Conversations with Contemporary Artists
ANUPA MEHTA
India 20 is a crisp and lively compilation of conversations with twenty landmark contemporary Indian artists who are internationally recognized for their cutting edge work.
These no holds barred tĂŞte-Ă -tĂŞtes provide succinct insight into their idiom, trajectory and concerns.
The interview format and a wide selection of images allow the reader to map their progression. An introductory essay and a representative timeline provide an overview of seminal events in their journey and developments within the field of Indian contemporary art. A pertinent listing of solo participations makes the book invaluable for anyone interested in gaining a perspective on Indian contemporary art as mirrored in the work of these twenty artists. The specially commissioned studio portraits by Nrupen Madhvani and others make the interviews come alive in a unique way.
With 215 colour illustrations
Conversations with Contemporary Artists
ANUPA MEHTA
MAPIN PUBLISHING
CONTENTS
FOREWORD INTRODUCTION
5 6
CONVERSATIONS WITH INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS 8
VISIBLE INVISIBLE: ALWAR BALASUBRAMANIAM 18
RAZOR’S EDGE: ANANDAJIT RAY 28
PRIVATE SELF: ANJU DODIYA
38
PAINTER’S PAINTER: ATUL DODIYA
48
SOURCE CODES: BAIJU PARTHAN
58
AGENT PROVOCATEUR: BHARTI KHER
PRIVATE LAMENT: CHITTROVANU MAZUMDAR
68
80
BEYOND KITSCH: G RAVINDER REDDY 90
UNHEARD SOUND: IRANNA GR
CONTEMPORARY MYTHOLOGIES: JAGANNATH PANDA SELF DISCOVERY: JITISH KALLAT
110
UTOPIAN VISION: JYOTHI BASU
120 130
BY DESIGN: BOSE KRISHNAMACHARI
140
SANS ANALYSIS: NATARAJ SHARMA PAST PRESENT: NS HARSHA
150 160
EUCLIDEAN VISION: Rm PALANIAPPAN
170
APOCALYPSE NOW: SHIBU NATESAN GLOBAL LOCAL: SUBODH GUPTA
178
UNSTEADY EQUILIBRIUM: SUDARSHAN SHETTY FREEZE FRAME: TV SANTHOSH MILESTONES BIBLIOGRAPHY
208 212
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
214
198
188
100
FOREWORD
I have been collecting Indian contemporary art for several years. Over time, I have developed a close relationship with many of the artists featured in this book – the list includes artists whose works I am familiar with and those whose works I am deeply interested in. That makes this effort even more special. All twenty artists are undoubtedly acknowledged, even internationally, as being among India’s most well-known names. The book is also a token of my appreciation for the friendship and learning they have extended to me over the years.
Since its inception, Alekhya Foundation, Vadodara, has supported several promotional activities, including art camps and exhibitions. The India 20 project – a travelling exhibition and this book published in conjunction with it – is a non-profit effort that aims to provide a better understanding of the works of the selected artists. The book is aimed not just at those who are conversant with the art world in India, but at new collectors and the general public. It is also a tribute to all my artist friends and the art fraternity who have constantly supported and encouraged me in my efforts.
I am thankful to all the artists and to Bipin Shah of Mapin Publishing for an endeavour that has proved to be a valuable learning experience for everyone involved with it.
Kishu Chauhan Alekhya Foundation Vadodara
INTRODUCTION
IN
the introduction to her fascinating book, Conversations before the End of Time, American art critic Suzi Gablik states: ‘…I hope the practice of dialogue may become more widely recognized for
the special sort of harmonics that it offers: a latticework of thoughts and points of view that interweave and complement each other. Allowing the truth of the subject to emerge not from any one point of view but from many makes any entrenched position open to question: it will always be destabilized by another perspective. For this reason the very process of dialogue can, of itself, transform the world view of selfassured individualism and radical self-sufficiency, since when individual consciousness breaks out of the limits of its own preconceptions and expectations, it travels out more freely, in many different directions.’
India 20 aspires to do the same: the attempt has been to allow the artist’s voice to emerge sans the burden of a loaded position and an occasionally preconceived perception of his/her artistic practice. India 20 also refrains from succumbing to that unfailing Indian penchant for archaic terminology. The tone is spontaneous and candid in keeping with the belief that lucid is not necessarily simplistic. These conversations – most of the questionnaires evolved out of free-wheeling discussion and were jointly edited – provide a rare kind of mapping of individual voices and, in the process, of the artistic trajectory of twenty contemporaries living and working across the country, and in Shibu Natesan’s case, overseas.
A buoyant and vibrant climate is characteristic of the market and milieu for Indian contemporary art today. From 1990 to 2006, the graph has seen a steady upward movement being plotted upon it. The upsurge of 2005−2006 only underscores the size of the iceberg. In the case of the twenty artists featured here, price is merely one quantifier of the quality of work. The selection is based on my own interest in
their work, as also the fact that all twenty, arguably, have broken exciting new ground over the past few years. As the timeline indicates, in most cases the growth pattern has been consistent, but markedly productive from 2003 to 2006.
