Tomorrow Is Another Day

- Vinod Mehta

Two years ago I found myself closeted with Mario in a foreign land. The country was rich, the wine heady and the natives friendly. Not surprisingly, we had a terrific time.
During those 16 days I had a good, long look at Mario and I am ashamed to report that I discovered only one solitary eccentricity. I noticed that when we were in a pub or a theatre or a restaurant, he would suddenly disappear. I also noticed that just before he left he surreptitiously pocketed a beer coaster or a menu card. Initially I suspected Mario to be a latent kleptomaniac or one of those souvenir hunters, but that appeared too simplistic an explanation. My journalistic antenna suggested something decidedly more serious.

So, the next time he withdrew I followed him (we were then at a French restaurant) and found him near the kitchen, hand cupped, eyes frenetic, pen busy. He was taking “notes”.

The notes were a few hasty lines which to my untutored eye meant very little. For Mario, however, they represented homework, the germ of a future drawing. He told me that that was the way he worked.

To understand what Mario is saying to us through his drawings we have to understand his premise, which is that of the detached observer, the outsider looking in, the artist passing by. It is no coincidence that on the two occasions the author himself appears in Germany in Wintertime he is either peering in or passing by. It is this attitude Mario adopts in his German travels, an attitude which lends his drawings a clarity, sharpness and integrity unsullied by ill-digested ideology or spurious subjectivity. Mario takes no sides, has no axe to grind; he records with sympathy and accuracy the scene as he sees it. I believe Mario’s forte is trivia. For what else is a great drawing but an accumulation of trivia judiciously and harmoniously composed? Mario’s notes, as I mentioned earlier are sketchy to say the least. He uses them only to jog his memory, to quicken his artistic response (the actual drawing is stored safely in his head). We all remember the salient, the striking, the predominant, but that is too obvious even mundane an observation; it needs to be placed in the context of its environment (which may be a stray dog, a crooked tree an inebriated drunk) to give it fullness and vitality. Germany in Wintertime is a collection of drawings brimming with such fullness and vitality.