His passion is to bring out the mistakes made by artistes while painting portraits of Lord Basavanna, the 12th century philosopher, statesman and social reformer.
Being an ardent follower of Basavanna, city's senior artiste L Shivalingappa has taken a strong exception against artistes who depict Basavanna wrongly. He has penned a book cataloging all such mistakes. His aim is to educate populace about simplicity, achievements of Basavanna.
The book titled, 'Drushya Madhyamadalli Basavanna', lists paintings displayed by several renowned artistes at various exhibitions in the past six years that contains mistakes in the depiction of this reformer who fought against the caste system.
In his book, containing 82 pages with about 65 photographs, he has highlighted the mistakes made by the artistes in their paintings, critically analyzing their paintings based on the literature.
He says: “The artistes have failed to depict Basavanna in his real form based on literature. Most of the artistes without referring to literature have drawn these paintings out of their imagination and it should come to end. Basavanna is a man of simplicity and portraying him in wrong form will have a negative impact on people distancing him from them.”
“Basavanna is always depicted as a rich man clad in silk clothes, wearing a crown on his head bedecked with jewels made of sparkling diamonds and pearls (ratnakachitha) has to be stopped. The paintings depicting Basavanna wearing jewels, crown in all the sequences leave a wrong impression among viewers,” he opined.
“Portraits of Basavanna displayed in the Mutts, printed on coins, his sculptures, even films and several others have all depicted him wrongly as a rich person. We have failed to showcase his real personality. I want Mutt heads and artistes to rethink and read literature about Basavanna's biography before they undertake to paint him ,” he said.
He has also observed in the book that even in the West where Christianity is popular, nowhere it's founder Jesus, has been depicted as a rich man or from a wealthy background.
“I watched paintings of Lord Jesus visited several churches. Nowhere, I found depicting him as wealtheir person. He is always portrayed as a humble person born to a poor family. The paintings touch the viewers easily identifying him with their own sufferings, and thereby increasing their devotion, faith. Whereas, its not same in the country,” he said, adding the book will be eye opener for upcoming budding artistes, and even professional artistes who are intending to draw his picture.
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