Auction houses have recently claimed that 12−15 per cent of the buyers of Indian art worldwide are, reportedly, from other regions, including France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and the Middle East. Clearly, India is inching its way to a firmer position in the international art arena. It may not be entirely incorrect to say that the rigour and vocabulary of many artists in this publication has contributed seminally in shaping international perceptions about Indian contemporary art and fuelling its upward movement. Indeed, the works of almost all featured here have found place in prestigious international collections across the globe.
As things stand in the current scenario, to believe that an art index floated by an auction house or art funds managed by galleries are objective ways of quantifying and assessing the market share/prices of specific artists, is naĂŻve. Locally, astute dealers are reshaping a staid market and many from this grouping are most likely to scale greater heights in years to come.
Fresher ways of seeing, a more vigorous and a clearer approach to writing on art and much needed infrastructure may facilitate better understanding among young collectors and international connoisseurs.
India 20 aspires to provide an alternate view – the voice of the artist as heard and recorded.
Anupa Mehta Ahmedabad, July 2007
INDIA
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ARTIST’S PORTRAIT: SAIBAL DAS
SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007: (in)visible, Talwar Gallery, New Delhi 2005: Unfixed Being, Van Every Smith
Museum Galleries, Davidson, NC 2005: Transition and Transformation,
Fine Arts Galleries, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 2004: Into Thin Air, Talwar Gallery, New York 2002: Traces, Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, Spain 2002: Talwar Gallery, New York 2001: Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai 2000: L’Association Mouvement d’Art Contemporain, Chamalières, France
All images in this section: Courtesy Talwar Gallery, New York, New Delhi
PAINTER’S PAINTER
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Visible Invisible
ALWAR BALASUBRAMANIAM
Alwar Balasubramaniam’s extremely tactile work – A FASCINATING MIX OF CONCEPTUAL IDEATION AND INNOVATIVE USE OF MATERIAL – is delicate to the point of being ethereal. White predominates within a precise and controlled use of subdued monochromes. Trained in printmaking and painting, but a self-taught sculptor, Balasubramaniam possesses an unusual facility with material. He uses it to evoke illusions so fascinating that they could easily be referred to as meditations on the effects of time, space and light on the materiality of objects. Time is also an active ingredient in many works, wherein the artist harnesses it to reference temporality versus impermanence. He uses fragile constructs as a device with which to calm the mind of the viewer and to allow for pause. Driven by quiet but palpable spiritual concerns, Balasubramaniam’s work focuses on the interconnectedness of matter. His is a quest not just for singular epiphanies, but for a larger awakening.
ATUL DODIYA
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20 AM: Can we begin by retracing your journey as an artist?
AM: So you cause a shift in perception…these illusions, so to
AB: After my schooling I decided to join the Government College of Arts, Chennai, but I didn’t
speak, were made using plaster? AB: Fibreglass, plaster and casts from body parts….
get a seat for two years. So I decided to work, earn
That’s how it began – it was an attempt at
money and support myself so as to be able to paint. A year later, I joined a screen-printing factory
reducing the gap between work as an artist, and the life that I live. The cast remains as proof. It
– this was my introduction to industrial printing.
creates an illusion in the physical space; the effort
The third time around, I got into the college. I
is almost like capturing a frozen moment of a three-dimensional life. From 2004 on, I began
began painting and drawing and specialized in
wondering whether it is possible to look at reality the way it is…I made a work called Light Makes Dark, with soot taken from a lamp. We think light
printmaking. My experience with industrial printing helped me a great deal. Following college, for almost five years I made prints. But all along I
only gives light, but I started seeing that it gives darkness too. I started capturing traces again, but from energy…some works were an attempt to use
questioned the way I worked, and I didn’t work for almost a year. Instead, I thought about ways to approach art. From this point onwards, my work
energy – candle-light, blowtorch, sunlight – as a medium to capture time.
was referred to as sculpture or mixed media or installation.
My friends would ask me why my work was not about social or political issues. My work is about basic human inquiries – you don’t see the connection immediately, because there is an assumption that only the direct and the physical are obvious and relevant.
AM: So medium and form didn’t become limitations… AB: Exactly…. The year in which I didn’t make any work was akin to a journey without traces. If you leave footprints, people can see that you have walked, but if they can’t see the traces then they assume that you haven’t walked at all. I realized that science has more to do with physical existence, and spirituality with invisible existence. And art is something which is in between. AM: Much of your work was/is about...? AB: It’s about perception and reality. For example, I made a work called, When I Made a Pond, It Became a Mountain, in which, while making a negative space, the positive space came into being. I am interested in questioning limitations that impede
Light Makes Dark, acrylic, oil, soot on canvas, in the artist’s frame, 40.75 x 21”, 2004. Private collection, New York
the understanding of reality. It’s about everyday experience and preconceived patterns. AM: As if to say that things are not quite what they seem…
AM: The play with materials is also about altering perceptions, where one thinks that it’s heavy, but actually it’s not, and so on… AB: We try to understand everything through our limitations. If we were aware of this, the
AB: Yes. If we can shift them for a second or even one thousandth of a minute, it allows for different possibilities, for one to be able to look at the alternatives.
