Vivan Sundaram, Gakawaka: Making Strange [ Book Review]

Book Title:   Vivan Sundaram

                      Gagawaka: Making Strange

Published by:   Chemould Prescott Road

Paperback

155 pages 

Full Colour

Size – 8 x 10.75 inches

ISBN 978-81-908879-4-6 

Price:                Rs. 2,750/- [includes DVD]

When I saw the Gagawaka presentation by artist Vivan Sundaram at Lalit Kala Academy, I was perplexed. It was neither a fashion show, nor was it evocative of art traditionally seen within a gallery space. There were dancers performing and walking alongside professional models and artists too were participants on the makeshift stage cum ramp. The garments, if indeed they could be classified as such, were bizarre to say the least, yet they were crafted with finesse and some of them were quite marvellous to see. I kept wondering how to contextualize this presentation. It was neither art nor fashion and neither was it breaking totally new ground for in the two decades that I have taught at NIFT, I have seen design students create equally, if not more creatively bizarre garments.

With the intention of finding some context to place this artistic offering within, I picked up the book ‘Gagawaka, Making Strange’, published by Chemould Prescott Road.  A slim volume, visually lush with numerous full-page colour photographs of each work, it also includes a DVD of the performance/fashion show and essays by Deepak Ananth, an art historian based in Paris, Shanay Javeri who is a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art in London and Gitanjali Dang, an “independent curator-critic and shape-shifter” based in Mumbai.

Ananth takes us through a rich, art historical discourse beginning with a rag picker reference citing Baudelaire and later with references to the Futurists, the Dada movement, Oscar Wilde, Arte Povera, Duchamp, Andy Warhol and more. He claims that “from the ragpicker to gladrags, from the lower depths to the bourgeois salon – the contrast will appear flagrant or incongruous only to those unaware of their co-presence in the inaugural texts on modernity”. Though erudite and interesting his essay does not extrapolate this “co-presence” with clarity. He also quotes lavishly from Roland Barthes and brings in references to artists who have made some foray into the realm of fashion, but never quite manages to present the evolution of the ragpicker-fashion designer with any level of conviction. He cites the ragpicker icon in reference to Sundaram’s “delve into detritus” with an installation ‘The Great Indian Bazaar’ [1999], which is followed by ‘The Brief Ascension of Marian Hussain’ [2005] and other works that incorporate trash. Implicit in the use of ‘trash’ is the image of the rag picker, but in Gagawka, Sundaram does not use items only collated from garbage bins and kabadiwala’s. A lot of them did not seem used, but newly bought. In addition, a twist to this argument emerges when Ananth states that the initial point of Sundaram’s departure for creating this collection was the body; more pertinently, the body’s distress, which arose from the artist’s own experience of a body “punished by pain”. The argument centred on trash then becomes confusing.

During a period of convalescence Sundaram was inspired to use medical paraphernalia to create garments, transposing materials used for healing the body to create another kind of body. This was done, perhaps, to cloak the presently dysfunctional one as a way of exorcising the body’s infirmity, to present the antipode of sickness through the glamorous dimension of fashion. This disclosure lends far greater authenticity to the body of work than the historical antecedent of detritus or the on-going relay between art and fashion. However, for this most pertinent revelation Ananth does not cite historical precedence or context. Neither does he tell us about Sundaram’s experience through this venture, which we are told was both therapeutic and cathartic. He does not reveal how it benefitted the artist, which could perhaps be the most significant contribution of this venture.

Shanay Jhaveri does not delve into detritus or history but focuses upon his viewing in four episodes, of the work as a moving installation cum performance cum fashion show and also a static exhibition, beginning with his anticipation before the preview, where he was invited to engage with the artist about the work. He describes the performance evocatively, brings films into reference and also mentions fashion stalwarts such as Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto and others who have used garments in an architectural and sculptural way, but neither of these two writers provide a considered fashion perspective. Jhaveri however, does not try and provide answers but raises oblique questions. In discussing one particular performance consisting of a single garment, where the performer had been internally ‘miked’ and every breath amplified and broadcast to the audience he says: “Did a force to know, and not forget, guide the performance? Did it precipitate a state of knowing?” After the four encounters he concludes that Gagawaka is an “expansive practice, a constellation, a set of platforms through which a series of questions are asked.”

