I had started collecting contemporary Indian art, when, by chance, I saw Ved’s drawing in an auction exhibition organised by ‘Helpage’ in 1991 in Mumbai. I met, Ved in this exhibition. From Mumbai, I went to Delhi to meet him & see more of his works. I saw Ved’s ‘Mankind- 2190’ in 7th Triennale- India. I bought ‘Mankind- 2190’ & some selected drawings from his studio.
INTRODUCTION : THOUGHTS & RECOLLECTIONS
I developed a strange communication & togetherness with ‘Mankind-2190’ when I displayed it in my Glenbarra art gallery. Whenever I was alone & stood before this work, some immotional responses were generated & travelled between us. The opinions, I gathered in Japan rated his works in my collection & his creativity, very high. Within next two year, I bought all the drawings, paintings & sculptures of Ved Nayar including ‘ Mankind2180’, the installation which received commendation in 5th Triennale- India. I invited Ved to Himeji to help me to complete my first book on Indian Contemporary Art based on my collection. This book of drawings has a selection of Ved Nayar’s works from my collection between 1977 & 1993 & is conceived & designed by Ved Nayar, himself. Masanori Fukuoka
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‘Drawing for me is a complete expression and a vehicle to arrive at my sculpture and at my painting. My drawing, to me, is an assurance. These drawings begin to exist independently and along with my sculptures and paintings. My concern in the drawing, in the sculpture and in the painting, is human form or human face. Elements of environment and concern, I feel, are needed to surround these to provide them context, stature, validity and contemporariness. I draw, when a compulsion seizes me. I draw more by instinct rather than by the tenants of formal training to draw, with any instrument or tool capable of drawing. The operation starts with a dot or a line or a blot created with the help of a medium. Then a coordination of instinct, fingers holding the tool or a brush and the medium develops. During this process, a moment comes when a ray of energy flows out of my inner self, through my fingers to the drawing. The drawing is complete and I recognise it ‌. some part of my creativity and emotion gets intensely infused in the drawing. The erotic in the drawings has a symbolic presence similar to Shiv-ling in the temple or the allotted location of panels of erotic sculptures in the scheme of the structure of a temple to guide the devotee, through indulgence, to fulfillment of life circle on earth and in heaven’. Ved Nayar
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INDEX
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Introduction 1-26 Figure, tree & birds 27-36 Figure with animal head 37-46 Pear face figure 47-52 Erotic 53-58 Brush drawing 59-72 Group figures 73-78 A standing figure 79-82 Figure with many arms 83-88 Figure with many heads 89-96 Two figures 97-104 Face & figure 105-108 A dancing figure 109-114 Face 115-120 Circus 121-126 Art Exhibition-One-Man Shows, Participations & Bio-data 127-130 Bibliography 131-133 More Drawings, Paintings, Sculptures and Installations of Ved Nayar in the collection of Masanori Fukuoka 134-156
My art is my personal creative visual expression, with a concern creeping in.
MY ART
I don’t remember any signs, during my childhood, which could have definitely predicted my becoming a painter-sculptor. I was the youngest child in the family. I was a lonely child who had adjusted to aloofness, enjoying it and hating it alternately. Living in a house which was amidst a jungle (forest), about two kilometers from the road from where, I thought, the ‘World’ started. From my house, a pagdandi (pathway) led me through the jungle to the World and from the World to my house. My first relationship in my life, outside my house, began with this jungle. I took the jungle in me through the window and from the terrace of my house. It tempted me and whenever I came out of my house, it engulfed me, as if to take the responsibility to prepare me to face the world. The jungle was never consistent in its behavior towards me - it changed its moods
1976
1977
during the day and the behavior when seasons changed. The jungle (forest), sometimes let me feel its love, care and indulgence. It provided me the cover of cool shade when I walked through it, returning from school in the hot summer afternoon - allowed me to explore it, let me climb the trees, pick flowers, listen to the conversations and the music of the birds. Sometimes the jungle taunted me, even scared me,- let a snake pass in front of me. It lengthened the shadows of the trees, allowed the howling wind pass through it, when I had to cross it at night to reach my house - But always in the end, asked the full moon to peep through the branches of the trees, slowed down the wind,- made a flower drop on my way - and guide me home on the ‘pagdandi’ (pathway). Somewhere, sometime during this relationship with the jungle, I think, the desire to express was born in me. I had no medium at my command to express and the urge got buried somewhere. Amidst my relationship with the jungle, the world began to change
1977
7