VISIBLE INVISIBLE
10
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20 possibilities of understanding the altered perceptions and reality are higher.
visual. Still, my intention is not to tease. I see it as rainfall in a container.
AM: Is there an interest in optics or the science of things? AB: No. Most of the time critics review my work and refer to the high degree of technical skill and the fact that I do draw from various disciplines. But I can’t relate to what they say because technique is the least of my priorities. It’s simply a means to an end.
AM: It must have required considerable technical experimentation to arrive at these works… AB: During the last few years I was interested in capturing invisible traces, but somehow I couldn’t find a way to do it. So I was working with the visible, capturing traces from the body etc. One day, I was changing the air-freshener in the bathroom and I observed the material used… later, I used the same material for my work.
AM: You’ve made a series of what might be termed ephemeral works… AB: I’ve used a chemical crystal to cast some works – the form evaporates and vanishes, raising questions about permanence, gravity, time etc. It also goes from a figurative form to abstract to nothing over a few months. If they call it sculpture, in the end it will not be sculpture; if they call it visible, it’s not going to visible; if they call it figurative, it’s not going to be figurative…
My mother saw a bust I’d made and said, ‘Oh, it’s so sad,’ because she felt as if the likeness of her son was evaporating into the air. When the neck broke, the head fell off the pedestal…. I, on the other hand, thought of it as the bust escaping the confines of its limited space and merging with the larger space. So the same event was viewed differently.
AM: Is there a subversive vein in all this? AB: No, I am interested in making the viewer look at things in a conscious way. Visual art is not just
AM: It’s a bit like sculpting presence out of absence and vice versa… AB: True. The work Emerging Angel evoked an
Untitled (casts from self); left: sand, fibreglass; right: evaporating compound, 18 x 20 x 24” each, 2004 ALWAR BALASUBRAMANIAM
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20 AM: Would you like to articulate some pertinent thoughts about your own work? AB: No, I don’t feel the need to.
illusion that it was created from nothing. On the first day of the exhibition there was a symbolic and organic larva-like form in an acrylic container. This took about a month to dissolve and for another sculpture to emerge from inside. The inner sculpture was made of fibre resin, the outer one of evaporating compound. Since the colour is the same, it seems as though it’s changing from one form to another. I sculpt what’s around me and out of what’s around me. I also made a few works of space in between forms and the surface on which its shadow falls.
AM: Is there any religious practice that you follow? AB: I practised religion until I was 15 years old. Then I began seeing the difference between spirituality and religion. Religion can exist only with divisions. AM: There is an androgynous quality in your work, as though you don’t want to assert the maleness or femaleness of things. AB: ‘Neutral’ is a better word. I would say I am a part of the whole thread bundle, I am not the thread bundle; I am just a small element of the thread bundle. If I want to make a small circle and state things such as I am male, Indian, Tamilian, it’ll never work. I like the fact that I am part of a large space…. In my late 20s, I made a few works which seemed to refer to male and female as negative and positive forms, but it was not intended to be that way.
AM: Where do you locate yourself at this particular moment? AB: I’m occupied with some questions; that’s one reason I took a break. AM: So that things resolve themselves… AB: Things happen when you stop trying to make them happen. AM: There is an intense finesse in the way you work. Despite what you say and the way you explain it, material does assume an important quality. AB: Yes, but as I said, it’s not one or the other; it’s the relationship between things – the effect of time and space on matter – that brings about the whole reaction. When I’m in the process of making, technique is simply a means to achieve my purpose.
AM: How do you respond to international expectations and responses to your work? AB: That’s very interesting. In India, people think my art recalls that of certain Western artists. And in the West, they look at it as stemming from an Indian sensibility, so I guess it’s defined by the baggage that people carry. For many people, the skin of the work is the work itself – they don’t really enter it.
AM: I know that you really don’t like putting yourself into a bracket, so to speak, but would you dwell a little bit on where the ideas come from, the concerns and preoccupations and influences? AB: They are all from events of daily life.
Born in Tamil Nadu, India in 1971, ALWAR BALASUBRAMANIAM holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the College of Arts, Chennai, India. He studied printmaking at EPW Edinburgh, Scotland in 1997 and at the Universitat fur Angewandte Kunst Wien in Austria in 1999. He has received several international awards, including the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship and the UNESCO Bursary. In 2001, he received the Kunstlerdorf Fellowship in Germany and Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró Award in Spain. The artist has participated in various solo and group exhibitions in India, Spain, Poland, Korea, Japan, Finland and Germany. His works are in numerous private and public collections in India, Europe and the USA.
