The Actor: A Political Document in Fictional Garb

Senior journalist Tavleen Singh's debut novel, The Actor, is a real socio-political document of our times, rendered in a fictional form. For future generations who may want to catch a glimpse of India's political past without necessarily applying themselves to serious research, The Actor offers an overall picture of what Indian politics looked like in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.

Amit Singh, the actor, is a six-foot-two, handsome Bollywood hunk, married with two children when the novel opens. He is facing a mid-career crisis after three consecutive flops. He has been the reigning king of Bollywood, at par with the well-known real-life superstars. His marriage to Ananya is on the verge of collapse. Their marriage has turned cold, and their interests have diverged. While Ananya, a failed Bollywood aspirant who has now become the perfect Bollywood wife, is all for a new fling but without losing her present creature comforts, Amit wants to hang up his gloves and seek the meaning of life elsewhere.

Guruji is the Prime Minister of India. It is his third consecutive term, and he is in no mood to relinquish power before anything or anybody. He has made the judiciary, the fourth estate and business houses dance to his tune. But Naresh Khanna, a two-time independent parliamentarian, wants to change the political discourse of the country. He has covert backing from many people, including businessmen who want to remain anonymous. Naresh launches a new political outfit, the Parivartan Party, a party for change.

As luck would have it, this is exactly the time when Naresh wants Amit to become the celebrity face of his party. Both were born into affluent families and grew up in central Delhi, though their careers took them along different paths. It is time for a reunion, and Amit does not hesitate when the invitation to join the new party comes from his friend. Amit moves to Delhi, gets his old bungalow refurbished and begins a new journey. Maya, a young, separated, voluptuous, rich and intelligent journalist from the capital, becomes Amit's friend, partner and adviser. She takes him to the hinterlands of the Hindi heartland to show him samples of the prevailing casteism, feudalism and heart-wrenching poverty.

Then everything happens. The ED lands up at Naresh's home. Its officials ransack the place and take away computers and documents. The harassment becomes a regular affair, with various intimidation tactics being employed. Guruji orchestrates every move against the new party and its leaders. To catch them off guard, Guruji asks the President to dissolve Parliament and call an election. This move literally throws the plans of the Parivartan Party, its IT cell and its foot soldiers into disarray. They rise to the occasion and begin organising pop-up meetings all over the country. The final rally is to take place at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi. Naresh is shot while delivering a speech at the Ramlila rally. The wound is not fatal, but he is taken to hospital. Now it is time for Amit to step in and continue the speech, not with film dialogues but with political rhetoric.

As the 318-page novel picks up pace towards the middle, Tavleen Singh's knowledge of the Indian political scene from within, acquired as a senior journalist, takes over and drives the narrative remarkably close to contemporary events, without ever losing focus on the complex inner workings of the protagonists. Guruji does not get much narrative space in the novel, but his menacing presence is felt throughout.

The last few pages give one the feeling that the author was writing the novel as Rahul Gandhi began the second phase of his 'Yatras', which culminated at Ramlila Maidan on 1 November 2026 (yesterday). Of course, the novel was not written yesterday. With her political acumen as a writer, Tavleen Singh could almost be described as prophetic and futuristic in her anticipation of political developments in our country, though the novel does not offer the conclusion that readers might desire. She gives Amit a new life as a politician, but not at the expense of Naresh Khanna.

Throughout the novel, the author draws comparisons between the protagonists and the Rajiv Gandhi-Amitabh Bachchan political partnership. Both Naresh and Amit are handsome and intelligent. Amit is a reluctant entrant into the political scene but a quick learner, much like Amitabh Bachchan. Tavleen Singh almost hints that Rajiv developed a certain ego issue with Amitabh as the latter exuded star power and enjoyed wider acceptance on the political stage. However, this does not come across as a judgement so much as a statement of cold fact. I think the author introduces this parallel mainly to suggest that the Naresh-Amit partnership, too, could develop cracks. But for the time being, and for the sake of change, they are thick as thieves and behave more like blood brothers.

The narrative pace and cinematic culmination, the steamy sex scenes between Amit and Maya, and the flirtatious, sex-craving nature of the female elite at both Bollywood parties and private house parties lend a spicy dimension to the novel. These scenes, and the portrayal of the supposedly easy nature of sex-starved women from all walks of life, could, however, attract some flak from feminist critics. But Tavleen Singh, a woman herself, may not be vilifying female modesty merely for the sake of spicy narration. There must be a tinge of truth in it, which appears magnified when viewed through the art of the novel.

JohnyML

 

Why Single Out Rahul Gandhi for Taking a Vacation?

 

Rahul Gandhi has gone to Vietnam for a week-long holiday. Photographs of him carrying his backpack at airports are doing the rounds on social media. He is mocked and targeted, as usual. When there is so much to do on the home front, why should he take a break once in a while? He has done so before, too.

What are these mockers trying to prove? That Rahul Gandhi is unfit to lead an agitation, an opposition coalition, or even the country at some point because he takes off to foreign shores once in a while? Does this theory really hold any water? To me, the answer is a big NO.

Two things are important to understand at the outset. One, his detractors refuse to recognise the fact that politics in the 21st century has changed considerably, and so have the attitudes of politicians who identify with the new age. Two, they call Rahul Gandhi irresponsible and suggest that he goes elsewhere, incognito, to 'service' himself. They cannot stand the fact that he has a mind and body of his own.

By highlighting Gandhi's vacations at supposedly 'unexpected' times, when a crisis is unfolding at home, his detractors actually do something else. They conceal something crucial about the politics and governance of our times: the Prime Minister's gallivanting across foreign shores in the name of business, trade deals, and the development of strategic relationships. They also want to divert attention from the fact that the Prime Minister has offered no explanation regarding the alleged vote-rigging under his favoured CEC, Gyanesh Kumar.