very quickly. The country was partitioned. We fled leaving the jungle behind. Riots to kill each other started. Urge to express came back and I took a conscious decision to express myself through the medium of painting and later in sculpture. The journey of my expression through art has been similar to the journey of contemporary Indian art after Independence - of derivation, of introspection and of discovering ones own creative visual imagery for expression. I started as a painter but later included sculpture also, as form of my expression. This inclusion has not been abrupt but has evolved over the years. On the way, I started making hard-edge paintings. These were abstract derivations with ritual connotations. Third dimension crept in my works at this stage. Around this time, I felt that my works of this period developed an aloof personality of their own after they were completed. I became stranger to them and they, stranger
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to me. They existed, were accepted and I existed separately. I chanced making some figurative sculptures and found that some part of creative and emotional mine gets intensely infused in my sculptures. I no more became stranger to my sculptures. A togetherness developed and continues, whenever we confront each other. In our different moods and shades of thoughts, we communicate our and humanity’s joys, sorrows, conflicts and emotions. I created environment for my sculptures to live and found, they were content, more vocal and expressive. I provided for some, organic environment and they accepted it and started growing with the growth of the environment. A mention of my sculpture, Mankind 2110 (An alternative) exhibited in the Fifth Triennale India will explain the role of environment as part of my sculptures, better. A bronze figure of Devi (Goddess) with many arms, on a log of wood suspended horizontally from the ceiling, is walking to descend to a growing paddy field below. The paddy plants grew in
height with passing of each day and swayed with the breeze. The paddy field provided environment and the sculpture achieved a total experience of a spiritual happening in nature. The green of the paddy field embarked me on the adventure of using colour in three dimensions in company of my later sculptures.
1978
1979
Programmed in me, I carry compulsions of my cultural identity. I am an aggregate of my local, regional and global consciousness. I am placed in this changing world which has just entered 21st century. Man is going to crowd the world with assembly line produced products. Man has become a suspect of destroying environment and our cohabitants on earth. He has enlarged himself beyond this planet and is extending his reach in the universe. Man will change the world from ‘natural/material work accessories’ world to ‘biological/ genetic work specific accessories’ world. He will rehabilitate other planets with these engineered work specific accessories and start living there by modifying himself. Man
has started imagining that he will master the universe. He is dreaming of immortality amidst planets. Electronic media is becoming a super power and is taking control of our physical, intellectual and emotional responses. It is churning our cultural identities. It is influencing our needs and choices. Through the advertisements and the programs inserted in between the advertisements, T.V is researching, recreating and inventing ‘Icons’, as representatives of our time, life, desires, dreams and emotions. Celebrity has emerged as the most powerful and influential icon. One among many types of celebrity icons which are occupying TV screens is the super model in various forms of presentations. For many years an ‘Icon’, an elongated human form, most of the times a female, has been evolving to take the centre stage in my creative visual imagery, in my drawings, in my sculptures & in my paintings. This icon resembles super model in content and in thought process.
1979
Its reach is from earth to heaven. It dwells amidst planets, presuming immortality, surrounded by ‘the assembly line produced products’, icons of vanishing cohabitants of this planet and the icons which I derive from my cultural inheritance to accomplish my creative visual expression in my drawings, sculptures & paintings. Involved in my creative visual expression for last 50 years, I have been making my humble contribution to my Society. I thought, the world around me has started to live & let others live, respecting our Society’s human & cultural values & ‘Rule of Law’ norms. I was absolutely wrong. I am suffering the abuse, threats of physical aggression, demolition of property, without obtaining Court’s orders, by criminally altering purchase deed clauses for property grab, by my property grabber neighbor, who is a practicing lawyer & son of Police. The property grabber was caught red handed by three Police officers, on the orders of ACP, getting my room
1980
demolished. The same three Police Officers, under the influence of the property grabber, later, diluted the FIR. The property grabber secured bail easily, courtesy Indian Police. Police SHO who helped the property grabber to dilute his FIR is now promoted to the rank of ACP. I have now realized, at this late age of 76 years, after 63 years of country’s freedom that the governance & law enforcement agencies in India are not result achieving institutions. The implementing ends of these agencies help the aggressor rather than save the victim. ‘Rule of Law’ in India ???????. When you are killed, you are supposed to come back to prove, who hired whom, with proofs, to kill you. All the law enforcement & implementing agencies, you will find, will be standing behind the criminal. An artist requires peace & peace of mind around him to evolve & express. It is not there for me any more since June 2009.
1980
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Q: What do you do? How do you define yourself as an artist?
