A Many Armed Art

In exhibitions such as the present one, we are lucky to have works with the vertical pull - a pull exerted not by the closed community or any culture priests, but by the human spirit in a modicum of unity. Such works sometimes help create the sense of the sacred in the mere sensation. The modern age has gifted the human mind with a keen sense of curiosity, a great boon no doubt, but without the heart, the organ of feeling, in which the universal religions of another day as well as medieval art were much the stronger, there is little lasting art. Only with such union of mind and heart could painting with the deeper substance come to be.

Today, Indian art is many armed, like the Indian Goddess Durga, maybe! – a figure of speech no doubt applicable to the situation in art everywhere. From the sweetnesses of the art of the Bengal School, the area of expression has widened, hesitantly at first but triumphantly. There has, or had, been a tendency to follow western styles, with a particular interest in Matisse; this situation is in striking contrast to the one in classical Indian music and dancing where hardly a dent has been made in the traditional sensibility. In literature and the visual arts then, the writer, painter and sculptor come more and more to depend on their own personal predilections; their roots have been disturbed and this is a marked part of their psychic condition. The varied sources on which they draw seem to coexist in unreal ease with occidental or international influences, a kind of ‘water and fire' effect. Since a modern city is no longer ‘normative’ it does not allow for the resurrection of local archetype with impunity. When this does happen it is merely incidental, not necessarily shared with the culture at large. Thus the painters and sculptors address a select intellectual elite; one can take it or leave it. This extent of freedom creates in turn, a varied middle class audience of viewers which may or may not share the new plastic consciousness, but which reacts positively to at least some of the artists. In music and in dance one hardly comes across such wide divergences and if so, only rarely. Inevitably the ‘contentless art', like that practiced by Sangeeta, Vasundhara, as the narrative-less art like Kalicharan's or Tarannum's, has a smaller audience. The rapport here is not easily established. Those who readily respond to the abstract mathematics of music are less easily adaptable to non-representational art. If pure harmony is acceptable in music it would appear that in contrast, visual harmony is singularly empty. On the other hand there is yet another art which by presentation of grotesque dream-states is a wry commentary on the social conditions today. But to continue, here below, I only mention a few in this show due to restriction of space:

To begin with, we have Jayasri Burman, Niren Sen Gupta, Seema Kohli and Shakuntala Kulkarni, for instance. These painters have never lapsed into journalese. A combination of conscious purpose and intuitive inspiration makes for a forceful art, something in the style of some recent Austrian artists.

The work of Shobha expresses the grand lines of experiences coming to grips with the energies within self. Her inner abstractions are controlled, intricate and quite removed from any social concern. Her compositions open up like the petals of a sunflower indeed; they radiate like the orbs. They have the same energy; the guiding principle is that of unity; the opposing elements are brought into a dynamic union. The colours are vibrant, stellar. The best of this work has energy, creating the feeling of awe for the deeper cosmic elements.

Very different is the work of Arpana Caur, Anjolie Ela Menon, and Shailendra. Here, at last, these painters have arrived at a combination of Indian miniature with the styles of the day. The work is serious but pleasurable. The softness of colour flats is well contrived, decorative and yet conducive to a mood of peace.

Jatin Das is a fine draughtsman. At his best, he expresses as few other contemporary Indian artists do, configurations of figures, ecstatic souls. There is no question here of breaking ground on a new technical plane; the artist restates a perennial and vital theme in individual terms.

Krishen Khanna, at one time completely dehumanized his art and made his debut in a colour field abstraction of reds, blues, greys, like the American painter Mark Rothko. He also experimented with photography but since returned to the figurative genre, as in his feelingful 'Death of Che Guevara’ and, later, the greater works on Rumi, as also his family and other portraits

Among the sculptors, there is Neeraj Gupta, a more than competent artist, as in the abstract shapes of his mythological and other lyrical or non lyrical themes. There is a sensitive rendering of volumes in his work. In some other of his works Gupta points at the absurdities of our visual environment. Recently he has arrived at a controlled symbolism which is seen at a far greater remove from the surface. His method is rigorous and yet eminently aesthetic. Anupam Sud works in a style that is masterly; at the best of times she is devastatingly potent. Just the badly needed mock-trial of the genteel India middle class society.

The works of Laxma Goud are boiling cauldrons of nuances of affects but with an underlying artistic order in the seeming disorder, the seething primeval mass of an inner social universe in formation.

Indian Art is often described as being derivative, but the experiments of the few discussed here may well be claimed as fruitful due to a highly personal transplantation of world’s influences. Artists in general, as in many other parts of the world, are passing through a period of transition, but the next decade should establish a still forceful Indian image in the realm of international art. A not unpromising future lies ahead of most Indian painters and sculptors. Recent trends are indicative of a future breeding towards a universalistic vision as in the powerful works of Rameshwar Broota.