Dealing with the serious Earthly matters

Manika Ahuja

When you think of a painter, you think of a portrait of an artist creating an incredibly beautiful canvas using paint and brush! Here is an artist who uses military tanks and road rollers to raise environmental concerns. Meet Michel Granger, a French artist in Chandigarh to paint for the cause of restoring glory of the Himalayas.

To begin with

Credited with making posters for the Paris Climate Summit-2015 and Cannes Film festival, the artist conjured the image of earth with his live painting in sector 17 Plaza Chandigarh. Granger says his endeavour is to, “restore the lost glory of the Himalayas.”

A product of School of Fine Arts, Lyon, Granger shares that he was barely seven or eight- year- old when he took to painting. “I did my first painting on the theme of earth and humanity in 1970.”

Art with a message

Wishing to critique the loopholes of the modern society, the renowned painter said, “Though an artist is not an activist, I believe he can impact the environmental debate in his own subtle ways.”

Using road-rollers and tanks to paint

Granger informed that he has dedicated a series of works to the theme of deforestation, where he painted not using his brush, but a road roller! Explaining the reason behind the unusual choice, he adds, “When in my prime, I saw a road roller destroy an entire forest in France within fraction of seconds. The scene haunted me for days. I used the heavy machine to revolt against deforestation.”

The artist recounted how he realised 10 works using ‘military tanks’. And mind you, the art was not devoid of a latent message, “During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China, tanks were used to suppress the demonstrations. Painting with the help of tanks for me, was a way of opposing the use of power to gag people.”

To India with love

While Granger said he admires the works of British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor. France-based Dialogue en Humanite co-founder Geneive Ancel, who accompanied him could not stop admiring the city. Sporting a bright phulkari duppatta ecstatically, Ancel said, “I adore the architectural genius of Le Corbusier, the common link between France and the city.” Pointing at a brochure she says, “Humanity itself is responsible for its greatest problems” and that the dialogue would go a long way in rousing society’s attention to some of them.

Local artists from Punjab also joined Granger to express an artistic pledge for the cause of the Himalayas. The pledge announced the kickstart of the series of the “International Dialogue on Himalayan Ecology” organised by city-based international study circle Dialogue Highway.