VED NAYAR’S ART & THOUGHT An Interview © Ved Nayar Web address for this interview: http://www.whohub.com/ved
VED NAYAR answers: I paint, I sculpt, I make installations and I write about my creativity and my concerns. My art is my personal creative visual expression, with a concern creeping in. Q: What is your message? VED NAYAR answers: Live your life around your cultural identity. Imbibe your local, regional and global consciousness in your creative visual expression. Q: Your biography in four lines. VED NAYAR answers: I was born in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad- Pakistan) on May17, 1933. I lived in a jungle. The road was two kilometers from my house, from where the world started, I thought, in my childhood. I experienced the partition of my country. I completed my general education (B.A) from St. Stephen’s college, Delhi. I completed my Art education from College of Art, Delhi. I am a free- lance artist.
1983
1983
Q: Do you upload your work to the web? If so, where could we see it? VED NAYAR answers: http://www.vednayar.com http://www.vednayar.info Q: How is an idea born? For you, what is inspiration? VED NAYAR answers: ‘I am content, choosing to walk, all alone in darkness, locating, building and carving my own path to walk on, towards the universe of a floating volume of intense darkness, hiding sparkles of light. Sometimes, a sparkle of light comes out of that universe of floating darkness, engulfs me and then leaves me rejuvenated, to continue locating, building and carving my path, to walk on it, in darkness towards the universe of floating volume of intense darkness, hiding sparkles of light. Q: What role does technology play in your creative process? VED NAYAR answers: I am a contemporary Indian artist. I make use of any medium
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or technology which helps me to achieve my creative visual expression, the way I conceived and visualized it. Q: What is art? VED NAYAR answers: Art, to me, is a creative visual expression. Q: When do you get your best ideas? VED NAYAR answers: I don’t know. When an idea becomes a compulsion, I express it. Q: How do you evaluate whether an idea is good or not? VED NAYAR answers: I don’t evaluate my ideas. I live life. When an idea becomes compulsion, I express it. Let the history judge it. Accept it or discard it. Q: Three creative ideas that you would have liked to have created? VED NAYAR answers: I don’t want to base my creativity on somebody else’s creative ideas. Q: When and how did you begin
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1984
to see yourself as an artist? VED NAYAR answers: My art is my personal creative visual expression, with a concern creeping in. I don’t remember any signs, during my childhood, which could have definitely predicted my becoming a painter-sculptor. I was the youngest child in the family. I was a lonely child who had adjusted to aloofness, enjoying it and hating it alternately. Living in a house which was amidst a jungle (forest), about two kilometer from the road from where, I thought, the ‘World’ started. From the house, a pagdandi (pathway) led me through the jungle to the World and from the World to my house. My first relationship, in my life, outside my house, began with this jungle. I took the jungle in me through the window and from the terrace of my house. It tempted me and whenever I came out of my house, it engulfed me, as if to take the responsibility to prepare me to face the world. The jungle was never consistent in its behavior towards me—it changed its moods
1984
during the day and the behavior when seasons changed. The jungle, sometimes let me feel its love, care and indulgence. It provided me the cover of cool shade when I walked through it, returning from school in the hot summer afternoon— allowed me to explore it, let me climb the trees, pick flowers, listen to the conversations and the music of the birds. Sometimes the jungle taunted me, even scared me, — let a snake pass in front of me. It lengthened the shadows of the trees, allowed the howling wind pass through it, when I had to cross it at night to reach my home— But always in the end, asked the full moon to peep through the branches of the trees, slowed down the wind,— made a flower drop on my way— and guide me home on the ‘pagdandi’ (pathway). Somewhere, sometime during this relationship with the jungle, I think, the desire to express was born in me. I had no medium at my command to express and the urge got buried somewhere. Amidst my relationship with the jungle, the world began to change
1984
very quickly. The country was partitioned. We fled leaving the jungle behind. I saw a group of people killing one helpless person. I met people who had a compulsion for lying and who planned to harm their dear ones, friends and children, but were accepted as innocents. Urge to express came back and I took a conscious decision to express myself through the medium of painting and later in sculpture. The journey of my expression through art has been similar to the journey of contemporary Indian art after Independence— of derivation, of introspection and of discovering ones own creative visual expression. Q: Why do so many artists and creators have such volatile personalities? VED NAYAR answers: It is not necessary for an artist to have a volatile personality. Since recent past, our world, including art profession, has become very competitive, exposure and sale oriented. Volatility or pretentious
1985
volatility in the personality of the artist helps him to register his presence. Q: Do you consider yourself postmodern? VED NAYAR answers: I am a cotemporary artist in a fast changing world. My art expression remains abreast with the time. Sometimes, however, my mind takes a flight into the future. We will exhaust our planet & make it unlivable. We will search another planet to live. Man will modify himself to live in the environment of the selected planet & will design the accessories, he will need to survive there, to modify the planet for his survival & for his needs. I begin to feel, about the tendencies emerging on the horizon, to alter and use the nature’s biological code by artists sometime in the future. Q: How should a work of art be evaluated? VED NAYAR answers: Let the history evaluate a work of art.
