In the picture His Excellency Venu Rajamony, Ambassador of India Admiring the Laxman’s work together with Dr. Dharmendra Bhandari.
By Catherine Dailey.
On Friday, October 4, His Excellency Venu Rajamony, Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, inaugurated the “R.K. Laxman, The Uncommon Man” exhibition at the Gandhi Center in The Hague. The subjects on display include art, caricature, humor and political cartoons. Most have been included in Dr. Dharmendra Bhandari’s recently published book of the same title, a compilation features a collection of works since 1948.
Professor Nirmala Sharma, Director of the Gandhi Center, introduced the Ambassador, opened the evening program and welcomed distinguished international and Indian guests to the exhibition of Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman (b. 1921), “India’s best known and most revered political cartoonist.”
Ambassador Rajamony spoke briefly about R.K. Laxman’s work and alter ego, the “common man.” The “common man” cartoons appeared daily in “The Times of India” for more than fifty years, and the Ambassador stated that Laxman “was one of the greatest and most iconic cartoonists of India—a man who chronicled the history of post-independent era through art.”
With a few simple brush strokes, Laxman drew his signature creation, the bespectacled “common man”, a symbol of “the quintessential Indian, ” which is considered to be among the most widely recognized and celebrated cartoon characters in the world.
Guests included Dr. Dharmendra Bhandari, who is to be largely credited for bringing the exhibition to The Hague. In his introductory presentation, Dr. Bhandari commented that, “international political figures including British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher and former US Presidents Richard Nixon, Barack Obama and others, were featured prominently in Laxman’s cartoons. He further mentioned that political figures, and other personalities, were often flattered by how they were depicted in Laxman’s beloved cartoons.
“Though Laxman’s cartoons are highly recognizable by India’s general public; very few people know “Laxman the artist,” as much of his work in this genre was unpublished, said Bhandari. From his beloved Lord Ganesha, to temples and landscapes, crows and other animals; Laxman employed watercolors, pastels and ink to tackle a variety of subjects. His oeuvre even included nudes, drawn when he was young and still relatively unknown,” he continued.
Laxman’s work, has even received praise by a former President of India, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, who once remarked that, “Laxman’s works speak, more than a thousand words.”
Laxman recreated the personalities of political leaders, men of both peace and war, litterateurs, actors, musicians and famous sportsmen. As an artist, he relied upon memory, not photographs, to depict his well-known subjects. By means of humor, he gave life to his subjects on paper and chronicled his times as a political and social critic. From trade or technology to cricket, Laxman’s creations were unique. His used cartoon illustrations to capture the essence of political leaders–their characters, politics and egos and even their futures, day after day for decades.
Former Deputy Mayor of The Hague, Mr. Rabin Baldewsingh, was among the other distinguished guests who attended the opening. Mr. Baldewsingh also gave a few prepared remarks—noting that the work of a political cartoonist can be likened to the health of a miner’s “canary in a cage.”
Laxman, used little more than a pen and ink to sketch artistic representations of challenging, even discomforting, subjects in his world and the world at large. The former deputy mayor noted that Laxman’s cartoons, like the work of any political cartoonist, are a significant indicator of the freedoms enjoyed by citizens in any healthy democracy.
Top level representatives from the The Hague’s international judicial institutions, local representatives from the Indian community in the Netherlands and other guests from the community were also present to open the exhibition, which will remain on public display until October 12, 2019.