 Dang’s essay is placed strategically between these two and is significant because she does not allude to the work but speaks tangentially of an improbable, bizarre situation, bringing an element of fiction into play. Her essay echoes the discomfort I felt in trying to contextualize the work within the parameters of art and fashion and made fascinating reading.

This volume does not provide a reassuring context to view the work within but raises issues. Is Vivan Sundaram charting new territory, where the cathartic and therapeutic qualities inherent in art-making are the key to understanding this work? Will the art of tomorrow emphasize what artists say, not so much about the world to the world, but what the process of art-making does to the maker, revealing him to himself? Ananth’s almost casual mention of Sundaram’s convalescence as impetus for Gagawaka, generates interest, more so than the historical precedence for this work, or lack of it.

Manjit Bawa - Readings, edited by Ina Puri [Book Review]

Book Title:      ‘Readings’ Manjit Bawa                  

Edited and
compiled by:       Ina Puri
Published by:      Lalit Kala Akademi,

                               New Delhi ,2010

Paperback 
220pages 
Size                           18 x23.75 cms
Full Colour
ISBN: 81-87507-42-X 
Price:                    Rupees 1,000/-

 

Manjit Bawa was an individualist; an artist and human being who lived life on his own terms. Through his art, he brought into play modern modes of expression in painting, while also referencing the Indian aesthetic. “Being a turbaned Sikh from an ordinary middle-class family was daunting enough but to strike out against the prevalent forces of Cubism and the iconic Klee was to really ask for big trouble”[i].But he did venture out; creating a new figure, a new landscape and spoke in a new voice.

Art in its essence is an experience; a silent communion between a viewer and an artist’s canvas. Its understanding matures as we do. The simplicity of this communion has become compounded in the crowding of urban life, where time is at a premium and such contemplation a luxury. Today, for most people, art is either a commodity to invest in or too challenging an intellectual activity to participate in. For some, art has been reduced to being just a piece of decoration.

Each artist however, spends a life-time devising an iconography that speaks most evocatively of their thoughts and feelings. This complex language that encompasses all dimensions of their being is not easy to decipher. In Manjit Bawa’s own words[ii] his work was “a continuous process that takes up almost all my waking hours. Even when I sleep, I have experienced visions in my dreams that are related to my painting activities….. I wanted to create my own style….to find a new idiom and a new language. In every sense, this was a stumbling block that needed to be tackled with immense patience and fortitude[iii]”.

Many books about artists become technical and theoretically complex, excluding rather than including the lay viewer. ‘Readings, Manjit Bawa’ compiled and edited by Ina Puri, published by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, reaches out to us through essays, interviews, conversations and reminisces by Manjit Bawa himself and other artists, providing a unique insight into the artist and his oeuvre. It is not didactic, but eclectic; each reader is thus able to formulate their own ideas, to look at the artist’s canvas through these perceptions. The text is bi-lingual. There are writings in both Hindi and English. Ina Puri’s close association with Bawa’s art reveals itself through this selection, providing insight into the man, his persona and what made his art; the people that influenced him and how childhood memories led to the cow and goat becoming leitmotifs.  Prayag Shukla [in Hindi], sums up that the animals and birds and all the different emotions and feelings that Bawa brought to life on his canvasses that had not been seen before in Indian Art and “in par ab Manjit ki ek vishisht chaap hai” that the seasons and their colours have“apne he vishisht aakaron aur rangon mein kramash dhaal liya.”