AM: Have your concerns remained static or have there been shifts? AB: If you noticed…in the beginning my work was about traces, now I’m standing on the other side, capturing the invisible. It’s almost the opposite of what I was doing six years ago. AM: Do you make notations or do you draw, sketch and write prior to the creation of a work? AB: There is no formula. Sometimes I make sketches, but not always.
He lives and works in Bengaluru.
VISIBLE INVISIBLE
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Untitled, acrylic, fibreglass, dimensions variable, 2001. Exhibition installation view, Talwar Gallery, New York, 2002
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Dawn to Dawn, trace of fire, silkscreen, 109 x 17�, 2004. Private collection, Texas
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Container as Content, fibreglass, sand; left: 25 x 25 x 34”; right: 70 x 57 x 34”, 2006
15
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The Tree Inside, fibreglass, silicon, charcoal on paper, 138 x 47 x 83” (cast), 58 x 76” (drawing on the wall), 2006/2007 Facing page: Gravity, fibreglass and acrylic, 10 x 7 x 37”, 2006
I am interested in questioning limitations that impede the understanding of reality – so I create evocations that contradict everyday experience and preconceived ideas.
� ALWAR BALASUBRAMANIAM
17
Breaking off from the linearity of the narrative/figurative tradition of the Vadodara School, Anandajit Ray arrived at a highly individual vocabulary, DISTINCT FOR ITS SMALL FORMAT, COLLAGED QUALITY AND A SAVAGELY WITTY SENSIBILITY. A versatile painter, Ray has experimented successfully with small-sized sculptures and printmaking. However, his prowess with watercolour is what sets him apart – at one level, his work recalls the stylized rendering of miniature traditions, while at another it recreates the phantasmagoric worlds of a homegrown sci-fi genre, or tacky detective novella. Fantastical and bizarre, his imagery – it also serves as an ironic commentary on social and topical themes – throws up stories within stories, leaving the viewer unfolding a veritable Pandora’s box of meanings. The overriding effect is that of an uneasy pastiche floating in strange realms, where ‘acts of violence, terrorism and death are seen as banal as organized bouts.’ Drawing from sources as far removed as comic books, botanical drawings and miniature painting traditions, Anandajit Ray works much like a scientist with his magnifying glass to create visual narratives both exquisite and kinky in parts.
Razor’s Edge ANANDAJIT RAY
SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2004: For the Future IX, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai 2003: Gallery Espace, New Delhi 2000: Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
ARTIST’S PORTRAIT: NRUPEN MADHVANI
INDIA
20 AM: How would you qualify the work that you have been engaged in making? AR: I am not someone who follows any agendas. My work is quite open-ended. I like to think that it has a quality of ‘entertainment’ about it.
really, but the self…. At this moment, I’m still interested in pursuing painting. At the same time, there is a great need to engage with the threedimensional. AM: You once said that you primarily see yourself as a painter… would you like to comment on that statement today? AR: Yes, but there is an inner push…to sculpt, even make assemblages.
AM: There is, as I see it, a very strong subversive element running right through…not irony so much as deliberate provocation… AR: Yes, it is deliberate, though I refrain from an interwoven message. When the message becomes too strong, the work just freezes….
AM: Your work doesn’t subscribe to any particular ‘ism’, so to speak… AR: Or it does to everything…. When we came to Vadodara and the narrative school was strong, everyone said, ‘Tum narrative kaam kar rahe ho’ (You’re working with narratives). So there are these preconceived notions. There is a strong narrative at play…but I wouldn’t like to be conscious of it. It’s more about structuring ideas; there are a lot of instinctive twists and turns as I go along.
AM: Circumstantial details occupy a very important place within your work… AR: Yes, though I strive for less. I want to sort of alternate between elaboration and to try and be more contained. AM: Can we map the last ten years and the shifts that have taken place? AR: I’ve flitted back and forth. I’ve just been busy making work, from show to show. Somewhere, I’m a bit lost, really. The quantity of work that I end up producing is not very much, but I’ve been bouncing off from older ideas to move forward…. Such as those cricket bats – it was always on my mind to make small, three-dimensional works… at present I’m much more concerned with form in the local context.
AM: What attracts you to the frame and format that you prefer working in? AR: Initially, it was just a reaction to oils. I said, ‘No, I’ll do small format, watercolour.’ Then you get into the small intricacies. Miniature painting was a strong influence. I also enjoy gouache. I like the intimacy, the idea of things opening up, up close. AM: Would you like to speak about your interest in text, writing, film? AR: I’m very interested in narrative, whether it is film, text, or any sort of oral history. The French film Delicatessen is one example. It was very surreal and strange…I’m bound by something which is defined, but that itself is not very defined and clear for me.
