The Polymath As Painter

It is difficult, if not impossible, to visit the 'Last Harvest,' an exhibition of over 200 of Rabindranath Tagore's artworks, with a truly open mind. After all, one is talking about India's greatest polymath, a man equal parts poet, playwright, philosopher, cultural ambassador, educator, writer and humanist. His genius is authentic and undisputed. One hundred and fifty years after his birth, his ideas continue to resonate, his large body of work continues to move and to inspire. Surely, his paintings and sketches can be no different, even if the man himself was modest and diffident about them, describing his skill as limited and his interest as more of an indulgence, an infatuation? And so, one approaches the exhibition in a spirit of respectful curiosity. Critique is superfluous.

But I do have my opinions, and my overriding impression is that Rabindranath Tagore was not a great artist, but an interesting and significant one, although I would contend that at least some of the significance derives from the fact that Tagore was, well, Tagore. 

He started out making idiosyncratic doodles - forms in the margins of books, attempts to convert unseemly jottings and scratchings in his writing into larger patterns. His friend Victoria Ocampo encouraged him to pursue this fledgling interest and he eventually exhibited publicly in Paris in May 1930. His work was acclaimed,and travelled to other countries before being shown in Calcutta in 1931. 

This idiosyncrasy is evident in the first part of the exhibition - an aggregation of softly sinuous or severely angular forms rendered in pen, ink, pastels and watercolours. These are mostly fantastical creatures, monsters, flights of fancy that seem vaguely Asian or Polynesian, the substance of ancient art and old stories, simultaneously strange and familiar. The second part of the exhibition, devoted to inky landscapes, left me cold. The third and fourth parts - drawings of people, group scenes and faces - were the most rewarding. Tagore had a profound and sensitive understanding of character, drama and gesture and it's no surprise that all of the figures and faces in the exhibition express and emote. The women with their baleful eyes and elongated heads leave an indistinct, hazy impression, although there a couple of pen and ink drawings that are  so cleanly delineated and whimsical that they could almost have been drawn by another hand. 

Overall, the dark colour schemes, the smudgings, cross-hatchings and soft lines all combine to make you feel like you have wandered into a part of Tagore's mind where things are ideas are still suggestions and forms unresolved. Tagore spoke of his painting and sketching as having a rhythm and meaning that didn't require explanation. I'm not sure about the meaning, but there is a rhythm here - sibilant, soft, slow, serious and very occasionally, lilting. 

In his art, as in other spheres, he was modern before his time and by some accounts he catalyzed modern Indian art. When I look at his work I am reminded forcefully of KG Subramanyan's, and Subramanyan was himself a pioneer. Tagore was a titan before he picked up the paintbrush in his late sixties. And while his art does not build his genius, it does burnish it. 

Two Saturday Mornings, Mostly Well Spent

It's been a promising few weeks for art in Bombay. The art world's equivalent of a rockstar making his debut in the city, a festival of photography, more shows previewing than I could keep count of and several populating the weekly must-do/must-see lists of lifestyle magazines. As always, there was more that I wish I had seen than I could actually make the time for.

A Photograph is Not an Opinion - Contemporary Photography by Women

Curated by Sunil Gupta and Veeranganakumari Solanki, featuring multiple artists

March 14th - 27th, Terrace Gallery (at Jehangir Art Gallery)

Many photographers, many concerns - disease and death, the environment, the body, the passage of time and meaning, a woman's right to physical autonomy in public spaces, the burdensof conflict and loss that women bear, longings and explorations, the constitution of family, socialization, repression and coming of age, desolation and its conceits. Some works were overtly feminist, some less so, some perhaps not at all. There was a lot to see and to process. Multiple themes jostled together and what one eventually got was a glimpse of an artist's work rather than an articulation of a narrative, process or aesthetic. Full marks for breadth and for bringing a few lesser-known names (to me, at least) into the spotlight. But none too many for depth.

A Village in Bengal

Chirodeep Chaudhari

March 14th - 26th, Project 88

I'd seen one of Chaudhari's photographs from this exhibition in my morning newspaper. It struck me enough to have me venture out in the afternoon sun to see the complete show. Anyone who's been in Bombay over the last few days will acknowledge that that's no mean feat for a badly reproduced photograph to accomplish.