Informative and refreshing to read, the book is illustrated with over forty full colour plates, photographs of the artist and some of his drawings. A full list of collectors is appended at the back of the book, but regrettably none of the works are dated. It would also have been useful to include a small biographical note on each of the authors published in this compilation. A comprehensive biography of Bawa tells us about his numerous exhibitions and art camps he attended. We also learn that Bawa curated shows of Indian Art in Syria, Egypt and Australia, was a founder member on the Committee for Communal Harmony, organized peace marches during the anti-Sikh riots and more.

Essays by Ranjit Hoskote, Ashok Vajpeyi, Gayatri Sinha, Richard Bartholomew, Ina Puri, Geeti Sen, S. Kalidas and Madan Gopal Singh bring some in-depth analysis and critical insights, while painter Krishen Khanna, a friend through the decades, reminisces of his early encounters with Bawa. J Swaminathan, friend and fellow painter, does a quick summary of the evolution of the modern Indian art movement from Amrita Sher-Gil to Tyeb Mehta, stating that “Manjit’s figure is at once an assertion of a tradition and its negation” owing hardly anything to the realism of the West, suggesting instead a linkage with the Pahari Miniature tradition.

 A year before the riots in Ayodhya, Bawa wrote an article for the Times of India which provides a glimpse of the artist’s unusual perception of things. He also brought attention to the fact that most people agitating in the name of Ram were quite ignorant about the Ramayana. They were mostly “sons of shopkeepers and petty merchants…. seething with frustration”. He arrived at this conclusion, not through some obscure intellectual analysis, but by engaging with people on the ground: one human being to another.          

The book has diverse material on Bawa’s evolution as an artist, his engagement with the world, involvement with communal issues, work as a curator and artist and also how he encouraged younger, aspiring artists.  His preoccupation with various dimensions of being, both physical and spiritual, all find place in these readings. In a talk given to art students at Shantiniketan he ends, with accrediting Ina Puri for motivating him to think anew and sums up with a Sufi saying: “simply trust…… do not the petals flutter just like that? Trust life….” He was well versed in the Hindu epics and could challenge the young protestors outside the Babri Masjid on the Ramayan just as easily as he could quote from the Gita, even though he “found it difficult to subscribe to many of these values.” An independent thinker, he questioned things. This is brought to life in this book, as in his art.

The interpretations of Manjit Bawa’s art are many and all equally illuminating.  Hoskote finds a “jagged edge of eroticism and risk in an intimate battle of beak and dagger, the swelling tongue of the bull, the tumescence of the goat” adding that “Bawa is more significantly preoccupied with the sheerness of pleasure at the edge of language.” While Kamala Kapoor sites that “Bawa’s images…. appear to reflect his desire to intervene in a world burdened with over-rationality, as he draws forms in the air that undulate and reform into pliable boneless shapes.”In a small note of personal appreciation, the author David Davidar makes an interesting observation about Bawa’s use of colour, where “artwork so vibrantly alive in hues of yellow, red, carmine, electric blue, green and gold was tamed, cooled and recombined through some strange alchemy such that a flaming red soothed the eyes, a glaring yellow could alleviate a migraine headache and the startling blues suggested a cool draught of water.”

The book may not represent an exhaustive research and analysis of the artist’s work, but it is the kind of book that makes Manjit Bawa and his art accessible to a large section of people. We become acquainted with the man behind the images on his canvas, from whom readers will draw hope, solace and inspiration at many levels.  The mix of analytical essays with reminisces, interviews, exhibition reviews and writings by the artist himself, give this book a unique place:  useful to the student of art, to artists, to the lay public and also the scholar. It is the first book in the series called ‘Readings’ of writings on artists and sculptors introduced by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.

