Vividh 16 – Multiple Expressions of Indian Art

VIVIDH | AN OVERVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ART By Sushma K Bahl

Indian art and aesthetics, cutting across schools of art and thought, reflect its continuum of plural and intertwined cultures. The vividh (a word in Hindi derived from the Sanskrit language meaning multifarious and diverse) collection offers a panoramic overview of the vivid expanse of the contemporary Indian art scene. Traversing beyond the traditional boundaries and subjects, the multiple creative expressions discourse around the personal and the public, decorative and mythical, rural and urban, real and imaged. In its form too, the assemblage of paintings shifts between portraiture and narratives or landscapes and abstraction. Defying a singular thrust, the holistic ensemble of around 50 paintings in varied forms and genres by 25 artists from around India includes significant artworks by several renowned masters who share the space with select works by younger emerging artists on the vividh platform.

Most of the works featured in the exhibition are paintings. For the artist, the act of painting is like pouring his/her inside out from the heart, hand, and mind onto the canvas, paper, cloth, board, or another base. To quote Georgia O’Keeffe, “… I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way…”. Manifest as a physical entity, painting often entails a distinctly composed metaphor in select colours, textures, and forms that communicate an emotion, idea, experience, or message. And for the rasik (taster/viewer), it is the encounter with the work that matters, depending on his/her ‘ways of seeing,’ to quote John Berger. A subjective and intuitive process, one of the earliest forms of art, painting continues to persist and flourish in its own niche parallel with the expansion of digital and other forms of art, as illustrated in this vivid collection.

The multi-layered encounters, dreams, and desires of the artists featured here offer the viewer a peep into the graphic eloquence and dynamics of a wide variety of artworks. The multitude of life-like as well as imagined masterpieces in this exhibition, as elucidated below, represents the artistic repertoire of masters of the Bengal and Santiniketan School as well as The Progressives, Shilpi Chakra, Cholamandal, Baroda, and Bombay Groups. The mid-20th-century paintings by legendary artists appear next to some fresh creations, as of here and now, by their younger contemporaries. The featured work is reflective of each creator’s own socio-cultural-political leanings and life experiences in their trademark style as well as the distinct aesthetics of the collective they are affiliated with.

There is a substantial repertoire of portraiture in this ensemble. A recurrent theme in painterly renditions, the human form engages master artist FN Souza, whose obsession with male and feminine figures is represented in the collection. The sensuousness and beauty of the female figure is also at center stage in work by SG Vasudev, while mother-child bonding is the undercurrent in a painting by B Prabha. Shanti Panchal, in contrast, focuses his gaze on the innocence and plight of a young boy who appears in his working boots and with a spade. His portrait of Maya with her long hair seems pensive. Artist-scholar KG Subramanyan’s untitled woman looking upfront, eyes fixed and surrounded by birds and beasts for companionship, appears to come from another imagery world. Human portraits, be it a petite and curvaceous female figure or a strong male form, are also the playing fields in the work by Shanta Samant. The spiritual iconic form Lord Ganesh, invoked for auspicious beginnings, appears in a distinct incarnation in yet another work authored by SG Vasudev as a woven silk tapestry.

The ability to stay rooted and indigenous while also absorbing and assimilating selective international practices is mirrored in Jamini Roy’s figuration of the three pretty maids or his Santhal carver. Noteworthy are the markings and symbols in the borders around his puppet-like figures in flat colours. The work is clearly impacted by the folk arts and Kalighat Patua (rural art form of West Bengal) repertoire of his native place. In yet another strand appears AA Raiba’s narrative compositions titled Barahmasa (twelve months/seasons of the year) in one case and untitled in another. The fantasy-filled work draws its inspiration from Pahari (art style practiced in and around the mountains in Himachal) and Mughal miniature painting, while younger artist Bhairavi Modi’s art, though in different renditions, shares an interest in regional styles as reflected in her depiction of scenes and stories as enacted by some of her protagonists. Narratives surrounding people and life in urban and rural India or those based on classical or folk stories are center-stage in distinct work by distinguished artists Bhupen Khakhar, NS Bendre, and Satish Gujral.

Minimalist, ethereal, impressionistic compositions and Zen ambience come to the fore in abstract and geometric renditions by some of the featured artists. It includes work by artists who were or have been based in the West while simultaneously keeping their links with the subcontinent alive. A distinct ethnic touch within a glo-cal genre is reflected in their abstraction that treads both worlds.

Leading in this group is artist SH Raza, who was based in Paris until his last few years and was renowned for his work marked by its spiritual essence. Bindu (dot) and Prakriti (nature) are at center stage in his colourful compositions encompassing circles, triangles, squares, and half circles. A dot within a rhythmic pattern of circles, triangles, and squares says it all in Raza’s oeuvre. His contemporary from London, Balraj Khanna’s amazing white circular painting features what reminds one of instruments, machine parts, or space creatures in contrast. This resonance of an otherworldly abstraction or neti-neti (neither this nor that) ambience is echoed in his multi-coloured painting featuring forms akin to toys, puppets, and zebra-like creatures. Also included in the grouping is banker-cum-artist Nayan Kisnadwala’s work. His abstract paintings, bordering on the tantric, feature blooms and Shaligram (lingam). Inspired by colour therapy and numerology, the works create a web of spirals, lines, and circles imbued with spiritual undertones.

The vividh (multiple) collection illustrates the versatility within the genre of painting, entailing variable expressions in different media and modes as practiced across the country. Each artist creates the work in their distinct form, style, palette, material, size, technique, and thrust, ranging from oil or acrylic on canvas to watercolours on paper, from tapestry in silk to egg tempera on board, from mixed media on a hard surface to embroidery and gold/copper on canvas, from gouache on paper to watercolours mixed with acrylic on canvas. The plural ensemble presents an overview of the contemporary Indian art scene. Reflective of the country’s enormous ethnic, linguistic, geographical, political, and cultural diversity, the artists can be seen to re-imagine and re-configure their ideas, dreams, and encounters into fine works of art that make this vividh collection.