AM: Are things like Bollywood, comic books etc. still a source from where you draw? AR: …less and less…if I watch Bollywood now, I watch it on television…but my interest in Bollywood, MTV, the miniature tradition or kitsch has more to do with form and structure. You have to be able to draw from those structures and reinvent them totally in postmodernist fashion.
I have great difficulty dealing with sentimentalism – I’m not being judgemental, but things become funny when there is overt nostalgia. AM: Occasionally, there is a zeroing in, a freeze-frame effect that one sees…. Is that an intentional focusing device? AR: Very much…those are also games you play
AM: So, at this point in time, where do the references come from? What is the terrain that you are trawling at present? AR: Very much from myself…not self-portraiture
RAZOR’S EDGE
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20 when you know how you’re going to pull somebody in and then trip them up…. Cinema is a good source for me, because I look at editing very, very closely, in an attempt to be able to break the narrative, flip it over etc.
ended yet structured. I’m very interested in structure. You could call it obsessive. AM: How do you assess yourself vis-à-vis your contemporaries? AR: I don’t think I would be telling the truth if I said that the market doesn’t matter. But I don’t have the energy to sit and milk it. I’m very slow, very pedantic. I’d say I find myself at an in-between stage. Which is not a bad thing.
AM: On another note, within your family, were there people who influenced you? AR: My father was a chartered accountant; we came from a well-to-do family. My mother is a wellknown exponent of a form of semi-classical devotional music that has nothing to do with Rabindra Sangeet. So was my grandfather, who was a totally eccentric character – I grew up with him till he passed away when I was 11. He had this fantastic ability to narrate…
Born in 1965 in Kolkata, ANANDAJIT RAY holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Vadodara in 1991. He has had solo exhibitions in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and has participated in several group shows around the world. He received the Sanskriti Award in 1999 and was nominated for the Sotheby’s Award at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai. He participated in the Bangladesh Biennale in 1997.
We had one room, we stayed in that one room, so everything you did, you did with your dadu, you know; after which I went to boarding school which was pukka British…Vadodara was a revelation.
He lives and works in Vadodara.
AM: Any particular artists whose works you were inspired by? AR: I hung around the advertising crowd; there was Nataraj Sharma, along with Vasu, BV Suresh. At that point I was doing pencil-rendered, huge, surrealistic, bizarre drawings…. There was Rekha Rodwittiya, as also Nasreen Mohamedi, who was most unsparing. My early attention to detail is basically from, I think, Bosch, and a lot of the miniaturists…. AM: To go back to your work, the chiaroscuro is occasionally very surreal… AR: Surrealism is a device that I am very interested in, but the philosophy is too far out for me. Miniature painting can be surrealistic. Odour is another thing that I am intrigued by. I’d like to work with it. AM: There is a very finished quality about your work… AR: No. It isn’t so finished. There are mixed areas, just painted over, brushed-over areas…. The main image is definitely finished. I like to keep it openANANDAJIT RAY
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The Aphrodisiac Maker and His Quest to Re-instate Himself in a Position of Past Glory, watercolour and gouache on paper, 20 x 14.4�, 1987
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Mouth Brooder, watercolour and gouache on paper, 60 x 20�, 2000
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Vehical, watercolour and gouache on paper, 50 x 30”, 2000
I am not someone who follows any agendas. My work is quite open-ended. I like to think that it has a quality of ‘entertainment’ about it.
24
� ANANDAJIT RAY
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Transficks, watercolour and gouache on paper, 30 x 40�, 2000
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Untitled, watercolour and gouache on paper, 9 x 12�, 2000
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Untitled (For Jacque Coustav), watercolour and gouache on paper, 40 x 30�, 2000
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SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007: Bodhi Art, Mumbai 2007: Lakshmi Vilas Palace, Vadodara 2006: Bose Pacia Gallery, New York 2005: Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi 2001: Gallery Chemould, Mumbai
ARTIST’S PORTRAIT: NRUPEN MADHVANI
Private Self ANJU DODIYA
Although the central protagonist of Anju Dodiya’s oeuvre is a FECUND, CREATIVE SELF-IMAGE, her work is devoid of overt feminist concern: her preoccupation and delight lie with the private self. Primarily a watercolourist, Dodiya has also created a fascinating body of work on tapestries, mattresses and fabric. The source material for her ‘daily dramas’ and terrifying tableaux is eclectic: she draws from diverse disciplines; specific areas of inquiry include 19th-century Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, world cinema, print-media photographs, fashion catalogues and images and text gleaned from the Internet. Highly complex, her imagery has its genesis (through association) in personal objects/images that hark to wellsprings of memory. A highly informed painter, her work is like a well-orchestrated suite that combines formal sophistication with vigorous intellectual inquiry. Entering it calls for an awareness of private codes of meaning that lace her pictorial image. An informed sensibility is a prerequisite in this activity, as the artist does not believe in straightforward explanations.