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[i] Manjit Bawa Pg 65

[ii] Shantiniketan 1998

[iii] Manjit Bawa Pg 95

Shilpa Gupta edited by Nancy Adajania [Book Review]

Book Title: Shilpa Gupta

Edited by: Nancy Adajania

Published by: Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and

Prestel Verlag, Munich, Berlin, London and New York, 2009
Paperback
248 pages
Full Colour
Size: 9 x 11.25 inches
ISBN 978-3-7913-5017-2
Price: Not Mentioned



Shilpa Gupta’s art is provocative and theatrical. Employing video, performance, hand-crafting, photography, installation and more, she raises bold questions and invites the viewer to participate in making, and interact with her exhibited art-works. Representing the artist as investigator, using the anthropologist’s tools of research, her art confronts conventional practices and social taboos. She addresses a gamut of issues from terror, menstruation, religious beliefs, and social and intellectual repression. She has exhibited widely and engaged with luminaries across the world including academicians and psychologists. In her mid thirties, she is young and her art practice which is barely a decade old has been documented in the recently launched publication ‘Shilpa Gupta.’


This is available as a paper back edition, in a well designed format with ample colour visuals. It also includes scribbles and jottings by the artist as well as some feedback-forms from viewers of select exhibitions. I was especially drawn to Gupta’s own writings “….Take gun/Press the trigger/Eat eat eat/ Pull pull pull…” [Hands in the Air, 2008-09] And more such intense, repetitive sentences that were transcripts of her installations. Since most of her work has been exhibited abroad, I have not interacted much with Shilpa Gupta’s art. What I have seen has been engaging but not always convincing.

The book includes essays by Quddus Mirza, an artist, teacher and critic from Lahore, Nancy Adajania, a cultural theorist and curator based in Mumbai and Shanay Jhaveri a young writer who is currently a research candidate at the Royal College of Art in London. In addition, there is an email interview of Shilpa Gupta by Peter Weibel, an Austrian artist, curator and theoretician. However, I was disappointed to find that all the writers were so pre-disposed towards Gupta’s practice that the relevance of this and whether it fulfils the criteria of the issues she raises and confronts were not adequately debated.

Adajania is very eloquent and has followed Gupta’s practice from her college days at JJ School of Art in Mumbai. She tells us that Gupta’s “real medium” is “audience perception”, and that her work functions “more as props for her disclosures.” More often that not, I would be seduced by what Adajania wrote, then feel let down because the work discussed did not convey the depth of commitment and profundity that the writing implied. It is challenging to write about art that employs sound, movement and people participation as important dimensions of its expression so I wondered why the very technology that Gupta employs was not used to give us a better sense of the way her art works. A DVD or VCD documenting the ‘transient’ and interactive nature of her art could have been a valuable resource for the reader

Gupta combines a unique element of the theatrical with the empathetic in presenting her ideas but their relevance and efficacy in being more than mere commentary comes into question. The issues are pertinent and pressing for the most part, but is art equipped to handle them? And if not, then the very procedure is disturbing for it engages with people across various strata of society, often disturbing their way of life in an attempt to uplift. Is this merely an exercise for artistic expression? By exposing people to new ideas are they then left to return to their obviously inadequate devices/practices which she sought to change/question in the first place? A host of such questions arise which have not been addressed in the book. For instance, she casts her own breast in cement, [Khoj Modinagar, 1999] placing it with its “inconveniently sprouting hair” on the wall of a disused toilet, which the artist had re-constructed for local women grass cutters, risking the wrath of the estate managers. What happened thereafter? Has it changed their perception of hygiene and do they use the toilet or prefer the open fields? How was the ‘breast-cast’ viewed or relevant to the problem of either hygiene or dignity to defecate? Or later, in the work ‘Untitled’, [2001] where Gupta uses cloth stained with menstrual blood, inviting women to participate with an instruction manual of how to send her the stained fabric. What was the profile of the women who participated, and what exactly, is the taboo? None of this is mentioned.

