Vividh 15 – Multiple Modes Media & Manifestations of Indian

VIVIDH | Multiple Modes Media & Manifestations of Indian Art By Sushma K Bahl

Vividh, a word in Hindi derived from Sanskrit language, means multifarious and diverse. Akin to ‘vivid’ in the English language, it also resonates with clarity and freshness, as indicated in the title of the current exhibition ‘Vividh: Multiple Expressions of Indian Art’. The vivid selection in a range of genres presents Vividh artworks of high aesthetic merit by artists from across India and different schools of art and thought. The collection features a range of life-like and imagined creatives in striking colours.

The vanguard collection mirrors the contemporary Indian art-scape. Marked for its vast and varied creativity, the selection includes impressionistic renditions created around the 60s and 70s by modern legends such as Jamini Roy, FN Souza, SH Raza, and MF Husain, among others, who worked in their trademark style. The rest are by younger emerging stars including Dileep Sharma and Raghava KK, who appear more daring in their choice of materials and forms. Together, the two streams appear on a shared platform in this holistic and inclusive collection. With their graphic eloquence and colourful masterly renditions, the featured works illustrate a comprehensive overview of contemporary Indian art of the last few decades.

Marked for duality—its ability to stay rooted and indigenous while also absorbing and assimilating selective Western and international practices—the collection engages with beauty, romantic, utilitarian, or spiritual themes, besides socio-economic-political issues, ideas, encounters, and life experiences. Descriptively expressive, the creatives appear in varied media, modes, moods, and manifestations as artists work across genres and in free-flowing expressions rather than within specific movements or groups. They reflect the country’s enormous ethnic, linguistic, geographical, political, and cultural diversity. The spotlight in collective contemporary art is on the mindscape in some works, while in others, it springs from real-life experiences. The artists do not simply describe or design; they re-imagine and reconfigure their ideas, dreams, and encounters, cutting across rigid stylistic boundaries.

Ranging from the personal to the public, the artists can be seen engaging with the emotional and environmental, traversing through socio-economic domains. There are artists from different cultural backgrounds and regions of the country working in photographic, digital, and mixed media art that rubs shoulders with paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

Jamini Roy’s figuration of the pretty maids dancing their way possibly to a temple, akin to classical sculptures, comes in bold and flat colours. It is clearly impacted by the folk arts and Kalighat Patua repertoire of his native Bengal. In another distinct vein comes the mythically inspired and fantasy-filled narratives overlaid with wit and humour in the work of artist-scholar KG Subramanyan, be it his gouache or acrylic paintings. Bengal folklore and genres are also at play in the work of Jayasri Burman, while her contemporary Bhairavi Modi’s renditions appear to draw inspiration from Pahari and Mughal miniature painting styles. There are clear imprints of folk and regional styles in the depiction of scenes and stories enacted by some of these artists.

Narratives surrounding life experiences in urban and rural India, or those based on classical or folk stories, are at centre stage in the work of several artists, including Laxma Goud, Sakti Burman, NS Bendre, and Sunil Das. Social concerns, human angst, and environmental issues are the focus in the works of artists Bhupen Khakhar and Krishen Khanna. A contrast, however, is offered in Suchi Chidambaram’s work as it echoes the energy of the cities, their architecture, and the people she has been associated with, be it in India or the UK.

Human relationships and feminine concerns are other threads that link up in some ways, differently rendered in the works of a few of the featured artists. Satish Gujral’s painting features a couple in an entangled embrace, while the group focusing on the delicate mother-child relationship, besides other themes, is led by Maya Burman and AA Raiba. Masoom Khambhayta’s “Girl in a Twirl” and “Lucky Eve,” in contrast, present an overview of life coloured with emotions. Rini Dhumal takes the female form onto a higher pedestal as an icon of Devi, a much-revered and feared mythic goddess.

An ethereal and Zen ambience comes to the fore in abstract and geometric renditions by Abhijit Pathak, Nayan Kisnadwala, Kajoli Khanna, and Ram Kumar. The senior-most living artist, SH Raza, renowned for his abstract work around the concept of “Bindu,” is represented in this collection with some of his earlier works bordering on landscapes, which are the precursors for his preoccupation with abstraction.

Popular Indian culture has been another source of inspiration for several artists in the collection, with MF Husain, who had embarked on his artistic career as a billboard painter, leading the way. This stream has been taken forward with a touch of Bollywood in the colourfully painted imagery of younger artists such as Dileep Sharma and Nayanaa Kanodia. Man’s relationship with animals, birds, and flora-fauna is brought face-to-face in the rich imagery of Gurcharan Singh, Lal Bahadur Singh, and Sridhar Poluru.

Artistic obsession with feminine figuration and her sensuous form—a recurrent element in the works of master artists Jatin Das and FN Souza—continues to engage the interest and art-scape of several other artists. Her petite body, curvaceous figure, fulsome breasts, slender waist, nude form, and innate beauty are the playing fields in differently rendered figuration in paintings and sculptures by Iqbal Durrani, Jahangir Hossain, Laxman Pai, LM Sen, and Shanta Samanta in the ensemble.

There is a shift towards digital art, photography, multilayered mixed media, and three-dimensional forms in the works of several younger artists. Award-winning sculptor Alpesh P. Wood’s work comes with inlaid carving. Nayan Kisnadwala, a banker by profession, takes recourse to symbolism, scriptures, colour therapy, and numerology for his creatives, which he sells to raise funds for some charities. Karan Khanna, inspired by a short stint as an intern with Cartier-Bresson, gave up a career in advertising to pursue his passion for photography, as illustrated in his amazing pictures. Raghava KK, listed among the ten most remarkable people in 2010 and a TED speaker, uses his multidisciplinary expertise and engagements in combining art and technology to create cartoons, pop-IT books, and interactive art.

Each creative in the collection of nearly 80 works by about 30 artists adorns a distinct appearance and, in its own metier, reflects the specific context it stems from. There is a fairly striking change in the work of artists of the pre-independence era and those who have emerged on the scene during the last couple of decades. Clearly, contemporary artists are free of the political compulsions, artistic constraints, and rigid formulaic patterns, as they engage more openly and confidently with contemporary themes and events using new media and technologies as practiced globally. The spectrum of contemporary Indian art makes an engaging montage with elegiac tonal variations. Some of it appears realistic; others are imagined, scrutinized, magnified, or reinterpreted to evoke thoughts and emotions. The Vividh collection mirrors the continuum of Indian art and its complex relationship with life, religion, society, and politics. The exhibition presents an overview of Indian art in multiple modes, media, and manifestations.