O.V.Vijayan left us on the 30th March 2005.
The Andhra Pradesh Political Cartoonists Forum, on the 22nd of March, honoured him with Life Time Achievement Award.
Little quotes on Vijayan cartoons, pulled out from different sources for their exhibition during the occasion, are given below.
I accept my limitations. I am fully aware that this is no way enough, still – to begin with, to pay tribute to.
Goodbye, Vijayetta
With love,
Sundar, April 6, 2005
*
The Andhra Pradesh Political Cartoonists Forum, on the 22nd of March, honoured him with Life Time Achievement Award.
Little quotes on Vijayan cartoons, pulled out from different sources for their exhibition during the occasion, are given below.
I accept my limitations. I am fully aware that this is no way enough, still – to begin with, to pay tribute to.
Goodbye, Vijayetta
With love,
Sundar, April 6, 2005
*
A brief biographical note: O.V.Vijayan was born in 1930 in Palakkat, Kerala. In 1954 he took a Masters degree in English Literature from Madras University and then taught for a while, before becoming a political cartoonist. Vijayan has worked for the Shankar's Weekly, Patriot, and The Statesman, freelanced for various publications including Far Eastern Economic Review, Economic and Political Weekly, The Hindu, Newstimes, Mathrubhumi and Kalakaumudi.
His fiction, translated to English has been published by Penguin India, his memoirs as a cartoonist by Rupa & Co, and his Malayalam fiction, non-fiction and cartoons by DC Books. He has won several prestigious awards including the National Sahitya Academy Award and the Padmabhooshan.
*
Between historical pessimism and imbecile revolution, there is a stretch of arid territory where the cartoonist retires to. It all begins in a lot of violence, and subsides as ingloriously as it had come. That is history. The cartoonist views it from his arid space and catches its absurdities and contradictions.
That’s how I have conceived of the peasant and his disturbed son – and their irrepressible questions.
O.V.Vijayan
*
His cartoons may not make us laugh. Even when the contours of Vijayan’s unique strokes tickle our imagination, the laughter, when it comes, comes salted with the inevitable sadness that their biting sarcasm evokes.
- Ashish Nandy, Social Scientist
*
O.V. Vijayan is a very unforgiving cartoonist; some might say he is almost too explicit in his determination not to let anyone get off the hook. He often uses very strong language too. During the sordid, self-seeking, horse-trading which followed the fall of Morarji Desai's government, he showed a porcine Indira Gandhi, with an equally piggy Charan Singh on one side and Jagjivan Ram on the other. Under the cartoon he wrote, "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from, man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
- Mark Tully, Journalist & Writer
*
Vijayan brought a distinctly young voice to Indian cartooning. He had everything that was ‘‘anti’’ that went with the campus mood of the sixties and the seventies. His graphic idiom down to the speech balloon looked modern and defiant. He had considerable peer pleasure. Abu Abraham and Rajinder Puri had levelled up editorial cartooning and they were doing incredible caricatures in the anatomical mode. Vijayan chose geometry instead. He dismantled political figures into templates of circles and triangles.
- E.P.Unny, cartoonist, Indian Express
*
It is worth remembering that in the late ‘60s, when BJP’s former avatar, the Jan Sangh first contested elections with the ‘lamp’ as their election symbol, O.V.Vijayan had rushed up with a brilliant cartoon in The Hindu. It showed a ballot box with the ‘lamp’ emblem; the caption below read ‘Mein Lampf’. In a simple and urgent way he had alerted us, even then, to the clear and present danger. It is this kind of graphic alertness we need to develop today to expose all fascist meta-language.