Gandhi's critics want to see him as a traditional politician, comfortable in his home constituency, wearing traditionally accepted attire and making stupid statements to incite people through sheer demagoguery. Contrary to their expectations, Gandhi comes to the podium with complete data in hand. His political approach is that of a social scientist who speaks to an intelligent constituency, respecting people's views and their criticism of the subject at hand. He is ready to argue, debate, and learn.

On the other side of the fence, our Prime Minister does none of these things. Gandhi's opponents on social media want to portray him as a playboy who needs periodic 'servicing' to satisfy his carnal pleasures, while preserving the image of the Prime Minister as a naishtik brahmachari (an avowed celibate). They constantly try to suggest that Gandhi has a 'secret family' elsewhere and that this is why he takes off whenever time permits.

The question is: why should anyone have a problem with another person in the world seeking bodily pleasures, whatever form that indulgence might take? Gandhi is not a 'young' man in the biological sense, especially when compared with the non-biological entities that dominate public life in this country. He has the right to have a family, if he has one, and the right to protect it from public scrutiny, like any other man in the world. Questioning him on these counts is in extremely bad taste. It reflects a low standard of thinking.

Gandhi is answerable to his party, the Congress, and to his constituency. When he leads an agitation, his fellow agitators understand why he, like them, needs some private time to relax, reorganise himself, and strategise. He may not need a battery of people and followers accompanying him wherever he goes. Without Z-category security, he travels abroad alone, like an ordinary man, leaving himself open to assault and abuse. That is the real courage of a man, perhaps something not everyone can claim to possess.

Gandhi is leading an agitation in a country where politicians from the right wing are released from prison to contest elections. He is leading the opposition in a country where right-wing leaders openly oppose reason and education, advising Indian youth to make pakoras or drive taxis instead of taking to the streets to demand their rights. Gandhi bears the enormous responsibility of opposing such staid politics—not just its verbal irrationality, but also its potential for physical aggression.

History has shown us leaders taking revolutions forward and bringing them to success from jails, forests, and countries of exile. A leader need not give up all privacy and remain on the streets at all times. Even CJP leader Abhijit Deepke has asked members of the agitating pressure group from across the country to return to their homes, spend time with their parents and other family members, and happily participate in the festivals of their respective religions and choice.

Have you ever asked Gandhi's detractors whether the rich and powerful of this country have stopped going to clubs, travelling abroad, postponing vacations, celebrating family festivals, shopping, pursuing pleasures, having their daily drinks, or buying gold and vehicles simply because agitations are taking place against the government, even agitations seeking to change it?

If you have not asked that question, why single out Rahul Gandhi? Let him have his vacation, like all the other tired people in the world. Reducing his foreign trips to sexual escapades comes from minds corrupted by power, money, and a lack of education.

We need to respect the youth of this country, not lumpens with extreme right-wing affiliations. We need to respect the young people who organise, agitate, and demand change. We need to respect those who are fighting on our behalf. We should not judge a person simply because he has gone away to find whatever offers him personal comfort and solace. Learn to respect a leader even if he does not satisfy every form of idealism and perfection that you cherish in a leader.

Yes, Rahul Gandhi can be questioned if he takes off again when he is in the Prime Minister's chair, holds a public office, or plays a role in the ruling dispensation. Then, he will need to answer all kinds of questions. He cannot run away from questions posed by the press and the public, as the present Prime Minister does.

— JohnyML

Peter Nagy: End of An Era

 (Peter Nagy)

Peter Nagy of Nature Morte is no more. One cannot separate Nagy from Nature Morte, a gallery that changed the behavioural and exhibition complexion of Delhi. Passing away at the age of 67 sounds too early for an art professional (in that case, for anybody in today's world). The reasons for his passing are not known. He was a silent man, but he knew how to raise his voice whenever he felt it was needed. He came into the Indian art scene when oil on canvas was the only thing people understood and appreciated. Nagy revolutionised that outlook and gave space to artists who dared to move out of the comfort zone of oil on canvas and work with other materials.

I met Nagy in the late '90s. He had just found a place to run his gallery, Nature Morte, which he had established a decade earlier with one of his friends in New York. Sources said that he was disillusioned with the US art scene and, like many people who sought spiritual solace, he too decided to travel eastwards and make Delhi his home. Initially, like Jerry Saltz, he was trying to push his art. But when he understood the primitive nature of the Indian art scene, he thought he stood a chance of donning the gallerist's garb. Saltz went on to become a truck driver and then a polemical art critic, while Nagy went on to become an artist and then a successful gallerist.

Nagy had found a controversial site for his gallery: Qutub Colonnade. It was not a happening place, and Nagy rented it for the 1998–99 art season, presenting Shibu Natesan's solo exhibition titled Missing. It was there that I met Nagy for the first time. He was welcoming but spoke little. He served red wine, and I drank until I puked. I was writing art reviews for most of the newspapers then, and I reviewed the show in one of my columns. I couldn't say that we became friends.

When Mrinal Kulkarni and I curated Small but Significant, an experimental exhibition, Nagy was the first to walk in on the opening day. At the same venue, we held another conceptual art exhibition titled Dreams: Projects Unrealized in 2004. Once again, Nagy was the first to arrive and appreciate the show. He had an eye for non-mainstream art, though he became mainstream later. So did the artists who used to participate in our early shows. That's why I always say that experimental art is the mother of all mainstream art.