INDIA
20 AM: Watercolour remains your mainstay… AD: Yes, I enjoy watercolour…maybe because of the discipline it demands. There is tension – every mark you make, stays. In spite of the spontaneity and quickness of application, there’s a strong sense of unpredictability. So it suits my temperament, this edginess. The control of the medium and the formal play continue to remain important. Strangely, though, I feel quite vulnerable despite years of practice…
an ease with the medium. Because I’d worked with collages – layering, in terms of washes, came naturally, and I just fell for it. Fabric, on the other hand, provides a softer approach – it’s more lyrical. The mattress works took off from the Grand Hyatt Commission. I was supposed to do the Shiva-Parvati marriage. It was 14 by 12 feet and I thought of breaking up the space into fragmented drawings on cloth. And then, since the subject was a marriage, I said to myself, ‘Why not a mattress?’ I enjoyed working on that surface, the thick paint… slapping it on. I enjoyed that physical presence – I call it a pregnant painting. Then Gayatri Sinha was curating a show at Sakshi called After Dark for which I continued doing those works. It wasn’t just about innovation or experimenting on a new surface. Content determined these choices…the obvious sleep/dream/desire connotations. The
AM: But you are exceedingly proficient with the medium… AD: Yes, it’s a proficiency that I am aware of. But at the same time, the medium has its own nature and water will behave like water! Even the seasons affect it! In recent years, I’ve moved towards other mediums – charcoal, for instance. I chose charcoal because of the darkness it yields and the feeling of working as though with dust. It gives me a sense of aggressive power. But when I use it with watercolour, the dust floats, and again, it’s unpredictable. So there is a constant play between control and abandon. AM: What defines these choices? AD: Many things…. In the past few years I have enjoyed working with fabric because of the texture that it provides to the heads that I paint, a different skin, so to speak. I also enjoy the sensation of rubbing paint on the tactile textile surface. It’s very sensual. I find that I’m most playful with fabric. It also has to do with the fact that there is no white – you remember that fear of white that I have often spoken about. With fabric, there’s already a ground that is laid out. The readymade pattern provides safety and continuity, a ready backdrop against which to develop the imagery. It sets up a relationship of interaction with the surface, against that of imposing images on it. Gravitating towards fabric also stems from my interest in medieval tapestries. When I started out with watercolour, it was a total accident. My father had got me a box of Winsor and Newton watercolours. I started because I didn’t want to waste it! But, surprisingly, I discovered
Cloud Hunter, acrylic on mattress, 46 x 7 x 78”, 2005
PRIVATE SELF
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20 artist’s insomnia, anxiety and creative dilemmas were re-lived on the bed. There are a lot of subconscious associations with surfaces. The floral patterns point to the fertility metaphor. The choice of kitschy upholstery fabric generally used for middle-class sofas and curtains getting thrown in with high-art images like those of Dürer and Utamaro, delighted me.
grandeur of the space, the past glory as well as the decay. So the work is about all that, plus it is a kind of inward reflection, a meditation on loss, on wealth and on the passing of time. I hope it is grandiose with an element of danger! AM: Is the self-image a narcissistic concept in any way in your work? AD: Not at all! Initially, the self-image used to be very frontal, almost a study. I used to sketch myself…as a nocturnal diary. Later it built into a visual allegory or play. And now I find it very funny and idiotic when people use the word ‘self-image’. It is just a take-off point, sometimes…
AM: The scale of your paper works has opened up… AD: I have been working on large-scale works on paper since 2000. Though, in these new works that I am doing, it is more full-fledged simply because of the overwhelming space where the work will be shown. This will be in Vadodara at the Laxmi Vilas Palace. I’m looking at it as an installation of drawings in the Durbar Hall. I’m planning a huge carpet of mirrors and the drawings will surround it. The backs of the works will be in fabric, so when you enter you’ll see colourful backs, almost like courtiers, and the mirrors will reflect the whole
AM: So how did it come up? AD: It drew from the myth, and the idea of ‘looking into’ yourself through your reflection. Self-examination is considered being narcissist in certain cultures. AM: Parody remains an important element of your vocabulary. Do you use it consciously to make a larger social comment? AD: It’s almost self-mocking. When I say ‘self’, I include the artist self and that becomes the artist as the performer, the artist as part of the market, the artist as the critic’s victim – all that is also part of the parody. I don’t mean just the lonely artist brooding over his or her images. AM: Does irony not become a double-edged sword, given that you indulge in a sort of dual play? AD: There is a work of 1998, Studio Guests – there are these European visitors watching sword swallowers – in which the reference is to artists who have to perform for international curators. There’s always an international menu. I have also made paintings where I make fun of the aspect of needing to paint, in spite of having nothing significant to say. AM: But does that hold true even today? AD: I’ve done two or three images like that. In one
Pale Mourner, watercolour on paper, 22 x 30”, 2004
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there’s this huge crown, in a work titled Coronation and there’s a pencil dangling from it. The pencil in front of the artist’s eyes…it’s mocking. You want to create and go with the territory. Yet it all sounds vain and banal. I think there is a sense of humour and serious self-mockery that’s going on. That’s what saves me…otherwise, I’m quite neurotic and obsessive in my hunt for the image.
