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.    

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.