Without stepping on the toes of Delhi's mainstream galleries, Nagy created his own niche in the capital, and people started streaming into Nature Morte at Neeti Bagh. The location was precariously placed, right next to a T-junction with a traffic light. Turning the vehicles into the address was a task. But art people came there, taking all the trouble, because Nagy presented interesting exhibitions. It was there that I saw Subodh Gupta taking baby steps towards stardom. Nagy was very conscious about his selection of artists. He exhibited Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Pradeep Puthoor, Atul Dodiya, to name a few.

Interventions in institutional spaces and museum displays were unheard of in India in the '90s and early 2000s. Nagy got an opportunity to work with the Chandigarh Museum and its displays, and he made some interventions there with Anita Dube. Later, this became a model for Vivan Sundaram to intervene in the history of the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata. Much later, when the Bhau Daji Lad Museum was revived, Tasneem Zakaria invited artists like Jitish Kallat and Sudarshan Shetty to make aesthetic amendments to the museum's history through their works.

Nagy was not alone in creating an alternative art scene in Delhi in the late '90s. At Masjid Moth in South Delhi, Eicher had started a gallery with Pooja Sood as its institutional curator. It had shown the works of Anita Dube and other cutting-edge artists of the time. Parallelly, right next to the Siri Fort Auditorium, in Shahpur Jat, Prima Kurien was running her gallery, Art Inc., which too was showing cutting-edge artists. Pooja Sood moved out of the Eicher Gallery to start the artists' collective Khoj, which later became Khoj International Art Workshop, aka Khoj International, and eventually just Khoj, operating out of downmarket Khirki Extension, near Malviya Nagar and Saket.

Together, the Indian art scene in the capital changed slowly, with Nagy silently holding one of the reins of its forward momentum, in the typical American way. Talwar Gallery was a quiet supporter of Nagy's efforts. Functioning from a few blocks inside Neeti Bagh itself, Talwar has maintained a 'touch me not' attitude while promoting Balasubramanyan, aka Bala, Ranjini Shettar, N. N. Rimzon, and others. Then, in 2008, the India Art Summit started at Pragati Maidan. It soon became the India Art Fair and moved to the NSIC Grounds in Okhla, with Nagy's artists often stealing the show. There again, Nagy played a silent role in almost deciding the complexion of the fair, even as its directors, owners, and sponsors kept changing. He also had an aborted stint as one of the curators of the second edition of the United Art Fair in 2013, which was the only failure in his long career as an art organiser. There were other contributing factors, which I shall leave for another detailed article.

Nagy entered into a partnership with Aparajita Jain and retained the Nature Morte brand. The gallery moved to Dhan Mill near Chhattarpur, an old mill space now converted into upmarket boutiques and eateries. I visited it a couple of times, only to realise that those who visited Dhan Mill for pleasure never stepped into this capacious gallery space. That's why, even when Ai Weiwei was exhibited there, the show did not considerably shake up Delhi or Gurugram, just a few kilometres away.

Nagy always asked questions whenever he attended a seminar. But I have never seen him take an interest in the answers. He was just performing his role as an intelligent participant in the event. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in Delhi invited Delhi-based curators for a discussion at its headquarters in 2023. I was surprised to see him there because I had never thought he had anything to do with an organisation like the ICCR, which has been famous for choosing the worst to represent India elsewhere. We exchanged some pleasantries and, as expected, nothing came out of that meeting.

Peter Nagy's passing marks the end of an era, in a way. While Amit Judge of Bodhi was making stars out of struggling artists by raising their prices and giving them lavish solo shows and openings, Nagy was slowly and steadily finding a way forward for Indian artists who worked away from the walls. He built several bridges for them to cross over to foreign galleries. I do not know the facts; however, I could say that it was the confidence he showed in Indian contemporary artists that made gallery majors like White Cube, Hauser & Wirth, Lisson Gallery, David Zwirner, and many others take an interest in Indian artists.

Peter Nagy will be missed.

JohnyML

What to Call a Woman Artist?

There was a time in Indian art, especially between 2005 and 2013, when group exhibitions were cited as “ten Malayalis and two artists’ exhibition.” The participation of a minimum of ten contemporaries of Kerala origin was a must, and anything above that could be artists from other parts of India. Nobody took offense. It was a norm.

People used to tell me, “Hey, you promote only Malayali artists.” They were right because the galleries that assigned me to curate shows wanted this particular line-up. So I used to respond with a smile, “Why me alone? Look at all my contemporary curators. They too go by the same list. Only the locations change.”

Trans-artists were coming up then. It was much before Queer and LGBTQ were mainstreamed, and Maina Mukherjee took the lead in curating them in Delhi. We did not know how to address these artists. They were as touchy as the feminist artists. Some blanketed enemies, and some others were selective in choosing their “ideal” enemies. I do not discount the fact that Ram Rahman and Sunil Gupta were here much before. But they moved easily amongst the dicked ones.

Then came the question: how to qualify an artist who belonged to the female gender? Call her “a woman artist” or “artist”—both offended them because they hated being identified as women with feminine qualities. Look at the catalogue essays of feminist artists; it would be difficult to find words like femininity or feminine. It should have been feminist/ic.

Parallelly, actresses became actors. No problem. Personally speaking, I do not have any issues in talking about women artists as “artists” only. But then comes our training in post-colonialism, post-structuralism, and all the other -isms that preceded and followed. You look at a work of art and you see a lot of “gender” things present there. So, to talk about them, you have to say that the artist is a “female” artist! To apply any theory, you have to look at the gender.

You look at the abstraction of Raza and that of any other female artist. You could see the “feminine” thing in their works. How do you overlook that? If nothing is there to take you to the gender qualifications, then the medium, material, and technique scream from the rooftop that they are the handiwork of a woman artist. Look at the works of Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher. Look at Surendran Nair and Rekha Rodwittiya. Look at Atul Dodiya and Anju Dodiya. How do you talk about them without qualifying the latter group as women artists, not because they are “women” in the biological sense but are “females” in the ideological sense?

