ARTSPEAK
Recovering a space for the arts
UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA
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De's success lies in her ability to draw her subjects out of their reticence and make them reflect on varied issues.
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Articulations: Voices from Contemporary Indian Visual Art, Aditi De, Rupa and Co., p.319, Rs. 495.
BANGALORE-BASED cultural journalist Aditi De has spent 25 years writing about the arts and culture. Articulations, a collection of her interviews with artists, in a handsome hardcover edition from Rupa and Co., is the result of this long interaction with creative minds in Indian visual art.
Newspaper articles, especially in the years before the Internet and online archives, did not normally endure for long. As Sadanand Menon says in his foreword to the volume, "It is commonly accepted that a newspaper write-up is seldom worth a second look. A feature, an analysis, an interview, a piece of criticism in the daily paper at a specific point in time has little claim to longevity. It suffers a built-in entropy all its own. These are literary efforts put together in a hurry, often on the run, in desperate awe of word lengths, deadlines and column-filling pressures. Inevitably, they can embarrass you on a second read a few days later".
And yet, even as the space for arts writing has shrunk, there have been steady and noteworthy developments in the world of contemporary Indian art. It is for this reason that a compilation such as this, which brings together a range of interviews with artists across the years, takes stock, as Menon says, of "the long connection the media has had with these developments and the absolute need to once again recover this space in our times, lest art coverage be reduced to `entertainment' and cocktail circuit gossip".
A range of issues
This collection discusses a range of important issues, including the place of the Indian artist within the global art space; the construction of identity; the gallery system and the selling of art; the role of cultural institutions. In the course of the conversations, it also provides us with interesting facets of the creative personalities themselves, ranging from Laxman and his crow sketches ("They come and sit on my window-sill. They're so beautiful") and Husain as photographer ("It is a social comment, even a judgement"); to Dashrath Patel, as artist by training ("I design because I like fun"); and Navjot and Altaj on art and politics ("To look is an act of choice"). The volume also contains valuable interviews with artists who are no longer with us: Hebbar, Reddappa Naidu, Sultan Ali, Arnawaz.
The hard thing about talking to artists is that their medium is the canvas: and so they always seem to say what they really want to say in their artworks, rather than in words. The best interviews, after all, are those where the interviewee is neither self-conscious nor inarticulate. De's success lies in her ability to draw her subjects out of their reticence and make them reflect on varied issues related to their work and the creative process.
"I am not a sentimental person," Hebbar tells her in his final interview in July 1995. "After I left Karnataka in disgust, for about twenty-five years or so, I have not kept up any kind of relationship. Look here, Karnataka is known for literature, music, to some extent dance and theatre. But not for painting, although at one time it had a rich tradition of sculpture..."
Locating the centre
And then there's Akbar Padamsee, saying, "I don't know what the mainstream is. It's so vast and varied, and everybody seems to think they are the centre of the world. (Laughing) When Gauguin was leaving France, all his friends said: `Why are you going to Tahiti when Paris is the centre of the world?' He replied, `The centre of the world is in my brain.' Fantastic answer! Every painter should feel that way..."
And here is a reflection on colour from the Chennai-based painter Achuthan Kudallur: "From the moment I took to colour, like a mighty river entering a gorge, I have felt the fullness of life within me. If I were asked to stop painting completely, I would sprinkle colour on a mountain stream and watch it flow."
In another section, De probes into the politics of art. Here is Rekha Rodwittiya on why she is a feminist: "I don't know why, in India, there's a sort of dirtiness associated with the feminist movement. It may be from a lack of proper reading. I'd always wanted to be a militant feminist in my art. In India, we have women stoned, stripped naked and humiliated because of moral decisions they have made. How can we say there is no need for a strong female protest? I happen to be a painter. But I could have been a journalist or a typist or any damn thing. But nonetheless, I would have been a feminist."
A fascinating and valuable collection. The career profiles of the artists represented here are a useful addition; and the author's introductory note, which updates us on what has happened in each artist's career since the date of the interview included here, is most interesting. Just one wish: more illustrations would have been nice. Surely it is time for a second volume that would include conversations with some of the younger generation of artists.
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