- Sadanand Menon, Columnist
*
Vijayan sees people and situations from within. And the view from within is wretched, disturbing. Certainly his angst has been aroused by disillusionment with Communism, the god that failed. But the despair is equally induced by politicians, those gods with feet of clay. Some people are doomed to see the world from within—they write, draw, report,
work from within than observe from the outside. Their contribution is powerful precisely because the anguish of the sufferers permeate their souls. People who have experienced Indian politics from ground zero, from famine-stricken villages and battle zones, from legislatures and bombed sites, from wrecked huts and ruined homes, would share Vijayan's pain, his inability to raise laughs. The middle class can get defensive, say but there are a lot of good things happening too. Sure there are, but they don't substitute, make up for or cancel out the bad things.
- Anita Pratap, Columnist
*
Unlike R. K. Laxman, the great institution of the Times of India, whose cartoons usually raise a wry smile, Vijayan is more likely to provoke a grimace and a sigh. Yet in spite of the cynicism and hypocrisy that his drawings expose, his ordinary characters recognize the ruses attempted against them and battle on - a spirit that captures one of post-independence India’s notable virtues. Another of those virtues is the capacity to produce and tolerate artists like Vijayan.
- Robin Jeffrey, La Trobe University, Melbourne
*
At a time when political cartoonists are pulling their punches, getting on side with conglomeratized publishers, and kowtowing to the ever-widening grasp of political correctness-gone-mad, there are still people left like Vijayan, willing to target any group or individual bent on stifling freedom and the will of the people.
His fiction, translated to English has been published by Penguin India, his memoirs as a cartoonist by Rupa & Co, and his Malayalam fiction, non-fiction and cartoons by DC Books. He has won several prestigious awards including the National Sahitya Academy Award and the Padmabhooshan.
*
Between historical pessimism and imbecile revolution, there is a stretch of arid territory where the cartoonist retires to. It all begins in a lot of violence, and subsides as ingloriously as it had come. That is history. The cartoonist views it from his arid space and catches its absurdities and contradictions.
That’s how I have conceived of the peasant and his disturbed son – and their irrepressible questions.
O.V.Vijayan
*
His cartoons may not make us laugh. Even when the contours of Vijayan’s unique strokes tickle our imagination, the laughter, when it comes, comes salted with the inevitable sadness that their biting sarcasm evokes.
- Ashish Nandy, Social Scientist
*
O.V. Vijayan is a very unforgiving cartoonist; some might say he is almost too explicit in his determination not to let anyone get off the hook. He often uses very strong language too. During the sordid, self-seeking, horse-trading which followed the fall of Morarji Desai's government, he showed a porcine Indira Gandhi, with an equally piggy Charan Singh on one side and Jagjivan Ram on the other. Under the cartoon he wrote, "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from, man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
- Mark Tully, Journalist & Writer
*
Vijayan brought a distinctly young voice to Indian cartooning. He had everything that was ‘‘anti’’ that went with the campus mood of the sixties and the seventies. His graphic idiom down to the speech balloon looked modern and defiant. He had considerable peer pleasure. Abu Abraham and Rajinder Puri had levelled up editorial cartooning and they were doing incredible caricatures in the anatomical mode. Vijayan chose geometry instead. He dismantled political figures into templates of circles and triangles.
- E.P.Unny, cartoonist, Indian Express
*
It is worth remembering that in the late ‘60s, when BJP’s former avatar, the Jan Sangh first contested elections with the ‘lamp’ as their election symbol, O.V.Vijayan had rushed up with a brilliant cartoon in The Hindu. It showed a ballot box with the ‘lamp’ emblem; the caption below read ‘Mein Lampf’. In a simple and urgent way he had alerted us, even then, to the clear and present danger. It is this kind of graphic alertness we need to develop today to expose all fascist meta-language.
- Sadanand Menon, Columnist
*
Vijayan sees people and situations from within. And the view from within is wretched, disturbing. Certainly his angst has been aroused by disillusionment with Communism, the god that failed. But the despair is equally induced by politicians, those gods with feet of clay. Some people are doomed to see the world from within—they write, draw, report,
work from within than observe from the outside. Their contribution is powerful precisely because the anguish of the sufferers permeate their souls. People who have experienced Indian politics from ground zero, from famine-stricken villages and battle zones, from legislatures and bombed sites, from wrecked huts and ruined homes, would share Vijayan's pain, his inability to raise laughs. The middle class can get defensive, say but there are a lot of good things happening too. Sure there are, but they don't substitute, make up for or cancel out the bad things.