But look at the works of the dicked ones. Cool. You don’t know whether they are done by a male or a female. Women critics, at some point, used to go to that extent where anything vertical in a work of art was dubbed as “phallic.” So I prefer to call the male artists “dicked ones.” Bad taste, I know. But what to do? I am a human being with normal follies. I prefer to see people as humans before I see them as gendered beings. But then they are different from me, a dicked one. I understand that.

What to do? When a woman artist insists that she is to be called an “artist,” I do not think that any level-headed human being, with or without a dick, would challenge it. Yes, a woman artist is an ARTIST. No doubt. She should be called an “ARTIST.” But when we talk about the content, medium, material, technique, and intended meaning, how shall we shun the word female?

Brother, I am in a dilemma. I read a lot of literature of my liking, as there is no universal liking for any literature, just as it is with art. I can discern a woman writer’s writing from a dicked one’s writing. Everything about her writing is different. Okay. Now she is not called a “woman writer” but a “writer.” However, both in journalistic and academic parlance, she would eventually be qualified as a “woman writer,” not to underline that she has a vagina but by virtue of having one, she is different from the dicked ones’ output, perhaps much better.

Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin are artists. But they really do male and female art that comes under the general category of art. Critics pick up the pros and cons of both parties and, perhaps due to a lack of jargon, they are qualified as artist and female artist—not always, but whenever such distinctions are demanded. There is no other way. But ah, there is a way: passing a bill in Parliament that bans any mention of gender while writing art criticism.

JohnyML

 

When an Exhibition Designer Turns a Vandal

 Prima Kurien, that is not a good designer act...

On Saturday, I went to Bikaner House and from there to Travancore House, where Bhuwal Prasad’s solo exhibition, 'Perpetual Drift', was inaugurated. My connection with the show is through the catalogue essay I wrote.

At the gallery, I noticed that the entire text had been reproduced on the wall outside the hall—something that, I felt, was unlikely to be read by anyone. Generally, a wall text is a blurb or a condensed version of the catalogue essay, running to no more than three or four short paragraphs.

What made me curious was the defacement of the text with some scribbles. I had already been handsomely paid, so I thought, “To hell with it. Who cares?” But curiosity got the better of my restraint. I asked the artist why there was graffiti on the text. He told me that the exhibition designer, Prima Kurien, had asked him to do it.

Well, Prima Kurien—or anybody, for that matter—does not have the right to do that. As an exhibition designer, she might have thought that only graffiti could draw some attention to a text that is so long and has been printed in its entirety in a vertical format, touching the ceiling. But that thought itself is pedestrian. She could have asked the printer to cut the text into different sections and placed them in each hall beside the works.

Now I have doubts about Prima Kurien’s design sense. Or was she trying to settle a score with me because of my earlier criticism of one of her shows?

Either it is overthinking on her part or outright cheapness.

JohnyML

Making of New Delhi- A Swapna Liddle History

From now onwards, I will not be able to see ‘Pandara Road’ or ‘Pandara Park’ as they are. Historian Swapna Liddle, with her book Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi, has changed a few of my perceptions regarding the city of New Delhi, which has been my home for the last three decades.

I am an ardent metro rider. Khan Market is my favourite station, as it can take me to various art centres such as Bikaner House, IIC, IIC Annex, India Habitat Centre and so on. I often come out of the metro at the Pandara Road opening. And now Swapna Liddle says that it was a clerical error. It was supposed to be ‘Pandava’, and while writing it down in the file, someone wrote ‘Pandara’, turning the ‘v’ into an ‘r’, with nobody then or later bothering to correct this clerical error.

In 1911, during the Delhi Durbar held by King George V and Queen Victoria of England on the shores of the Yamuna, he also laid the foundation stone for ‘New Delhi’, a new city that was to become the new seat of imperial power in East India. Old Delhi had too much history to handle and was beyond conversion. So they thought of acquiring land outside the city limits, starting from Malcha and ending with Purana Qila. In between were the Raisina Hills. The original idea was to align Malcha with Jama Masjid in Old Delhi and Purana Qila, along with all those monuments that lay in between.

The Raisina Hills stood in between, and it was difficult to cut through them, so the Malcha idea was abandoned and the project was pushed towards the hills. Today, we see the erstwhile Government House, Viceregal House and today’s Rashtrapati Bhavan standing tall on the hills. Four main architects were involved in the making of New Delhi and other landmark buildings around it: Herbert Baker, Edwin Lutyens, Swinton Jacob and Robert Russel.

Swapna Liddle brings out the story and history behind each building and how they came to be called what they are. The garden city idea of the early twentieth century in Britain was effectively employed in Delhi; therefore, we have a good green cover today. Thanks to over-familiarity, we see most of these buildings and places as mundane, except on ceremonial days. But beneath them are old villages, different lifestyles, occupations and establishments.

New Delhi was an administrative city meant for the British and their native staff. The founders of the city did not know that World War II was going to change the complexion of the world, including that of New Delhi. People started migrating to the new city. As the population grew exponentially, they had to be accommodated. Then New Delhi started expanding, and, as we say today, ‘New’ Delhi is NCR, which includes parts of both Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

A city with its sanitation plants in Defence Colony and Lajpat Nagar has today grown to a different dimension, with these places becoming upmarket real estate, pushing the new migrants further to the outskirts, which, in fact, are in other states. Delhi Dur Ast — Delhi is still afar — is true even now, but in a different sense. People in the NCR have started saying that they are ‘going to Delhi’ rather than going to the city because New Delhi has grown beyond its capacity.