Chaudhari's show consists exclusively of images of the Durga Pujo his extended family celebrates in their ancestral home in rural Bengal. Taken over a span of 12 years, the pictures are an attempt to capture his family's history as it evolves, takes on new forms and transforms completely. It is also a story of the photographer's own acquaintanceship with a place that is significant, but not, a place that is not quite home, but not quite away. If you visit, flip through the accompanying coffee table book - A Village in Bengal - and read the artist's essay, which describes his process much more eloquently and clearly than I have.

Looking at the show does feel a little bit like looking at a family album, but in the best possible way. Intimate without being intrusive, these images are vividly personal and particular but also instantly recognizable, each evoking a mood or a moment the viewer could have experienced in a completely different context. And they're beautiful - fine-grained and detailed in a way a lot of photography no longer seems to be. Ripples, creases, gestures and pauses are all captured with skill, deliberation and without mawkishness. Craft that doesn't crumble under the weight of concern might be old-fashioned, but it will always get my vote, and this show has plenty of it.

Anatomy of Silence

Rakhi Peswani

11th February - 9th March, Guild

I never know quite what to make of the Guild. I can't predict what I'm going to see - works that are angry and shrill, confusing, thought-through or simply well-intentioned. Rakhi Peswani's show checks the last three boxes, some more vigorously than others. It's an interesting idea - the exploration of the hand-made and its associations with art, myth or more appropriately in this country, labour. As a supposedly evolving consumption society, we exoticize and fetishize the hand-made but do not often enough investigate its origins in the repetitive and exploitative. What price do we - or does someone - pay for our crafts? The best works are those that bring light to bear on the unnoticed and unacknowledged 'handmade-ness' of the mundane - handkerchiefs, washcloths, mattresses. The least effective are the quotes embroidered on limply hanging sheets of gauze/ chiffon/ something ethereal.

Poems I Used To Know

William Kentridge

6th February - 20th March, Volte

What can I say about this show that hasn't already been said? Kentridge is much celebrated and lauded, and anyone who pretends to have even the most cursory interest in contemporary art has been hot-footing it to Volte over the past few weeks. The show has been heralded as a coup for the gallery and the city and for once, the heralds seem to have gotten it right.

I haven't seen enough of Kentridge's work or its staging to be able to compare this show with his other triumphs, but the art is indisputably interesting and good. I am not me, the horse is not mine is the centerpiece. Part collage, part film, part performance, part text, it's ultimately a work about the absurdity of disavowal and the conditions that make it necessary. What gestures and words does one employ to distance oneself from one's own gestures and words? It's ultimately a futile exercise but one that produces interesting and amusing theater when performed on a large enough scale.

There's enough and more to see and lots of technique on display - hand woven wool, ink and charcoal drawings on pages torn from the Oxford Universal Dictionary, sculpture, lithographs, smaller sets of films. I didn't expect to have fun, but I did, especially when watching 'No, IT IS' (2012), a triptych of flipbook films. I suppose it's because I really enjoy looking at sketches and pen and ink drawings, and Kentridge has a lightness and deftness of touch that I wasn't expecting.

So go, make sure you look at everything, and come away feeling that you've spent your time well.

In Praise of Parsis

PARSIS

Sooni Taraporevala

March 6th - April 6th, 2013

I've studied for 12 years in a school run by a Parsi trust, been taught by Parsi teachers, grown up around Parsi friends, done the chicken-dance at Navjotes, attended accounting and French lessons in baugs and in the course of so doing, acquired the art of navigating said baugs while avoiding eye-contact with their resident eccentrics. I was taught Hindustani classical music for several years by a wonderful Parsi teacher named Zarine. She was already in her 70s when I started studying with her. But she didn't let her age, or the fact that she had been blind virtually her entire life, dissuade her from wearing floral printed saris and garas, pearls, perfume and a glittering colour-coordinated sari pin to every single lesson. She taught us entirely by ear and I cannot remember her repeating a single sari although of course, she must have. 

All of this is an extremely long-winded way of saying that I know Parsis, at least a little bit. And that I like them, a lot. So in visiting Sooni Taraporewala's exhibition, I thought - portraits of Parsis, what's not to like?

