A Walk Among Lines

I've always loved looking at line drawings. Maybe it was all the art lessons I spent putting pencil, crayon, and much later, charcoal to paper, the scraping and the smudging, the sooty fingertips and wrists, the fact of creating something with a well-timed or ill-advised stroke, I'm not sure. There were moments when I enjoyed this, and equally there were moments when I resented the betrayal of my lines. Sometimes there was (what seemed to me) an insurmountable gap between what I wanted to draw and what actually took shape, at other times the shape and form were right, but the lines themselves looked hesitant and tentative instead of being liquid and fluid. I'd flip through all the instructional art books my father had collected, and each of them held drawings that seemed impossibly perfect - a few lines, drawn energetically and elegantly, putting together a picture that was no less than a painting. I wanted for my drawings to have that spirit and verve, but there was no getting around it - lines and line drawings were a rite of passage, and the only way to push past the limitations of my lines was through regular practice. Woe betide the inconsistent art student! A few days away from pencil and paper, and my lines would flag. 

Couple - II Lovers by Jogen Chowdhury

I've lost track of when exactly I stopped taking weekly art lessons but whenever I've gone back, I start by drawing lines. And at the risk of repeating myself, you only have to tell me about a line drawing exhibit and I will find a way to be there. There's something magical about line drawings - they represent an idea in evolution, they have the quality of an artistic fingerprint, they can span the continuum from simple and spare to vivid and sensuous. As with the best verse, there's little room for obfuscation - the line is art at its most transparent, a reliable 'tell' of artistic talent and sometimes, artistic intent. Lines are, simply put, hard taskmasters.   

Lantern by Bikash Bhattacharjee

Don't believe me? Do? Either way, visit the Jehangir Nicholson Gallery for a look at 40 odd line drawings curated by none other than Sunil Patwardhan. Called "Taking the Line for a Walk," (a name borrowed from Paul Klee's famous quote), the show is altogether excellent. The great Indian modernists, and their successors, are  each shown engaged in their own particular trysts with the line. Whether it is Tyeb Mehta, who would much rather work without lines but has a distinctive style irrespective; or Ara, whose 'Nude,' composed entirely of charcoal and smudges, has a sensuous, smooth quality; Paritosh Sen, whose 'Gorilla,' composed of deft charcoal strokes, is all muscle and bristle and snarl; Jogen Chowdhury, whose creamishly thick squiggles collapse perspective while retaining coherent form, but who is equally adept with the delicate, multi-layered cross-hatchings that lend texture and weight but also lightness to large figurative bodies (look at Couple - II Lovers); Arpita Singh, whose scenes of discreet domestic disquiet have an almost stippled quality; Bikash Bhattarchjee, whose 'Lantern' is a masterpiece in subtle charcoal technique; Sadanand Bakre's limpid and monumental forms; Nikhil Biswas's angry, whirling pen and ink swirls. There are so many gems of works and almost-works in this exhibition. But my favourite is the last work I saw - a young girl in pigtails by Lalu Prasad Shaw. Square, solid and sad and rendered with an expert, economical expressiveness. And I haven't even mentioned V.S. Gaitonde, Ganesh Pyne, Raza, Souza yet.  

If you're at all interested in what poetry, calligraphy, scribbles, shadow, solidity and delicacy look like when set in motion by a few flicks of an accomplished artist's wrists, look at line drawings. Anywhere works, but this show could be a nice place to start.    

Amrita Sher Gil - Personality and Painter

The NGMA's retrospective on Amrita Sher Gil has its flaws, but the artist shines through, regardless. Sher Gil burnt bright in her 28 years, painting prolifically, living fashionably and scandalously, winning admirers, awards and critics, denouncing the 'cheap sentimentality' that she felt was the stock-in-trade of too many of her Indian peers, dying quickly and restlessly. She was equal parts society swan and serious artist, sparkling and melancholic, bold and self-conscious. She inhabited a uniquely personal intersection between the European and the Indian, and she interpreted both Indian and European Modernism in that light. 

Organized chronologically, the exhibition allows a viewer to map the evolution of the artist's style. The first section on the ground floor consists of portraits, nude studies and some still lifes painted during the early 1930s. These are paintings bristling with energy, with thick brush strokes adding up to portray subjects as robust, sitting solid and square with expressions that are challenging, if not defiant. The feminine body is everywhere strong, unyielding, almost muscular. Although these are all different people, there is a bit of a sameness to them, as if the artist's personality had held greater sway during the sitting than the subject's. 

It is in the second section that her style begins to visibly mature. Sher Gil describes herself as an explorer of the sensuality of the line, and it is here that the sensuality comes into play most prominently. The portraits are more nuanced, the brush strokes less urgent, the people behind the painting make themselves a little more felt - whether coquettish, weary, clever or curious. There are many, many women here and they are vital - long limbed, large eyed, lush lipped. When nude, their bodies are painted with a matter of factness that renders their nudity almost besides the point and lets their personalities manifest. 

And of course there are many self-portraits of Sher Gil herself, painted at different times and in different moods - Amrita undressed (or undressing), Amrita in furs, laughing, languorous. Two of these, done in an almost Impressionist style, are the ones that I liked best - breezy and both of them showing her in her element, at work. There's also a small clutch of paintings made in Hungary - flat and almost cubist in their dimensions and interesting as a marked departure from her recognizably animated style.  

