कथांची चित्रे Good Pictures तरी असावीत किंवा Good Illustrations तरी...G A at 93

Today July 10 2016 is 93rd birth anniversary of G A Kulkarni (जी. ए. कुलकर्णी) 

लोकसत्ता, मार्च 1 2016: "...लेखकाने हस्तलिखित दिल्यानंतर त्या लेखनाचे पुस्तक होताना सौंदर्यामध्ये भर घालण्याची जबाबदारी ही प्रकाशकाची असते. ती निभावण्यामध्ये प्रकाशक कमी पडत असेल, तर हा एक प्रकारचा सामाजिक गुन्हाच आहे, असे मत ज्येष्ठ साहित्यिक भारत सासणे यांनी व्यक्त केले..."

Howard Simon:

“One of  the distinguishing marks of a great book is the persistence with which it is illustrated. The Bible, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the works of Shakespeare and Rabelais, Pilgrim’s Progress, Aesop’s Fables—are all among the much illustrated books. Almost every generation demands the classics in modern dress, set forth pictorially by a favorite modern hand. There scarcely has been a generation without its interpreter of the world’s great books.
On the subject of fine bookmaking there have always been two different schools of thought. There are those who would decorate a book with clear, beautiful type, print it on good paper and allow, at most, a printer’s flower to decorate the page. And there are the others to whom an illustrated book is an enriched one. ..” (‘500 Years of Art & Illustration’ , 1942)

The late G. A. Kulkarni clearly belonged to the second group, "to whom an illustrated book is an enriched one".  

Most fans of GA don’t often talk about this aspect. But GA himself has written about it. 

Reading the letters quoted by Mr. Anand Antarkar (आनंद अंतरकर),  in his book ‘Ek Dharwadi Kahani’ (एक धारवाडी कहाणी), 2015, however it looks like GA was largely unhappy with the state of illustrations for Marathi publications in general.  

"...अंक सजावटीत अतिशय फिका पडतो. कथांची चित्रे Good Pictures तरी असावीत किंवा Good Illustrations तरी. सौ. केशकामत यांच्या सजावटीत दोन्ही आढळते, पण असे क्वचित. 'हंस' चा हा भाग मला फार सामान्य वाटला. (मी थोडासा चित्रकारही होतो.) आणि मुखपृष्ठावरील चित्रदेखील आपण पूर्वी पहिले तर नाही ना असे वाटले. (अर्थात हे पुष्कळच मासिकांच्या बाबतीत घडते.) म्हणजे तुम्ही दुसर्या टोकाला जाऊन ' सत्यकथेसारखे भीषण मुखपृष्ठ द्यावे असे मी म्हणत नाही. पण 'आस्वाद'वरील चित्र मला बरे वाटले…(सजावटीत [शि द] फडणीसांचा समावेश नाही. एका विशिष्ट तर्हेच्या लेखनाला त्यांची सजावट  मस्त जमते. पण त्यांचा आवका फार मर्यादित आहे.)..." (a letter dated November 4 1968)

Following are two more examples of his views on illustrations:

courtesy: copyright holders of GA's letters and Mr. Anand Antarkar

 

Now imagine if William Blake illustrated GA's 'Orpheus' (ऑर्फियस) from 'Pinglavel' (पिंगळावेळ), 1977!

Artist: William Blake (1757-1827), The Book of Job,

illustrated, engraved and printed by William Blake

चोरी चोरीची ६० वर्षे...Ode to Joy...60 Years of Chori Chori

Year 2016 marks 60th anniversary of the release of one of the greatest Hindi entertainers:

Anant Thakur's "Chori Chori" 

Artist: Alfred Eisenstaedt, The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

“It was early in the morning,” Eisenstaedt himself recalled of the fall day in 1950 when he took the photo. On assignment for LIFE, covering the University of Michigan’s nationally famous marching band, he spotted the school’s drum major practicing his craft. Then, Eisenstaedt said, “I saw a little boy running after him, and all the faculty children on the playing field ran after the boy. And I ran after them. This is a completely spontaneous, unstaged picture.”

When I first saw the picture above, I was reminded of Chori Chori...