Plenty of paeans have been sung to this city's Parsis, all richly deserved, and this exhibition is an addition to the chorus. A community whose members are equal parts irascible, cantankerous, orderly, gregarious, boisterous, insular, sophisticated and crude; whose mighty contributions to Bombay and India are out of all proportion to its tiny numbers; increasingly lamented as dwindling in size and influence, but continuing to thrive regardless. I've realized that the rest of us think of Parsis affectionately, but in terms of stock 'roles' or 'types' - the flamboyant eccentric, the chic ingenue, the mummy's boy, the elegantly wasted, the pernickety store-owner, the protector and preserver of all-things-automobile, the piner for past (imperial) glories, the punter at the races, the teacher/ tormentor, the titan of art and industry. All of these characters are very much in evidence in the photographs, but so are others - mickey mouse boys, piano tuners, grandparents, pickle-purveyors, ladies catching up at street-corners in their big-print dresses. The exhibition, for me, is a pleasant pause - a reminder of a different (and better) city. 

It's all very pleasant and likeable. Though sometimes I wonder if we're doing Parsis a disservice by imbuing them with our nostalgia a little too soon, even though we can agree that the city and its other communities would be much the poorer without them. 

And for all the conversations I've been hearing lately about who is really from this city and when a person becomes of this city - here's one simple, innocuous question  that could help settle matters - do you know Parsis? Do you have a story about them? To qualify as a true-blue Mumbaikar, one with real roots here, you must. It almost goes without saying.  

Shilpa Gupta's Someone Else: Concern Meets Circuitry

Shilpa Gupta: Someone Else
Chemould Prescott Road
21st January - 16th February, 2012

This was a show about identities, boundaries, conventions and struggles, about lines that are drawn but must be crossed, about selves that are hidden, made and unmade, about compromises that are imposed on individuals. It was coherent and cohesive, with each art-work clearly articulating these themes.

But it was more interesting when read as a show about technique in the service of expression, about science and technology enabling art. Whether it was an interactive installation ordering the viewer to move backwards, forwards and stop! along a brick line facing a blank wall; whether it was a book heated to several hundred degrees Celsius and emitting a warning red glow; an airport flap-board asking tricky questions on loop -  neither of these works would have been as effective without all the wiring underpinning them.

The centre-piece of the show was an eponymous work comprising a hundred stainless-steel books, hollowed out with only the covers left behind. These covers were replicas of literary classics, with one small intervention - an explanation of why the author chose (?) to assume a pseudonym or camouflage some aspect of their selves. It's sobering to think of the price we continue to pay to be able to express an opinion or even a talent. The work I responded to most was 'Singing Cloud,' a massive form constituted of over 4000 microphones emitting a single sing-song lament. It loomed, exuding an energy of its own. And it must have taken a substantial amount of effort and skill to build and suspend.  

A show where concept met concern met circuitry. I left lugging a soap-bar embossed with the legend 'THREAT.' It now sits innocuously in my home, which is of course the point.  

  

Making Amends: Several Shows, Scattered Recollections

First, the caveats: This post is an attempt to make good on the commitment that I would engage more frequently with art and that I would document that engagement. I have forgotten more than I remember about all the shows discussed here. But having seen them, I still have something - tentative, succinct, partially accurate or otherwise - to say.

Atul Dodiya: 'bako exists. imagine'

Chemould Prescott Road

10th September - 20th October, 2011

Atul Dodiya is almost impossible to dislike. He is intelligent, sensitive, talented, willing to experiment, but also self-deprecating, humorous and approachable. A critic's artist, a collector's artist and a viewer's artist.

bako exists. imagine was one more in a long line of successful shows for Dodiya. It covered familiar ground but was also animated by ongoing personal concerns. There were cabinets jam-packed with references, almost like puzzles waiting to be put together; elements of autobiography; a recognizable visual style. There were also illustrations of Gujarati poet Labhshanker Thacker's fictions in which a young boy called Bako dreams of Mahatma Gandhi, fondly referred to as Bapu. There was something surreal about these visuals - renderings of renderings - and they weren't easy to navigate. The viewer felt removed, twice-over. But then, so too was Dodiya, who was examining his inner landscape as refracted through Thacker's work. The whole show was oddly discomfiting, but maybe that is to be expected when a real-world artist sets out to explore a fictional character's dreams of a defining historical figure.  

