Bringing Thoughts to His Lines

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Christoph Mett will agree if he is called an illustrator who thinks before he draws. And when he returns home to Munster this week, Mett, 33, will take with him a few reminders of his short, maiden visit to India - mostly photographs of graffiti from the streets, parties and examples of Indian illustrations. ‘’I saw a lot of the hand symbol (Congress party posters, apparently). It doesn’t matter if I don’t understand what’s written on them - are they in Hindi? I look instead for colours, the lines...’’ says the lanky, bespectacled German illustrator who is in the city on the invitation of the Goethe-Zentrum Trivandrum. Mett is an illustrator who is very much preoccupied with the cerebral content in his art. It, in fact, was the one theme that dominated his workshop for children last weekend. ‘’If you decide to draw something, don’t begin to draw until you have formed an idea about it. Use your imagination; why a thing should be like it is.’’ ‘Volkes Lieder’ (Folk Songs), a recent work of his, amply illustrates his philosophy. The thick, bound volume is a compilation of old German folk songs, several of them two centuries old, some even older. Compiled by the German opera singer Cornelius Hauptmann, the illustrations are by Mett. As accompaniments to something as inherently rustic or ‘countrified’ as folk songs, his drawings can appear startling. Mett’s attempt, through his art, was to give the songs a ‘new visibility’ and to convey their timelessness. ‘’People feel folk songs are conservative. I don’t think so. Some of them are very open-minded. You have to read them, four times maybe, and you find new aspects,’’ he says. ‘’The songs in this collection go deep into life.’’ Mett started his artistic career as an 11-year-old amateur in erstwhile East Germany. The son of a maker of lifeboats and a kindergarten teacher, Mett later attended the University of Applied Sciences in Munster, a city that would later become his home. His first major project, ‘The Trumpet’, for which he wrote the story and did the illustrations, was published during this period. Other works followed. A turning point came when he joined Martin Baltscheit for ‘The Truth About the Elephant’, which also found a Spanish translation. There are certain things that Are ‘conservative’ about Mett. Like his penchant for the ‘manual’ way of going about his art. Computers for illustration? ‘’Yes. But only as a tool,’’ he says.