Van Cleef's jewelled touch

RATE OF THE ART - CII

Olaf Van Cleef paints like the jeweller that he is. A scion of the Van Cleef family and counsellor to Cartier on high jewellery since 1982, the jeweller's touch is overt in the 59 paintings currently on display at the Gallery La Mere in Kolkata, especially in his use of embellishments like Swarovski crystals and gold-paper.

But there's something about the dense and minute perfection of his works "" the little dots in white goauche which pack every inch of his works, the precise lines in brown antique ink, the mosaic of colours (bits of glitter paper cut into various shapes and stuck on to the paper) "" that is jeweller-like. No wonder the collection is called "Jewelled Touch".

Of course, decoration is only one reason why Olaf uses crystals. "They help focus attention," he says pointing to a painting (unnamed, liked all his work) of two women celebrating Diwali. Of the two, one has her back to the viewer, her ample figure and her subservience manifest through the lines of her sari; the other faces the viewer, her aristocracy marked out by her slender frame, the ornate drape of the sari and a necklace.

"Yes, this is a design particular to the royal house of Baroda," he says, "but not everyone will recognise it. But the few who do will recognise immediately that it is Maharani Preeti Devi of Baroda and that she is wearing the Star of the South. It's like a little joke that I have."

Such jokes abound in Olaf's works. The jokes are often personal, ironic, self-deprecatory and reveal a close acquiantance with India.

Take the painting of Olaf's grandmother, Alice, with whom he came to India first and who was an important influence on his life. She can be seen, posing languidly with the Taj Mahal hotel in the background, while enlosed in the same frame is another of the painter himself, a palm tattoo runing down his cheek, but with the Taj Mahal in the background. "It's cheeky, no?" asks Olaf, winking broadly with Gallic effervescence.

All art "" and especially a representative art like painting "" feeds on the life of its creator. So it's only natural that Olaf's painting should reflect his fascination with India, a country he has been coming back to many times a year for over two decades now. Themes and motifs from India recur "" elephants, Nandi (Shiva's bull), Narasimha ("It was on my bedcover") and various Hindu deities, the lion sculpture at Kolkata's Marble Palace, Howrah bridge.

While he has been painting since childhood, this is only Olaf's third exhibition "" the first two being in Pondicherry and Chennai. It's only over the past few years that he has turned seriously to painting, filling his insomniac nights with frenetic painting.

Interestingly, Olaf has no intentions of exhibiting his paintings in Paris, where he lives. "There, they have a different perception of India "" that of a poor country. But it is not the India I know, the land of diamonds, of palaces, a rich cultural tradition. They will not appreciate my paintings."