In 2002 for an exhibition of contemporary South Asian Art in Manchester, Gupta commissioned a group of women to make 1,500 crochet boxes that were then blessed and used as part of an installation that questioned the notions dividing art and craft as also religious beliefs and their new-age consumerist manifestations. All of these are not just innovative ideas, they touch upon pertinent issues. I want to know what happens to the people she has engaged with and the impact on their lives thereafter but I am not informed. We have a couple of sentences to say that few women looked at menstruation afresh and some boys ran out of the gallery in disgust, but what happened to the crochet makers? Her art is not confined to the gallery and even when it is, it challenges the norm by provoking the audience to think or to turn away in disgust [Altered Altar, 1998 and Untitled 2001]. When Adajania says that Gupta “financially empowered this group of women” by paying for their crotched effort, I am curious about the extent of this ‘empowerment’? Can these issues remain just at the level of discussion confined to an art gallery or within the context of an art historical discourse? Surely the whole point of Shilpa Gupta’s art practice is to take it beyond?

She has challenged the premise that art has functioned within and upon. She has introduced innovative ideas and speaks a language that is upfront, candid and demands your attention. This practice, to my mind, brings into play much larger questions than the social taboos she confronts, for it redefines the jurisdiction of art, but none of the writers really tackle this. It is simplistic to say that by paying for their labour Gupta empowers the women financially. If it were that simple to bring about financial emancipation to the crafts sector then weavers would not be committing suicide nor government agencies subsidizing a languishing tradition that does not enjoy the same value, voice or dignity that fine art practitioners like Shilpa Gupta do. These issues need to be addressed with greater responsibility. While the artist’s practice goes beyond the confines of the traditional gallery, if the discussions around it remain within the same discursive space, they belie the relevance of what she endeavours to say and do.

The essays however are informative and almost all of her work is discussed by Adjania in “Darkness Is What Light Will Never Be: Shilpa Gupta’s Experiments with Truth. She brings in elaborate references drawing on the works of various scholars and artists from Wittgenstein to Joseph Kosuth, Jung and the Yogacharya school of Buddhist thought. While all of this is useful, none of the writers tells us anything about the artist. What is her specific background which lends impetus to this kind of thought and work? She appears to be a singularly independent thinker within the context of her peers and also artists before her, so I would have liked information about the person and experiences that have defined her thinking and therefore choice of issues and material.

The interview format though well suited to draw forth informal, personal revelations did not attempt this. Pieter Weibel didn’t appear familiar with Shilpa Gupta, either on the personal level nor in an in-depth manner with the gamut of her art explorations, to be able to provide such insights. This email interview at the very beginning of the book, specifically addressed questions that arose more out of Weibel’s preoccupations rather than Gupta’s own, taking the dialogue onto an altogether different level of engagement regarding the Synaesthetic experience. The idea was introduced as possibly belonging to Gupta’s practice, also mentioned later by Adajania, but neither were able to explain how this rare perceptual capacity, which cannot be cultivated, except perhaps by extensive meditation, was relevant to or prevalent in Gupta’s experiments.

The most comprehensible essay was ‘To See Again and Again’, by Jhaveri. He makes her art and its ideas infinitely accessible, allowing an easy grasp of what are otherwise rather abstract ideas, presented obliquely through material objects. But he makes sense of them in a logical way. He looks at the work for what it says, objectively, without imposing ideas he wanted to explore. Quddus Mirza speaks candidly about how violence has become something to relieve the tedium of everyday living. He is insightful in his observations. He says that the artist per se is not relevant in the mind of the ordinary citizen where television news takes precedence and that Gupta seeks to address this by making her work interactive. He writes of his personal experience with ‘Aar Par’ [facilitated by Gupta in 2002] and how Gupta’s father had to deal with the Mumbai police because of an artwork sent from Pakistan, showing two guns and roses which made the artist’s [Mirza’s] intent suspect. When he speaks of terror and violence and what it has done to the human psyche he is very passionate and un-put-down-able, but when he puts Gupta on a pedestal for not succumbing to the requirement of foreign curators, as other artist’s allegedly do, he is not convincing.