Balaji Ponna: 'Looking is not Seeing'

The Guild, Mumbai

September 8th - October 3rd, 2011

This was ostensibly a show about sub-text, in which words would intervene between the viewer and the work - creating a momentary disconnection, but ultimately framing the audience's interpretation of the work. In foregrounding sub-text, an artist essentially calls on the viewer to be conscious and aware of his or her responses, to look out for cues and contradictions. When a show hinges on semantics it's important that neither the words nor the work are literal. They cannot stand in for each other, they have to create space for (mis)interpretation.

But Balaji Ponna's works were the kind that left no room for doubt - either about his opinions or the intended meaning of the painting/sculpture/installation. One example would be paver blocks embossed with forms of sleeping men, meant to represent urban India's burgeoning homeless population. The work was entitled 'New Designs for our Country's Pavements.' When the substance is this apparent and overt, the sub-text is rendered irrelevant.    

Sudhir Patwardhan (Curator): The Art of Drawing

The Guild, Mumbai

October 2011

Drawing is the foundation for artistic skill. Most art students spend hours sketching, diligently seeking out scenes, subjects, angles, perspectives. Drawings also illustrate art-making, telling us where an artist comes from, how he sees, and why he ends up going where he does with his work. Drawings and scribbles are fascinating, and museums abroad mount special exhibitions dedicated to them. But they have fallen sadly out of fashion, particularly in Bombay's contemporary art 'scene.'

I must confess that I was happy just to see drawings in a gallery. There's something reassuring about pen and ink, just as there is something reassuring about making things with one's hands after hours spent tapping away at a keyboard or moving a mouse.

Because drawings are so intimately linked to an artist's process, it goes without saying that all drawings are different and that some work better than others. Gieve Patel's clouds, for instance, were ruminations. Sudhir Patwardhan's views of a street were definite but not beautiful - part of an exercise. Krishan Khanna's and Tushar Joag's sketches were cohesive, almost complete; others dream-like and disjointed. Whether these drawings succeeded as works depended almost entirely on how interested the viewer was in the artistic process, and what kind of process he sympathized with.  

Yardena Kurulkar: 'Transcience'

Gallery BMB

11th August - 7th September, 2011

Death and Life are part of a single cycle, each is meaningless without the other. It's interesting that we prefer to think of them as being distinct, apart: life is impermanent, uncertain, precious; death is the given we prefer not to contemplate. These were Kurulkar's concerns: not unique, but definitely weighty. In juxtaposing death and life, she had given herself the opportunity to convey something important and significant. 

Unfortunately, Kurulkar's works seemed less about exploring these juxtapositions and more about describing decay. Mottled heads and limbs, rotting bodies; black lines fading into whiteness and then nothingness - this was a show that emphatically reminded its viewers that not only is death inevitable, it also leaves us looking rather the worse for wear.

Sheeba Chhachhi: 'Luminarium: A Prelude'

Volte

13th June - 1st August 2011

Sheeba Chhacchi's works glowed. Sophisticated, complex, layered, drawing on current affairs, myth and history, they were a delight to decode. Looking back, I realize that what was most interesting about her show was not the visual detail nor the multiple references or even the technology - it was the pace of the installations.

Each installation moved at a certain speed, and in order to 'see' and 'understand,' viewers had to make associations and align themselves to the movement of birds across a landscape. This reorientation, facilitated by a specially designed soundtrack, yielded its own rewards. People slowed down, they looked closely, they took their time. There really was no other way to satisfactorily experience Chhachhi's show. It takes a special kind of skill and attention to detail to merit that kind of effort. Chhachhi's success lay in getting viewers to look and linger.

Mumbai Gallery Weekend: More Hit, Less Miss

Mumbai Gallery Weekend

Taj Land's End

31st March - 1st April, 2012

Nine galleries, a few dozen artists and several people one doesn't get to see at the SoBo openings. Some compelling work mixed with art that had a been-there-done-that quality. My favourite works were by the Pakistani artists represented by Lakereen. Imran Quershi's art was compact and delicate - all fine lines, simple colours and forms that were precise but undeniably organic. Atif Khan had created a larger canvas called the 'Flying Carpet' - a beautiful rendering of flowers and ants designed for geometric effect. I also enjoyed Ranbir Kaleka's 'Chimerical Entrapment.' I liked the way he negotiated multiple milieus using a single object, in this case, a vase of flowers. Kaleka will allow the buyer to nominate someone to be incorporated into the mixed-media work - a quaint personal touch from an artist who is otherwise known for operating with decidedly cutting-edge tools.