In Swapna Liddle’s book, history enthusiasts can read and see how this city came into existence, through stories and anecdotes. I am sure that once you read this book, New Delhi is not going to be the same again in your eyes.

JohnyML

 

I am Warli by Sanjay Parhad

 

When Zahir Khan of Bikaner House Galleries sent me an invitation to attend the opening of Mein Warli Hun — “I am Warli” — by Sanjay Parhad, I did not know that it was an invitation to a wonderful world. I could not attend the opening of the show. Somehow, I felt that I needed to reach out to Zahir and tell him that I would definitely make it before it was over. Yesterday, the 28th of September, was the last day of the show, and I rushed to Bikaner House. I realised how poor I would have remained had I missed it.

Presented by Jas Karan Gupta of Indian Arts Corner and curated by Chaavi Jain, Sanjay Parhad’s exhibition was a great experience. Parhad’s works are made along the traditions and canons (if any) of Warli painting. Hailing from Palghar in Maharashtra, Parhad is an environmental and Adivasi rights activist and a farmer who works in the field every day. He learnt Warli painting from his grandmother. In these works, he portrays the world of the Warli philosophical system as well as the folk mythologies in which Mahadev and Gauri play a great role. Bagh Dev, the tiger god, also appears in many paintings, protecting the daily life of his people in the village.

Warli paintings move between a set grammar and a loose structure. The grammar comes out of mindless repetition, as Warli painters (and, in that case, all folk painters) are not trained “formally”. They learn through observation and repetitive practice from their elders. As they do not have a model of perfection (as in the case of the Greco-Roman models in the academies), they improvise without straying far from their internal ritualistic and normative practices. This gives Warli art a sort of grammar, but the loose structure is an outcome of the artistic imagination of those who are much more daring and have developed a personal approach to their cultural expressions and existence.

Parhad is an innovator without straying away from Warli traditions. But his fine imagination and polished craft make the general Warli style into something extremely sophisticated. While the stick figures with inverted triangles as their bodies and the employment of multiple perspectives are intact in Parhad’s paintings, he converts folk stories that he listened to in his childhood into complex visual narratives, with the same figure appearing several times in different spaces within the painting. It is like the hunting scenes in a Mughal miniature painting, where a tiger appears a few times as it is pursued and hunted down.

For instance, the curator of the exhibition, Chaavi Jain, explained the story of a smart rat whose tail was accidentally cut by a barber while removing a thorn stuck to it. This smart rat takes a pair of scissors as compensation from the barber and exchanges them with a basket weaver for a bamboo basket. Through a series of exchanges, this rat even gets a bride, then a drum, and finally meets his accidental death in a freakish fall from a tree. Hilarious — but what a wonderful way Parhad has painted it.

In one of the paintings, Parhad depicts Delhi, the city. We recognise the painting instantly because of the unmistakable presence of the monuments. The curator tells me that the artist paints people in pairs when he paints a city, but when he paints the stories of his village, he paints people in groups or in chains, symbolic of their mutual dependence or connected lives. So is the case with the flora and fauna in the villages. They also do not have a separate existence. There is a painting of a set of migratory birds coming in concentric circles and making the painting vibrate with the flapping of their wings.

Parhad, in his imagination and rendering, goes back and forth between the past, the present and the future. He paints the future of humans, where one can see the word “Danger” written large in a few places. Parhad prepares his pictorial surface using a rough cotton cloth smeared with cow-dung paste mixed with fine mitti, or soil. Rice flour is used for creating the white figures, and some areas are fine-tuned with acrylic paint, charcoal, lal mitti and ash. He uses a bamboo stylus and commercially available brushes to make his paintings.

A wonderful show. What I liked was the pleasant approach of the curator and the gallerist, who enthusiastically walked me through the show even after I told them that I could handle the works myself. But the curatorial explanations made all the difference. Great, and thank you.

JohnyML

In Search of Travancore’s Forgotten Craftsmen

In the 1970s, during our visits to Palkulangara in Trivandrum, where many of our relatives lived, I used to spend a lot of time in one of my maternal aunt's home, gazing at the wooden almirahs with glass doors that showcased many artistic wonders: gods, goddesses, elephants, and tigers fighting with snakes, exquisitely carved in ivory and wood. I craved them as toys, but only got some half-done miniature elephants in teak wood. My mother told me that my uncle had a business in carved ivory and wooden items.

When I was looking for a book titled The Forgotten Atelier by the Trivandrum-based young conservation architect Sharat Sunder Rajeev, I came across another book by him, about which I had never heard before. Titled The King's Craftsmen: History of the Ivory Carvers of Thiruvananthapuram, this book was published by the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) in 2016. I did not think for a moment before ordering it from Amazon because I thought I could get some leads into my childhood experiences, besides feeding my interest in art history.

I have to tell you this: a history book cannot be more of a page-turner than this one. Though the production quality is not as good as the other history tomes from established publishing houses, this 300-page book is laid out in the best way possible, making the complicated history of the ivory carvers of erstwhile Travancore eminently readable.

In Sharat, I found a great storyteller, like another young historian obsessed with the yesteryears of Travancore, Manu S. Pillai. As an aside, Manu has a love-hate relationship with the descendants of the former kingdom for his ruthless takes on the palace revolutions and conspiracies of the 19th century, while Sharat has been a darling of the palace and its current members. More interestingly, these two brilliant young historians collaborate whenever possible to walk into the nuances of the architecture, culture, and politics of Travancore. You may see their collaborations on YouTube.