Shilpa Gupta has been prolific and many of her ideas have been discussed in the book. Though her art has evolved from immature investigations to more finessed presentations, her work is neither pleasing nor reassuring. It disturbs. And the book creates its own sense of discomfort. The very nature of Gupta’s practice and immediacy of this publication to her art-making necessitate various in-depth references and discussions including the Indian art historical context, or why this was not deemed relevant. Contrarian views as well as those of the anthropologist were also missing. They assume relevance in order to contextualize and debate an artist’s work that uses methodology which extends the discourse of art making, and a practice that has not yet been tested by time. Their omission left the context incomplete and unconvincing. Consequently the writing ‘looking’ at her art appeared not to be investigative enough or entirely objective.

A Mythical Universe, the Art of Jayashree Burman [Book Review]

Title: A Mythical Universe

Publisher: Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi
Year of Publication: 2010
Essays by: Ina Puri, Ashok Vajpayee and others
Price: Not mentioned
ISBN: 978-9\81-906463-0-7



Is the contemporary Indian woman really freed from the rituals and traditional values that are deeply etched in our psyche? Does she even want to be, is the question Jayshree’s water colours present.

To visually locate Burman’s lush but carelessly decorated watercolours in a milieu that is preoccupied with material things, concept art, installations and digital media, is virtually impossible for it has no recognizable icons that can. The randomly painted watercolour base and restless scratching of the ‘Rotring’ pen on a vibrantly coloured surface are indicative of the influence of the frenzy that has gripped the contemporary temperament but her art-making seems to afford a comfortable escape into another universe; where the artist does not have to acknowledge the chaos of today, but inhabits a world of memories.

The book that accompanied her exhibition at Lalit Kala Academy, ‘A Mythical Universe’, published by Art Alive Gallery has essays by Partha Mitter, Ina Puri, Ashok Vajpayi and Pritish Nandy. It is a lush publication with numerous images of Burman’s artistic oeuvre from the 1980’s to present and lends an opportunity to see her evolution as an artist. Contrary to what we encounter in her present work which draws heavily from a nostalgic world of traditional lore and icons of Hindu Gods and Goddesses, her earlier work is rooted in a modern, almost abstract idiom, where she works rather loosely with form. The present ideas started making their mark around 1997-98 and from 2002 they have formed the definitive style that is easily associated with Jayashree Burman.

Jayashree Burman’s lushly decorative imagery of Gods and goddesses do not really explore the contemporary physical world enough and therefore her painted visages appear as distant realities. She does acknowledge this environment but rather perfunctorily. Burman thus appears to be out of sync with the aesthetics that govern our everyday living, positioning her work as nostalgic exotica; holding onto a past that has long gone, virtually ignoring the fact that the tapestry of our world and its culture has changed and that she could examine these nuances more than she does.

The various writers have tried to eulogize and justify the traditional rooting without really contextualizing it in the present day context, which is disappointing. Ina Puri has presented Jayashree Burman, the woman behind the artist as a rather endearing picture of a Bengali woman evoking perhaps the much loved Banalata Sen, who has been immortalized through verse and Burman too has painted her in lush tones of green. Puri’s engagement with Burman the ‘Bengali bhadralok’ and the woman as mother, wife and divorcee, bring out personal details that help us engage with the subtler dialogue underlying the visual panorama. This is perhaps the richest essay in this large volume. Professor Partha Mitter has traced the beginnings of her “naïve decorative style” with that of the assertion of pioneering nationalist painters to protest the “naturalist academic”style disseminated by colonial art schools, citing her as a worthy successor to Abanindranath Tagore. Pritish Nandy on the other hand rather simplistically states that what makes Jayashree Burman’s art so special is that “she occupies a space she has created and patented as her own” which he defines as “her narration of popular mythologies in a secular idiom that’s achingly beautiful”. He reminds us that her art is not just about our past, our traditions, our mythologies, but also about today. However he does not explain this facet which is the core of Burman’s dialogue with herself - an attempt to reconcile the diverse worlds that frame her life today.