Unity and unimpeded development of language are the most important conditions for genuinely free and extensive commerce on a scale commensurate with modern capitalism, for a free and broad grouping of the population in all its various classes and, lastly, for the establishment of a close connection between the market and each and every proprietor, big or little, and between seller and buyer.’ –Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination

*

• ‘Proletarian in content, national in form such is the universal culture towards which socialism is proceeding. Proletarian culture does not abolish national culture, it gives it content. On the other hand, national culture does not abolish proletarian culture, it gives it form. The slogan of national culture was a bourgeois slogan so long as the bourgeoisie was in power and the consolidation of nations proceeded under the aegis of the bourgeois order. The slogan of national culture became a proletarian slogan when the proletariat came to power, and when the consolidation of nations began to proceed under the aegis of Soviet power’ – J. Stalin

We end by noting e-Con e-News’ recent definition of imperialism, which includes the prevention of modern vocational and technical education, especially through on-the-job training in machine-industrialization, and the wholesale diversion of education into non-technical pursuits and conceits, etc. This is indeed apposite for and opposite to the so-called modern art business in Sri Lanka as exemplified by these imported brushers and chisellers and academic shills.

(We thank Sena Thoradeniya for sharing his views regarding Sarasavi, Heywood and Ellepola Somaratna).