The Viswakarmas functioned as guilds, and they were invited from the 18th century onwards from both the north and south of Travancore. Even before that, artisans from various guilds were making slow inroads into power centres where they could find patrons and material conditions that allowed their crafts to flourish and helped them eke out a sustainable livelihood. In Sharat's book, we find the northern influx into Attingal along with the adoption of princesses from Kolaswarupam, and the influx of southerners from various parts of present-day Tamil Nadu, such as Tanjore, Madurai, and Kanchipuram.

It is difficult to review the chronology of these craftspeople, mainly because there are several overlaps of patronage as well as guilds through locational shifts and marriages. There were also schisms between them based on their preferred language of communication. The northerners spoke Malayalam and the southerners Tamil. The latter felt they were better and the former felt they were superior, only to remain divided for a long time. But slowly, they started moving closer through work, guild participation, apprenticeship, patronage, business ventures, marriage, and even through legislation in the mid-20th century.

Through a thorough examination of palace documents, gazettes, and published as well as oral histories, Sharat narrates the social and material conditions that made the artisanal castes lose their early 'Brahmin-hood' and later regain it through patronage and proximity to the power centres. Material conditions determined the hierarchies from within, as the goldsmiths thought they were highly placed on the caste ladder compared to those who worked in wood, stone, and metal. But when ivory came onto the scene, we see the craftsmen crossing borders, employing their skills, reinvesting their talent, and altering and redeploying their tools for the new and expensive medium of ivory.

Sharat gives us a picture of ivory art in India and the origins of the ivory trade through various ports of India. By 1977, ivory works were banned and dealing in ivory became a punishable offence. Artisans migrated to various other mediums such as sandalwood and expensive and durable woods in general. They brought the same finesse of their ivory works into these alternative mediums and created wonderful works of art. When patronage weakened and the demand for oil paintings and portraiture increased with the advent of Raja Ravi Varma in Travancore, many erstwhile craftsmen became portrait painters, commercial artists, backdrop painters for film studios, cut-out artists for advertisements, and finally formal art directors.

What amused me was something that I read between the lines. Sharat studies the number of artisans working in ivory craft and their castes, and elaborates that there were craftspeople from other castes, both the high and lower castes, like the Ezhavas. But their numbers were very small. Sharat underlines how the Viswakarma and Ezhava were two castes that stood together, often lived in mutual proximity, and came together during times of distress. Ezhavas too entered ivory and craft practice and business as they apprenticed themselves under Viswakarma masters. But it is to be noted that the Viswakarma masters, who were the heads of guilds/kudis and had been reluctant to impart craft secrets and generational knowledge to other castes, started responding to the changing times and embraced artistically inclined youngsters from other communities to impart the craftsmanship.

Something interesting happened when Ravi Varma became prominent as an artist and the number of painters from other communities started increasing, especially in the Ravi Varma school/style of painting. The list that Sharat gives has mostly artists from the upper castes, especially from the Nair community. This happened mainly because they could get direct access to oil painting techniques, thanks to the proximity they had to the artists who constituted the inner circle of Ravi Varma's friends and disciples. With Ravi Varma leaving Travancore, as Visakham Tirunal showed scant respect for him, the upper-caste artists became prominent in Travancore. Definitely, they couldn't really outdo the Viswakarma painters in numbers or quality. Unfortunately, the former got documented and the latter got scattered beyond recovery. But I am sure Sharat has done his best to recover them from oblivion in his second book, which I am yet to read.

Trivandrum Fine Arts College is the last form of what started off as a Danta Appis (Dental Office or Office for Ivory Works). We see all the Viswakarma masters and craftsmen becoming the early gurus, guides, and teachers in this establishment, which grows into the Shri Moolam Shashtyabdi Memorial Institute, then a technical school, then the earlier form of an arts and crafts school, and finally the Fine Arts College. I find something that perhaps Sharat did not see in this evolution. In the mid-70s, ivory was banned in Kerala, and it was during the same time that the strike for upgrading the technical art and crafts school into a fine arts college started and eventually succeeded.

An eminently readable book for those who are interested in the general history of Travancore and the particular history of its art scene and the makers, movers, and shakers of it.

JohnyML

Contemporary Baroque and the Craft of Painting

A work of art makes a camera out of a human. It makes him move closer, farther away and around it to get a better grasp of the form, theme and technique that have been employed in creating it. Often, one moves through three different distances when there is a large painting on the wall. From far away, he gets an overall feel and narrative (if any) of the work. From the middle distance, he sees the volumes of the images and hints of textures. And from the close or closest ground, he can see the breadth, depth and variety of textures and techniques. This, in fact, changes a figurative/narrative painting into an absolute abstract.

Walking into the LTC Gallery of Bikaner House, where ‘Odyssey’, a solo exhibition of Poonam Bhatnagar, curated by Uma Nair, opened yesterday, in the first hall itself, from the above-mentioned third distance I saw the image of Lord Hanuman giving a head massage to a young girl/boy sitting on the ground. Frantically, I rambled through my knowledge of stories from the epics and found nothing to match the subject of the painting. I walked to the middle ground to take a better look and, lo, I saw that the monkey god, in his avuncular avatar, was not giving a head massage but blessing the young ascetic in the Indian way, by placing both hands on his/her head. I heaved a sigh of relief and apologized to my own self for making a humongous misinterpretation in the beginning.

Yes, art could deceive the viewer with its own craftiness, or the lack of it. Poonam Bhatnagar has a well-developed technique of using acrylic paints in various densities on the canvas in order to create the textural surface that, in turn, becomes the contributing unit of the intended narrative. Bhatnagar has been experimenting with this textured style for almost two decades, exhibiting less and working more, initially using the mehndi dispensing cone as her primary device to employ colour, later to be replaced with direct application from the tubes and other contraptions that she herself has developed for the purpose.