 

Johnny Walker and others

"All Line Clear" from Anant Thakur's 'Chori Chori', 1956

विनी-दी-पूह व सौमच्या खंदकातील गॅस यज्ञ...E.H. Shepard: Winnie-the-Pooh @90 and Battle of the Somme@100

Year 2016 is 90th birth anniversary year of Winnie-the-Pooh and today July 1 2016 is 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme

Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Aftermath’, 1920:

“...Do you remember the rats; and the stench

Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--

And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?

Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'...”

Arun Kolatkar (अरुण कोलटकर), 'Sarpa Satra', 2003/2004, page 56:

 "...A nice yajnya, this.

Not a single sacrificial post in sight.

No ropes, no knives.

There's no need for the queen,

or anybody else,

to lead the animal to the killing field

and take its life by smothering it,

bludgeoning it,

or worse.

No need to carve up the parts

-omentum, liver, lung, bladder,

genitals-

and cook them separately;

or to roast

the victim's still-bleeding heart on a spit.

Oh no. Nothing of the sort.

Nothing crude.

It's all sorcery: mantras do it all..."

Baroness Warsi, Daily Mail, August 4 2013:

“...The largest volunteer army was the British Indian Army, which provided 1.2million men to fight. This is a staggering contribution; it’s thought that a tenth of the British war effort came from Indian soldiers. Despite the scale of sacrifice – 74,000 lost their lives in battle – knowledge of the contribution is sadly lacking.

My mission is to make sure their bravery, and that of others, is not forgotten. Immediately after the outbreak of war, divisions from India were dispatched to Europe. Thousands of men travelled across the world to fight for King and country – a King who wasn’t from their land and a country which they’d probably never seen.

It wasn’t just the propaganda that lured these men to battle. It was the glory that bravery would bestow on them, tribally and spiritually – and the 11-Rupee monthly salary...”

Winnie-the-Pooh was born 90 years ago in 1926. It was first illustrated by E.H. Shepard (1879-1976). 

I did not know the Pooh as a kid but my son did and he used this plastic stool for a number of years at our home with great affection. We still call it simply 'Winnie-the-Pooh'.

It's hard to believe that the same E.H. Shepard had not only participated in the war and won 'Military Cross' but also sketched the horror of the World War I trenches.

Jenny Uglow writes in ‘A Charmer in the Trenches’ for The New York Review of Books in October 2015:

“...Most of all in his prewar days, Shepard longed to join the elite group of cartoonists in Punch, of which Florence’s grandfather had been one of the founders. He had just managed this, with graphic social cartoons, when war broke out. In 1915 he joined up, soon to serve as an artillery officer with the 105th Siege Battery of the Royal Garrison Artillery. He was there with his troops on the Somme, at the battles of Arras and at Passchendaele, and later, in the last days of the war, in the fierce, snowbound fighting in the Italian Alps. Everywhere, he took his sketchbook...” 

1916, Courtesy: The Shepard Trust/Punch Ltd.

Geoff Dyer explains the "gas Attack' in his book ‘The Missing of the Somme’, 1994:

“...If shelling meant that courage would increasingly consist of endurance rather than gallantry, the introduction of gas condemned the soldier to a state of unendurable helplessness. Once an enemy gun emplacement had been knocked out, the danger from that source ceased immediately. Once a gas attack had been launched, all soldiers — even those who had initiated it — were simply at the mercy of the elements.

The first lethal gas, chlorine, was an inefficient weapon compared with phosgene and mustard gas which came later. Urinating in a handkerchief and breathing through it — as Robert Ross persuades his men to do in Timothy Findley’s novel The Wars — was often protection enough. Against mustard gas — which attacked the skin and eyes as well as the lungs — no protection was available. Since it could not be evaded, resisted or fled from, it eliminated the possibility not only of bravery but of cowardice, the dark backing which heroism, traditionally, had depended on to make itself visible.

Mustard gas was designed to torment rather than kill. Eighteen times more powerful than chlorine, phosgene was invisible and lethal— but effective masks soon became available. For their survival, then, soldiers were at the mercy of the same industrial technology that was evolving new means of destroying them.

The pattern for the century had been set: the warrior of tradition becomes little more than a guinea pig in the warring experiments of factories and laboratories..."

To paraphrase Kolatkar:

Oh no. Nothing of the sort.

Nothing crude.

It's all sorcery: gas does it all.

Indian bicycle troops at a crossroads on the Fricourt-Mametz Road, Somme, France

courtesy: Wikipedia