Copyright conflict shakes city canvas

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">KOLKATA: There''s no love lost in this triangle, described by an art collector Anand Agarwal, art historian Shreyasi Chatterjee and her student at Rabindra Bharati, Susmita De Maity. Worse, it adds fuel to the controversy raging over "plagiarism" charges levelled against Shreyasi by Eleena Banik. For, Susmita now accuses her teacher of stopping her from doing the "stitched paintings" that Shreyasi herself exhibited recently.<br /><br />Agarwal had bought two embroidered paintings that Susmita had done for her MVA finals last year.Subsequently, Rusi Mody acquired her work from the Academy annuals.<br /><br />Perhaps peeved by this, examiner Shreyasi Chatterjee had said, "Don''t let this make you think you''ve arrived as an artist," Susmita had complained to dean Partha Pratim Deb in writing.<br /><br />Apparently Shreyasi was upset that her student had ignored her suggestion during the midterm review "to use paint instead of embroidery" as she was "not a craftsperson." "She even threatened to fail me," Susmita claims.<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section2"><div class="Normal">When Agarwal heard this, he refused to acquire Shreyasi''s patchwork cylinder which he''d selected. "This was my protest against an unethical blackmailing of a student by a teacher," says the collector.<br /><br />On her part, Shreyasi asks: "How can I encourage a student who uses embroidery on an acrylic figure only as embellishment? Without a concept to back the runstitch used as frills, it was merely craft."<br /><br />Shreyasi herself has used embroidered patchwork to depict women''s ''domesticity'' through two caged birds, a jewellery box, shopping bag, cylinder and umbrella, among other objects. "The context in which I''m using the craft raises it to the level of a metaphor," she explains her post-modern expression which she has been using since 2001-02, when she did a Commonwealth fellowship on Post-Modernism in Theory and Practice.<br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section3"><div class="Normal">However, Susmita contradicts her teacher. "Every artist is constantly searching for new expressions, in terms of both form and medium," she says. "I have been drawn to the resonance of <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">kantha</span> stitches since they impart a three-dimensional effect and add shadows when light falls on them."<br /><br />"Teachers often feel strongly about a certain medium," explains senior artist Ganesh Haloi. But "a teacher should encourage the slightest possibility noticed in a student. For, at a young age many are unable to articulate their concepts," he adds.<br /><br />The abstractionist dismisses Eleena''s objections to the use of the cylinder and umbrella images. "Life is full of objects.<br /><br />It is not uncommon to see the same object becoming the subject of two or more painters — especially in contemporary times when curators want paintings on given themes. The objects become an artistic image only when they''re creatively interpreted. If both, the medium and the idiom are different, and treated in an individual light, it cannot be termed plagiarism."</div> </div>