Together, these colours and textures make very visually ‘rich’ paintings, with an assortment of themes such as landscapes, imaginary scenes from the Mauryan period, the theme of enlightenment pivoting on Buddhist lore as symbolic representations, and Hindu mythological stories, besides having a set of sublime landscapes. As I said, they are visually rich and give away an impression of embroidery work done on silk, or perhaps that was my first impression, besides the misadventure with Hanuman ji. To put it in other words, it is a variety of paintings that shows craftswomanship more than painterly qualities. These paintings of Bhatnagar, in this sense, are well-crafted pictorial relief works made on well-primed and well-framed canvases.

Is it a negative judgement? Not at all, but it is a kind of painting where the textural build-up functions as pixels of a digital image. This laborious and time-taking working process needs patience and personal involvement from the artist, which, interestingly, hinders the practice of having studio assistants who could ‘fill in’ the gaps, take further the notations or develop the cues given by the artist. I do not think that Bhatnagar uses an assistant to make her works. Without making any effort to say whether having an assistant is a wrong practice and not having one is something commendable, I proceed to say that Bhatnagar’s works belong to a decorative category of painterly craft, which demands individual involvement, meditation and overall personal evolution.

Let me put this seemingly condescending view into perspective. Painting has, in a way, become a collective, contributory and collaborative process for many artists who use painting as a conceptual practice rather than an individual spiritual creative pursuit. But there are many other artists who are lone wolves of the genre and still hunt alone and howl alone in the moonlit nights of creativity. They do not allow any kind of collaboration or assistance from outside, though at times they use mechanical devices in executing the works. Such singular pursuits have now become a ‘craft’ or a protected practice whose secrets are never imparted through teaching or apprenticeship.

Bhatnagar belongs to this tribe of artists who pursue a lonely path. In the days of technological revolution such as ours, with the time given for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to take over human endeavours, and also at a time when moderation and slow pacing are demanded by the industry leaders who work on the same technology, the art practice of Bhatnagar and her ilk would slowly turn into a ‘craft’ that needs protection and preservation. This will be a dying form of art soon, like ivory carving. When AGI is able to do anything that a human does, art done by an individual artist will become a ‘rare’ product, even negligible in the context of AGI.

I could see Bhatnagar’s works as crafted paintings not just because of the AGI doomers’ attitude but also because she fails, in a way, to choose the right ‘subject’ for her paintings. This may sound a bit confusing because she has chosen, to the best of her understanding, a range of topics that have been the flavour of the time for the last fifteen years or so. She de-historicizes history by making it look beautiful and without any conflict, like a straw painting, but preciously executed with a smattering of gold and silver colours and all the possible colours of precious stones.

Bhatnagar neutralizes the historical conflicts that have existed between Hindu mythologies and Buddhist ideas since ages and flattens them under the general aspect of personal spirituality. That clearly shows that the artist is like a craftsperson without any inclination towards the political or historical understanding of the times in which her art is produced. She repeats the craft of relief painting that she has successfully created for her purpose in subjects that have different historical and political quotients. When that is overlooked, these works become ‘beautiful’ and ‘interesting’ and ‘fabulous’ paintings, which we, the art historians, call contemporary baroque.

One word to the curator. A curator is never a compere or an anchor of an exhibition opening that she curates. She should stick to her brief, as in explaining her curatorial take on the works and a little bit about her personal affinities with the artist in question and her works of art. When a curator like Uma Nair goes into compere mode, the artists who commission curators will think that compering is a part of curating, which obviously is not. Curators should not become comperes and programme anchors. Even if they do, they should limit it to the generic, ‘Welcome to the dignitaries... and when I chose to curate this artist...’

JohnyML

‘Vision & Landscape: Aquatints of India’ by Thomas and William Daniell

 

Yesterday I visited ‘Vision & Landscape: Aquatints of India’ by Thomas and William Daniell, the uncle-and-nephew duo who travelled across India between 1786 and 1793. Presented by DAG at the Ballroom of Bikaner House, the exhibition brings together 144 aquatints developed from the paintings, drawings and watercolours they made during their travels.

The makeshift gallery space has been spruced up adequately with lights and panels, and the display is elegant and erudite. My only problem was with the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling—part of the heritage paraphernalia of Bikaner House—which shed more light than necessary and made photography rather difficult because of the reflections on the glass. Now, is it a problem of the glass frames or a problem of the chandeliers? Either way, it is a minor distraction from an otherwise excellent show.

Calcutta was the capital of British India at the time, and itinerant artists generally arrived there first before undertaking journeys into the rest of the country, often with a retinue of servants, elephants and soldiers.

Travel was slow and arduous. Emile Eden, who came to India almost half a century after the Daniells, noted in letters to her sister in London that their maximum mileage in a day was around twenty miles—and that too if they started before sunrise. Depending on the terrain, the journey could involve boats, palanquins, elephants, horses and walking, with the day divided into schedules to avoid the intense noon heat.

The Daniells followed a similarly demanding route: from Calcutta through the northern plains, Bihar, Delhi, present-day Uttar Pradesh and Himachal, and then west and south through the Maratha, Mysore and Madras presidencies.

What emerged from these journeys is an extraordinary visual record of late-18th-century India.

The 144 aquatints in this exhibition were laboriously and meticulously developed from the paintings, drawings and watercolours the Daniells produced on their travels. Their subjects range from monuments, temples—often described by them as ‘pagodas’—and forts to administrative buildings, Mughal landmarks and medieval architectural remains.

The Daniells had an eye for detail. They did not merely record what was architecturally or aesthetically impressive. Their works contain information that is topographical, historical, military and demographic. Soldiers who accompanied them for protection appear in some works, as do the labourers who carried their equipment.