And then there were: Reena Saini Kallat's large web of identity-endowing stamps; Manjunath Kamath's charming mixed media musings on the little and the commonplace; splashes of red and charcoal; tongue-in-cheek observations on the Krishna Leela; plastic bags and foil spun into sculpture; glass hammers reposing in glass cases; bonsai works by Charwei Tsai; Priyanka Choudhary's visceral mash up of wax and kitchen knives; and a Damien Hirst. What was interesting was the presence of several works that privileged technique and craft, that deliberately set up tensions between material, form and content. 

But other themes were repetitive, almost predictable - anxieties about scientific interventions in supposedly 'natural' realms, questions about identity and caustic takes on convention and consumerism. Not surprisingly, the ensuing art seemed to lack depth and investigation - whether it was a 3D representation of genetically engineered fruit, or the tale of the three monkeys related through photos of children. And there was a certain confusion and lack of context that came from having different works by different artists share a fairly small space. There was no breathing room, and  no apparent rationale for why thing were grouped and organized the way they were.  

More of a collector's event than an exhibition for the general public. Even so, the MGW  made for an afternoon well-spent.

Advertising as Art: An Argument

Most of us like to think that we’re entitled to our opinions, and most of us articulate our opinions in keeping with this spirit of entitlement. We’re quick to legitimize what we like, dismiss what we dislike and to oppose competing points of view. And when it comes to art and advertising, people – here I speak of the somewhat informed many, not the well-informed few - tend to have distinct associations and defined points of view. In the popular imagination, Art is pure, born of ideal and idea, untainted by commerce. Great art is something the world is always in need of. Advertising, on the other hand, is glorified salesmanship. Ads are eyesores, frequently crude, unabashedly commercial. Ads are the siren call of capitalism. Always taken with a pinch of salt, they’re something the world could do without.

Art and advertising. We’re somehow convinced that the twain will never meet. 

Except that they have, and do.

There are numerous examples of art masquerading as advertising. Both BMW and Mercedes have sponsored art, with the caveat being that their cars are used as the canvas. Skoda has launched a prize for emerging Indian artists. Levi’s and Dewar’s have recently collaborated with painters and performing artists, commissioning either graffiti or music depending on how they want their brand identity to translate into artistic forms. Louis Vuitton has commissioned sold-out collections by maverick Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, and Absolut has elevated artistic collaboration into an art form of its own, commissioning pieces by Warhol, Basquiat, Subodh Gupta, Keith Haring, RoseMarie Trockel and several others. These works form part of traveling exhibitions and there are concrete plans to establish an Absolut Museum in Stockholm. 

It’s evident even from this very limited set of examples that artists and advertisers have been striking bargains for some time now. The artist gains an opportunity to interact with new audiences and engage with new forms. The brand acquires cultural currency and legitimacy – extremely valuable in an age where more and more brands like to think of themselves as purveyors of content, not products.

Authors have also pointed out the structural similarities between the markets for art and advertising. In Renaissance Italy, for instance, artists and patrons drew up contracts specifying the size, content, color schemes and the date of completion of paintings. These contracts often codified minutiae, with artists specifying just how much time they would spend on the work, as opposed to the time spent by apprentices. Often, patrons would demand that a certain quantity of indigo or gold leaf be used in the work, and the artist would correspondingly have to account for purchases, weights and produce proofs of payment. Knowing this, the art markets of today - crowded with auction houses, per-square-foot rates and artists who are less personality and more ‘brand’ – seem like an evolution rather than a departure from (or betrayal of) the past. And both kinds of art markets – past and present – bear a startling similarity to the agency-client relationship.