Studio Guests, watercolour on paper, 42 x 28”, 1998 AM: Do you lead the viewer on? AD: I create an emotional climate in the work. Give the viewer clues. But finally, the viewer is free to interpret the narrative. Perhaps…for example, a personal stress of a very different kind may have prompted a work, but sitting here in front of you, I might allow you to think in a certain direction, because it suits me to…it’s perverse, I know.
AM: How do you deal with the pressure from galleries when, like you said, you don’t have anything to say and yet have to produce… AD: I have been very consistently controlled about this. I’ve always said ‘no’. I have my own rhythm with work and I can’t make art because I’m asked to. I paint for myself. When you are alone in the studio, a private anxiety takes over. I would feel physically unwell if I didn’t paint. In spite of all the control, experience, I think on some level I am an expressionist painter. Certain images arrive and I need to paint them. There is some kind of secret order or code which I unravel while working. The viewer unravels it in his or her own way…
AM: How important are the formal devices in the process of resolving a work? AD: The resolution of the image…well, I think, formally one tries. Sometimes, the content remains in a kind of floating zone. I’m interested in a certain range of images and it’s not as if I always know what I’m doing or creating, but at the end of a body of work, it makes a certain kind of sense. The structure and order are articulated only after the work is made. It is driven mainly by the emotional nuances attached to the image.
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20 AM: The repertoire of imagery from which you draw gets richer…do you consciously search these out on a daily basis? AD: Basically, I’m a voracious eater where visual images are concerned. I just want to see everything, especially while travelling. The morning starts with looking at four, five newspapers – I have to, it’s almost compulsive. I have to look at everything: ads, movie ads and sports images. I collect sports images as a bank of facial expressions; over the years, I’ve put together a very strong archive. I find that the emotions that we control in regular day-to-day life come to the fore during active sports and you see a fierce psychological drama happening…say, during tennis matches or in the violence of football. Faces interest me very much. Over the years, cinema has been my most important visual bank. Looking at Bergman, Ray, Godard, I have learnt so much about the psychological repercussions of a visual frame. How colour, light and tonality can generate expression!
me these unpredictable carpets all over the image – so there’s the need to unsettle the image. Formal unsettling is one aspect of this. I often play on the edge of the sentimental and the disturbing. It’s about going backwards and forwards with image and time. It’s as if I am making something and rejecting it. The work, then, remains in a state of constant tension, which is exciting for me. It’s also about deflating the creative ego…I’m laughing, but I really feel that art is a spiritual quest – I feel like a blessed being, really, knowing that I am able to paint. AM: Would you care to dwell on abiding influences that remain amid the increasing range of references and source material? AD: I started out with the very strong influence of the Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. Even today, I often refer to that vocabulary, the quality of lines and the overall elegance. Their depiction of sex and violence is visually stunning and theatrical. Music is something that I enjoy – 50s film music: Talat Mehmood, Geeta Dutt…the sticky, lyrical quality entered the suite of paintings that I exhibited at Bose Pacia. Since I started the palace works, I have been listening to Kishori Amonkar…there is the element of the female heroic in her work. All these things enter the work in a roundabout manner and enrich its emotional quotient.
I also look at contemporary fashion a lot. It’s been a very important source, actually. Not just formally, but in terms of details, of the costume and the underlying philosophy of fashion, as in the case of Japanese designers – I think it’s fantastic the way they break the form while cloaking the body. The body is almost denied. There is a Japanese designer, Rei Kawakubo, 40s-born; in one of her famous designs she creates padding on the back such that the wearer appears hunchbacked…she distorts the body to make the ‘beautiful’ look ‘ugly’, almost unreal. It really sets up a disturbance. It sets you thinking about natural form and the desired form. Dress can be a profound metaphor for the human condition! I find this quite exciting.
AM: …specific writers, thinkers, artists…? AD: Reading has provided a private fantasy world and in fact brought dangerously ‘literal’ qualities to my image-making. Setting up stories, characters and costume-dramas…maybe I overdo it sometimes. While painting, I often think of Bhupen Khakhar – that he made a virtue of his limitations, as in his approach to drawing. There’s always this kind of tentativeness or nervousness that I experience when I approach my own work. So I find his attitude inspiring. Through college, and even today, I find Rauschenberg‘s sense of colour and his joyous approach to material delightful. His textile works were at the back of my head when I began
AM: Beauty and disturbance coexist in the work… AD: Yes, that is a very important concern. I do imbue a work with systematic rupture. Beauty is a major concern, yet I have a need to disrupt it. For example, after making a rugged drawing, if I use water on it, the water takes its own path and gives
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Island of Greed, acrylic on mattress, 46 x 7 x 78”, 2004
The Path of Berries, acrylic on mattress, 46 x 7 x 78”, 2006
on the mattress idea. In the past few years I’ve also been inspired by Marina Abramovich’s monk-like approach and the spiritual inclination in her work.