1985
When we try to evaluate a work of art, our associations, our prejudices, our group allegiances, our biases, our ignorances, our art gallery and auction house associations, our buyer references, public relation pressures, the price tags begin to influence our judgments. Q: Must an artist reinvent him/ herself everyday? VED NAYAR answers: An artist should live his life intensely, evolve his creativity continuously and remain relevant to the time. The artist is the representative & historian of his times. Q: What do you think about public funding for the arts? VED NAYAR answers: Public funding for art is essential. But there should be a definite and rigid distinction between the public funding for the promotion of art and public funding for acquiring excellence in art, for National collection as representative of our
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I have to indulge in myself to continue or take the next step.
intermediaries in general played in your career?
VED NAYAR answers: We cannot go on living for bread and butter alone.
Q: How do you feel about the fact that the pieces exhibited in contemporary art museums are often of artists already deceased?
VED NAYAR answers: Negative.
Art is an essential requirement for living, for contributing content to living & for preserving it for posterity.
VED NAYAR answers: The scene is gradually changing. We may consider to bifurcate the collection of excellence in contemporary art. Works of living contemporary artists are housed in National Gallery of Modern (contemporary) Art. The works of excellence of already deceased contemporary artists are housed in National contemporary art museum. Keep the definitions of living and deceased flexible. When a work of contemporary art gets qualified to shift from National gallery of Modern (contemporary) art to reach National contemporary art museum, it will be excellent beyond doubt and will be a national/ global treasure.
time & creativity. Q: Is art necessary?
Q: Does it pain you to let go of a piece you have sold? VED NAYAR answers: Yes But the work of art should be available to all and to the history. Q: Is a work of art purchased, or is it better said, that it is the artist who is bought? VED NAYAR answers: These days most of the time, artist is bought .…. seldom the art. Q: In art, there is no guide. How do you know what the next step is? VED NAYAR answers:
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1985
Q: What role have the figures of art dealer, gallery owners, representatives, and
1985
‘I was invited to participate in a group exhibition by an art gallery in Delhi. The curator of the group show came to my studio to see the ‘Last Aggression - 1994’- a drawing. He approved the work. The work was printed in the catalogue. In the morning of the day of the inauguration, ‘The Last Agression-1994’ was displayed in the gallery. Before the inauguration, the work was sent back to my studio’. Now the work is accepted and sought after. Q: What types of jobs do you usually do? VED ANSWERS: I am a whole time free- lance artist. I paint, I sculpt, I draw. I think about my art and I write about my art.
1985
Evolving Human Form ..... figure, tree & birds
‘Figure with tree & birds’ 1993
Indian ink on paper
29 x 22 cm
27
Evolving Human Form
..... figure with animal head
‘Figure with animal head’ 1980
Indian ink on paper
45 x 29 cm
37
Evolving Human Form ..... pear face figures
‘Pear face figure’ 1981
Indian ink on paper
46 x 29 cm
47
Evolving Human Form ..... erotic
‘Erotic’ 1981
Indian ink on paper
29 x 20 cm
53
Evolving Human Form ..... brush drawings
‘Brush drawing’ 1980
Indian ink on paper
46 x 36 cm
59
Evolving Human Form ..... group figures
‘Group figures’ 1981
Indian ink on paper
22 x 18 cm
73
Evolving Human Form ..... a standing figure
‘A standing human figure’ 1985
Chinese ink on paper
37 x 27 cm
79
Evolving Human Form ..... figure with many arms
‘Figure with many arms’ 1993
Indian ink on paper
59 x 46 cm
83
Evolving Human Form ..... figure with many heads
‘Figure with many heads’ 1986
Indian ink on paper
37 x 27 cm
89
Evolving Human Form ..... two figures
‘Two figures’ 1993
Indian ink on paper
60 x 45 cm
97
Evolving Human Form ..... face & figure
‘Face & figure’ 1980
Indian ink on paper
45 x 29 cm
105
Evolving Human Form ..... a dancing figure
‘A dancing human form’ 1983
Indian ink on paper
42 x 30 cm
109
Evolving Human Form ..... face
‘A face you will come across one day’ 1986
Indian ink on paper
58 x 46 cm
115
Evolving Human Form ..... circus
‘Circus’ 1980
Indian ink on paper
26 x 23 cm
121
PAINTINGS of Ved Nayar in the collection of Masanori Fukuoka 1992
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1992 153
SCULPTURES of Ved Nayar in the collection of Masanori Fukuoka
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1977
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INSTALLATION of Ved Nayar in the collection of Masanori Fukuoka
1977
1977 155