There are also wonderfully self-reflexive moments. At Ellora and Elephanta, for instance, one can see one of the Daniells making an on-the-spot drawing while the other depicts the scene from another vantage point. The act of looking, recording and representing becomes part of the image itself.

But the detail that stayed with me most is from Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu.

The magnificent rock-cut panel depicting Bhagiratha’s penance to bring the Ganges down from the heavens contains, almost inconspicuously in one corner, a cat imitating the penance of the sage.

And the Daniells noticed it.

That tiny cat is perhaps a perfect reminder of what makes these works so fascinating. They were looking at monuments, landscapes and histories, but they were also attentive to the little things that made those places alive.

If you are interested in history, architecture, art, travel and India’s topography in the late 18th century, this is a show worth spending time with.

‘Vision & Landscape: Aquatints of India’ — Thomas and William Daniell

DAG, Ballroom, Bikaner House

JohnyML

The Grammar of a Life: Kanchan Chander’s Artistic Journey

 

“When you come, remind me to give you a copy of the book,” Kanchan Chander said while chatting on WhatsApp. She was inviting me to her solo exhibition, The Grammar of the Self, presented by Gallery Ragini and curated by Kishore Singh at the LTC Gallery, Bikaner House, New Delhi. As usual, the devil in me typed the answer: “When you see me in the gallery, please remember that you are supposed to give me a copy of your book.”

A pause. Then came the answer: “I am seventy. Sometimes I forget. I want you to have the book.”

Kanchan Chander, seventy years old—my God, I thought. I have seen artists whom I met in their prime turn grey, then white and fragile. Then I realise that I, too, am growing older. I couldn’t believe that she had turned seventy, or was about to, because when I met her for the first time, thirty-one years ago, she already had grey hair and a mature way of conducting herself in the art scene.

Kanchan has been around in the art scene for nearly half a century, it seems. She entered the art world from East Germany, where her diplomat father was posted. During the Emergency in 1975, as a young girl, she joined the Delhi College of Art. Soon after, her father was posted to Chile, which took her to Santiago University, where she pursued art studies for three years before returning to Delhi and graduating. A scholarship took her to Paris, where, at the École des Beaux-Arts, Kanchan studied printmaking and got married. The marriage did not last. She brought up her son, Palav Chander, himself an artist of some repute in the art scene.

Nobody leaves the gallery without asking, “Where were these works, Kanchan?” And she has a stock answer for all: “In the drawers, safely stashed away, only to be found now.”

For many, like me, Kanchan is an artist who makes “torsos” in various forms, formats and mediums. It has exasperated many, and when she switched to the sequined immortals, such as Madhubala and Marilyn Monroe, art lovers felt good. I think the reason was that nobody knew the trajectory of her artistic development. Many thought that she drew those torsos because she did not know how to draw.

Anyone who speaks conceptually, especially after the success of the Raqs Media Collective, is often met with the assumption that “yeh banda ko drawing nahi aata” (“This guy does not know how to draw”). When Kanchan explained her torsos with some inclination towards feminist theories, as she was keeping company with some firebrands in the genre, we all thought perhaps theories would help her eventually, the way Nalini Malani or Zarina Hashmi were “saved”, despite our lack of visual information regarding their formative years and exhaustive drawing experiences.

With The Grammar of the Self, we encounter a different Kanchan, whose open-ended torsos now fall into place as we see the archival material drawn from her stock of early drawings, prints, paintings and printmaking matrices. All of this is exhibited in one “look back in fondness” exhibition, given an appropriate curatorial shape by Kishore Singh.

Perhaps the exhibition should be called The Autobiography of the Self, but then anything said about the self is autobiography. So the alteration does not stand, but the meaning of the intent does. The show as a whole provides the topographies of aesthetics and craft that the artist has travelled through over the last fifty years.

From the earliest drawings of family members to the self-portraits of sudden self-awareness, one could understand how the young artist knew she was worthy of her chosen vocation. The more she drew, the more she archived. Tragedies, personal and familial, altered her images but never her focus. She found a special camaraderie with her mother, which she expressed through drawings and etchings. After her brother’s accidental death, her father became a loner, and she witnessed his weariness and pain through her works. She held on to these works for a long time for us to see, and they are now part of the exhibition.

Chance encounters with Bhuta Aradhana of the tribals at an exhibition held at the Delhi Crafts Museum brought a different thrust to her work, as she began experimenting with raw divinities in their frontal forms. Before that, her Parisian experiences had turned her into a caricaturist of sorts, transforming faces into noses growing out of faces and frames, giving them a comic, phallic presence. For her, these were symbols of nosey people and also of those who keep their noses up in the air to show their superiority. But autobiographically, it was also a take on the nose of her own spouse.

Kanchan painted and printed loneliness in the way Käthe Kollwitz had done. Her ideal in the beginning was Henry Moore, whose voluptuous sculptures found resonances in the bodies familiar to her. The motherliness of a round body and the genetic transference of the same to her may also have indirectly led her to portray her protagonists as well-endowed women, but drowned in sorrow and loneliness.

That does not mean that Kanchan has portrayed only sad women and men. After a certain stage, she moved from the representational aspects to the techniques of representation in various graphic mediums, which she has perfected, as the works in the exhibition demonstrate.

There is a conscious avoidance of the torso series, though an experimental row of works is presented, in which the female body turns into a horse-like torso, with suggestions of a spine—something that reminds one of the works of Atul Dodiya.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book, mentioned at the outset, which includes an interview with Kanchan by the curator himself, apart from his introductory curatorial essay, recognisably carved out of the interview. Senior artist Waswo has written about the lonely female figures, while Lina Vincent has detailed the techniques Kanchan has used in her works. There is also an article titled “Body as Archive” by Anita Jung.

The show closes on 18 September.

JohnyML