The third and last section is the one in which Sher Gil's craft becomes most refined, with the influence of Indian miniature painting and the frescoes and sculptures of Ajanta and Ellora becoming clearer. This is where the paintings become stylized, the lines fine, the use of space much, much cleverer, so much so that some of the oil paintings here have the quality of water-colours. Although a few of these paintings have a somber Gauginesque quality, most of them are sensitive and delicate portrayals of village life and (mostly) village women that play with perspective, pulling planes out and folding them back in. Although the iconic "Three Girls," "Brahmacharis" and "The Bride's Toilet" loom large, the images I still have with me are those of "Village Girls," "The Swing," "Ancient Storytellers" and "Elephants." All four are simultaneously angular but soft, flat but textured, full of that indefinable quality of mood. Sher Gil had said that she wanted to transcend the 'merely sentimental' with these paintings, and while there is romance here there is also dignity.  

Who knows what else this tempestuous, opinionated and polarizing artist would have done in the course of a longer career? She was flamboyant, she was politically incorrect, she was singular in times when it would have been much more convenient not to have been. Amrita Sher Gil was so entirely alive that she was never exactly a mystery. It's odd, but also true, that this is precisely what makes her all the more compelling. 

Petition for a New NGMA

I went to the Amrita Sher Gil retrospective at the NGMA, Mumbai, this morning. And had an experience that was disconcerting, to say the least. How is possible for one exhibition to leave me curious and interested, and incredibly annoyed, all at the same time? Here's how.  

The mounting of this show reveals a complete absence of imagination on the part of the curatorial team. Somewhere along the line, someone said (or thought) the following, and set events in motion accordingly. "Let's find a sparkling, provocative personality and a significant artistic influence and pay tribute to her. Let's structure her prodigious body of work chronologically because what other approach is there? Let's only have the most turgid, textbook curator-speak typed out on posters at the beginning of each section, and let's not include any other notes that may help give a viewer a perspective on the work or the artist as they walk through those sections. Let's use the same high-intensity lighting for all the works, so that some of them cannot be seen clearly, no matter what the angle. And right at the end of the show, to make up for the absence of detail along the way, let's gum up massive print outs of photos from the artist's life and quotes from her letters. Let's not worry about the fact that these print outs are unevenly pasted and ripping from the excess glue and would be approximately 10 times more interesting in context to, maybe, a painting." 

Just last weekend, I was so excited when I heard about this retrospective. Firstly, because I wanted to see more of Sher Gil's work, and secondly, because I was hoping it meant that the moribund NGMA, Mumbai was scraping its way back to relevance. As it so happens, this show is entirely in keeping with almost everything else the NGMA has served up under Rajeev Lochan's Delhi-based stewardship. Gone are the ambitiously mounted shows, the collaborations with international museums and galleries, the weekend and holiday art workshops for kids, the guided tours and the crowds. What we have instead are shows that pass through the city on their way across the country, interspersed only by repeated rearrangements of the institute's existing collections and virtually zero public engagement.  

Photo Credit: www.buzzintown.com

If this sounds like a rant, that's because it is. I remember how the NGMA used to be when it was run by Dr. Sarayu Doshi - collections by the great Indian modernists, the city's first brush with Picasso, with Egyptian exhibits from the British Musuem, with Italian post-modernism, with Fluxus, the sense that something new was happening here every month. Post the Cowasjee Jehangir Hall's restoration and inauguration, the NGMA was where many people in the city had their first brush with international art, with public exhibitions and with careful, thoughtful curation. Prior to this, the only themed multi-artist exhibitions I had seen were the RPG sponsored annual shows at the Jehangir Art Gallery. 

The NGMA Mumbai's decline since Dr. Doshi's departure has been steep and has remained unchecked in spite of some publicly aired misgivings. In the last five years, I can count the number of interesting shows I have seen here on the fingers of one hand - the TIFR's collection of modern Indian art (2011), a Bollywood and film themed exhibition celebrating a 100 years of Indian cinema (2012), and the Rabindranath Tagore and Homai Vyarawalla retrospectives (2013 and 2011 respectively). Most of these exhibitions were launched in Delhi and passed through Mumbai as a matter of form. Even the TIFR show can be attributed to the energies of the that institute's director, and not to any lapse into initiative at the NGMA. Girish Shahane made many of these points in a trenchant post written about 3.5 years ago. Since then, little has changed.

This is just not good enough for what is supposed to be a premier art space in the country's financial capital. Across the way, the stately Prince of Wales museum has reinvented itself. The Bhau Daji Lad has also been consistently and imaginatively engaging with the city's community since its overhaul. 

It seems the NGMA has witnessed the appointment of a new Director for Mumbai, a Mr. Shivaprasad Khened. But Mr. Lochan's shadow must loom large, because any signs of a new dispensation and new energies are conspicuous by their absence. Mumbai needs more cultural spaces and museums, but the present NGMA is doing us a disservice, occupying prime real estate and consuming public resources and giving back very little in return, other than subsidized rentals for theater groups during the Kala Ghoda Festival. I don't know who's paying attention, and I'll wager nobody is, but since the new government claims to be coming in with cleaning supplies and a big broom, maybe I'll drop them a tweet. Or two.