ANJU DODIYA was born in 1964 in Mumbai. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai. She has held seven solo exhibitions and participated in several national and international group exhibitions. She was twice nominated for the Sotheby’s Award for contemporary art.
Let me say it’s been a great delight looking at all these Souza works which we had never seen before, which are resurfacing in all these auction catalogues. There is a powerful, direct energy there, which I aspire to.
She lives and works in Mumbai.
AM: Your own approach is a bit like gearing up for war… AD: Yes, that’s very much part of my approach. I am like a martial artist in some ways. There is tension, a sense of ritual, rigour, and tight intention. All this when I start! Then slowly, I get into desperado mode!
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Joan – I (After Carl Dreyer), watercolour on paper, 30 x 22”, 1997
Lovers, watercolour on paper, 70 x 22”, 1998 35
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Cucoon, watercolour on paper, 45 x 70”, 2000
The Game, watercolour on paper, 70 x 33”, 2000 36
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Spaghetti Shiva, watercolour and charcoal on paper, 45 x 70”, 2002
Forked, acrylic on fabric, 42 x 72”, 2005
When you are alone in the studio, a private anxiety takes over. I would feel physically unwell if I didn’t paint. In spite of all the control and experience, I think on some level I am an expressionist painter. Certain images arrive and I need to paint them. There is some kind of secret order or code which I unravel while working.
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ARTIST’S PORTRAIT: NRUPEN MADHVANI
2005: Bose Pacia, New York
SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007: Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi 2007: Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai 2007: Museum Gallery, Mumbai 2006: Sumukha Gallery, Bengaluru 2006: Bodhi Art, New Delhi, Mumbai, New York 2006: Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore 2005: Faculty of Fine Arts, Vadodara SOURCE CODES
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2004: Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Vadodara 2003: Bose Pacia, New York 2002: Walsh Gallery, Chicago 2002: Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid 2002: Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai 2001: The Japan Foundation Asia Centre, Tokyo 2001: The Fine Art Resource, Berlin
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20 A virtuoso painter, Atul Dodiya is among India’s foremost artists. Eclectic and postmodernist in the true sense, his borrowings and range of reference reveal an ACUTE AWARENESS OF HIS OWN SURROUNDINGS and the world at large. Extremely prolific, Dodiya has consistently innovated with material and medium – each new suite of works done over the past decade has been notable for both content and form; his recent assemblages, for instance, were an evocative showcase of personal memorabilia, while his postmodernist revisiting of the life of Gandhi highlighted an enviable fluency with watercolour. An avid purveyor of art-historical source material, autobiography and national history, Dodiya has, in the recent years, created captivating painterly icons – Woman with Chakki and Sabari being two of them – to map contemporary Indian history. From realist landscapes to conceptual art works, Dodiya’s career at every juncture has established him as an artist nonpareil.
Painter’s Painter ATUL DODIYA BAIJU PARTHAN
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First published in India in 2007 by Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd. in association with Alekhya Foundation, Vadodara Simultaneously published in the United States of America in 2007 by Grantha Corporation 77 Daniele Drive, Hidden Meadows Ocean Township, NJ 07712 E: mapinpub@aol.com Distributed in North America by Antique Collectors’ Club East Works, 116 Pleasant Street, Suite 18 Easthampton, MA 01027 T: 1 800 252 5231 F: 413 529 0862 E: info@antiquecc.com www.antiquecollectorsclub.com
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Text © Anupa Mehta Photographs © as listed All images have been reproduced courtesy of the artists, galleries and from private collections unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978-81-88204-99-4 (Mapin) ISBN: 978-0-944142-60-8 (Grantha) LCCN: 2007928945 Designed by Jalp Lakhia Photo-editing by Nrupen Madhvani Transcripts and proofreading: Judith Nazareth, Keren Nazareth, Peter Nazareth and Catrinel Dunca Editorial coordinator: Diana Romany Processed by Reproscan, Mumbai Printed in Malaysia The author gratefully acknowledges Alekhya Foundation and Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd for supporting this project. Note: All image sizes in inches, as width x height.
ANUPA MEHTA is a writer and an art consultant who has surveyed the Indian contemporary art scenario for over two decades. She was founder editor, Art India, and Mumbai contributing editor, Asian Art News and World Sculpture News, Hong Kong. She recently published a novel, The Waiting Room. At present she lives in Ahmedabad, India, and works as freelance editor, columnist, and arts manager, overseeing projects for international agencies.
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART
India 20
Conversations with Contemporary Artists Anupa Mehta 216 pages, 215 colour illustrations 7.5 x 9” (191 x 229 mm), pb ISBN: 978-81-88204-99-4 (Mapin) ISBN: 978-0-944142-60-8 (Grantha) ₹1800 | $45 | £30 2013 • World rights
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