Parallels have been also been drawn between the motives of Renaissance patrons and present-day advertisers. According to game theorists, patrons in Italy used commissions to ‘signal’ status and make statements regarding religious and political affiliations. Art was an investment, made with a view towards building a personal and familial reputation. This reputation could then be drawn on to facilitate business and social relationships and to tide families over crises caused by slander or scandal. In a sense, both the 15^th century Italian noble and the modern-day brand owner are pursuing the same ends – both seek to create a distinct identity and build equity. They are signaling certain attributes towards long-term ends.

Having established that art and advertising have more in common than one would assume, I’d like to propose a rather more controversial thesis. If art and advertising can be used collaboratively, to fulfill similar ends, is it possible to think of advertising as art? 

Which brings us to the question – what is art?

The answer to this question is constantly evolving. Developments in science and technology, shifts in ideology and society have conspired to consistently challenge ideas about what constitutes art. Contemporary art is digital, video, performance-based, mixed-media, installations, typographical, abstract. The conventional markers of art – paintings, frames, clearly defined sculptures and identifiable themes – are increasingly difficult to find. We are living in the age of art as idea, concept and engagement.

And what, then, is advertising?

Advertising  too is changing – going viral, becoming high-tech, aspiring to become embedded in lives and conversations, aiming for ‘shareability,’ blurring the lines that separate ‘creativity’ from ‘commerce’ and ‘consumers’ from ‘companies.’ We are living in the age of advertising as content and experience creation with a view towards building brands and driving sales through engagement.  

This overlap - the pursuit of engagement - between art and advertising mirrors another seismic shift which raised questions about the nature of art and the legitimacy of new artistic forms – the emergence of photography and film. I find it useful to reference Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay discussing the impact of mechanical reproduction on art

According to Benjamin, art had always derived its ‘aura’  from tradition and ritual – after all, many great works of art started their lives as cult or religious objects. Moreover, their power lay in their authenticity and uniqueness – being one of a kind, being original. But photography liberated art from this need for authenticity – after all, any number of prints could be taken from a single negative. Who was to say that one print was more authentic and therefore invested with more power than the other? 

Films went one step further. They were art forms created for popular, rather than individual consumption, allowing audiences to experience motion, images and sound. Through the use of mechanical equipment, films created mass illusions that seemed real.

Cumulatively, photography and film divorced art from the ritual and the personal. I propose that advertising in its current form takes art full-circle, bringing it back into the realm of the ritual and re-establishing a personal relationship between the object and the audience.

Why do I say this? Firstly, because irrespective of our preoccupation with reach, numbers and ROI, advertising is ultimately personal. While all brands seek approval from the many, the basis for this approval is personal engagement, built with individual consumers who then make choices about sharing/ embedding the brand within their social contexts.  The brand might ultimately address a large audience, but this journey begins by winning over a few influencers, one handful at a time.

Secondly, advertising endows an object (in this case the product or the brand) with ritual qualities. Ads spin narratives around products and brands. These narratives are intended to shape perceptions, elicit emotional responses and evoke meaning and feeling. The ultimate aim is to make the product or the brand an indispensible part of the individual's routine and personal schema. It is just that the rituals in question are of a different order - not traditional religious rites but everyday contemporary behaviours - drinking a favorite brand of coffee, staying at a particular hotel, investing with a specific mutual fund, working with a certain organization, even day-dreaming about being able to buy the 'IT' bag.

It is advertising and branding that endow these decisions with significance. After all, in a world in which one can assume a base level of quality and product parity, what is the difference between drinking Lavazza or Nescafe? The difference is that by choosing between them, a consumer is buying into different promises, different experiences. And when this selection is made on a regular basis, the product or brand becomes part of the consumer's personal schema - the framework of thoughts and behaviors through which she negotiates the world. And isn't that precisely what rituals help us do?

I'm making some bold and contentious claims, and I'm aware that my argument is far from water-tight. But it's also time to look at advertising in the eye, see it for everything that it is. Yes, advertising is always creativity in the service of commerce. But it is also culture, ritual, story-telling and object-making. Advertising can tell us about where the world is going, help us distinguish ourselves from one another, aid us in making our decisions. It is creativity put to work. There's no denying that advertising is problematic, complicated, frequently irresponsible (occasionally manipulative) and aesthetically questionable. But it is undeniably a product of its times - an imperfect art, speaking to imperfect people, in an imperfect world.