- Anita Pratap, Columnist
*
Unlike R. K. Laxman, the great institution of the Times of India, whose cartoons usually raise a wry smile, Vijayan is more likely to provoke a grimace and a sigh. Yet in spite of the cynicism and hypocrisy that his drawings expose, his ordinary characters recognize the ruses attempted against them and battle on - a spirit that captures one of post-independence India’s notable virtues. Another of those virtues is the capacity to produce and tolerate artists like Vijayan.
- Robin Jeffrey, La Trobe University, Melbourne
*
At a time when political cartoonists are pulling their punches, getting on side with conglomeratized publishers, and kowtowing to the ever-widening grasp of political correctness-gone-mad, there are still people left like Vijayan, willing to target any group or individual bent on stifling freedom and the will of the people.
- John A. Lent, editor, International Journal of Comic Art, USA
*
…Vijayan carries the cross of pain, anger, disappointment on his frail shoulders. He raises concerns. He cuts through the cant and hypocrisy, the deceit and dishonesty of our time. He sees through the lies, the chicanery. In fact, it was Vijayan who brought to an end the age of genial cartooning and made savagery his baseline.
But he is no Eminem either. He is a balladeer of the spirit. Like Joan Baez who woke you to your conscience, he makes you look at the mirror and ask yourself who you are, what you stand for. Yes, his lines are cruel. He challenges you to think, to react and if you do not, he ridicules your helplessness and makes you even more angry.
- Pritish Nandy, Poet & Journalist
*
A powerful graphic journalist, an original story teller, a much-acclaimed columnist and political commentator, the cartoonist who brought a new idiom into Indian cartooning to reflect ultimate concerns, a critic fully aware of complex realities of the third world, a full-fledged political animal without bias who fought for decent amount of space for his cartoons, an intellectual who consistently raised the level of cartoon sensibilities, a brilliant writer who contributed to the theory of third world cartooning, a maverick who resorted to black humor to analyze and make his point, an extremely stylized artist who beautifully integrated words and visuals in English and Malayalam for subversion, a Gandhian cartoonist who promoted simple alternatives, the most daring, irreverent voice during the dark days of the Emergency…
- Sundar Ramanathaiyer & Nancy Hudson-Rodd, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia
*
…Vijayan carries the cross of pain, anger, disappointment on his frail shoulders. He raises concerns. He cuts through the cant and hypocrisy, the deceit and dishonesty of our time. He sees through the lies, the chicanery. In fact, it was Vijayan who brought to an end the age of genial cartooning and made savagery his baseline.
But he is no Eminem either. He is a balladeer of the spirit. Like Joan Baez who woke you to your conscience, he makes you look at the mirror and ask yourself who you are, what you stand for. Yes, his lines are cruel. He challenges you to think, to react and if you do not, he ridicules your helplessness and makes you even more angry.
- Pritish Nandy, Poet & Journalist
*
A powerful graphic journalist, an original story teller, a much-acclaimed columnist and political commentator, the cartoonist who brought a new idiom into Indian cartooning to reflect ultimate concerns, a critic fully aware of complex realities of the third world, a full-fledged political animal without bias who fought for decent amount of space for his cartoons, an intellectual who consistently raised the level of cartoon sensibilities, a brilliant writer who contributed to the theory of third world cartooning, a maverick who resorted to black humor to analyze and make his point, an extremely stylized artist who beautifully integrated words and visuals in English and Malayalam for subversion, a Gandhian cartoonist who promoted simple alternatives, the most daring, irreverent voice during the dark days of the Emergency…
- Sundar Ramanathaiyer & Nancy Hudson-Rodd, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia
*
No comments:
Post a Comment