(Dhwani se Shabd aur Chinh at NGMA, New Delhi, display view)
When I look at the exhibition ‘Dhvani Se Shabd aur Chinh’, with
the works of a large number of artists from the Indian South culled out from
the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, my memories go
back to an exhibition at the same venue around nineteen years back. The name of
the show was ‘Indian Contemporary Art: A Post-Independence View’ and was put
together by Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery and the NGMA. The occasion was the
golden jubilee celebrations of India’s independence. I was shocked to see that
there were no works of KCS Panicker who had singlehandedly established an art
movement as well as an art village (Neo-Tantric Art and the Cholamandal Artists
Village respectively) in this show. I approached the director of the Vadehra
Art Gallery, Mr.Arun Vadehra and according to him the absence of Panicker was
due to ‘circumstantial factors’. With some amount of journalistic fervour and
moral agitation as an art critic hailing from Indian South, I approached the
then director of the NGMA (I remember it was Anjali Sen) and asked why KCS
Panicker’s works were absent in a historical show like that. They informed that
other than giving the gallery space, the NGMA had nothing to do with the
exhibition. In my article written in the same year (1998) in the Malayalam
Vaarika from the Indian Express Group, I had discussed how the ‘Brahminical’
North wanted to suppress the ‘Dravidian’ South and its modern art history.
(work by Jankiram from the show)
Today, ‘Dhvani se Shabd aur Chinh’, almost after twenty
years corrects the historical faults that the NGMA had done during the golden
jubilee celebrations of India’s independence. The National Gallery has a vast
collection, mostly untouched by the in house as well as invited curators.
Somehow during the last sixteen years when Mr.Rajeev Lochan was the Director of
the NGMA, all the retrospectives were about the Bengal School. I cannot
complain because those retrospectives were mammoth in size and deep in curatorial
thoughts and presentation. But it had often raised the question in the minds of
many people why there were no other retrospectives than the so called artists
accepted by the mainstream modern and contemporary art history of India. Jitish
Kallat’s was the last one to happen and we had Subodh Gupta and Anish Kapoor in
the previous years. While it is always good to have such exhibitions which are
to be ‘block buster’ and ‘chart buster’ shows, in the case of the National
Gallery it has been a fact that what used to get burst was the expectation
levels of the organisers. During the last sixteen years when Mr.Lochan was in
chair the foot fall was bare minimum. But with the new Director General,
Adwaita Gadanayak (despite all the ideological burden that he has to carry
whether he wants it or not), the National Gallery seems to be on its way to
make certain corrections (so far definitely not in the usual BJP way) and of
late the ‘aam’ artists in Delhi have started crossing the threshold of the
NGMA, which has been an extremely elite and English speaking domain for more
than quarter of a century.
(display view)
The present show has a rich representation of the Indian
South artists though the emphasis is on the ‘Madras School’. The presence of
the works of KG Subramanyan, A.Ramachandran, Ravinder Reddy and so on have
helped to push the boundaries of the Madras School or the Cholamandal
aesthetics. At the same time, the in house curatorial attempts fail on this
count because they couldn’t cull out many other major artists from Indian South
from the NGMA collection. But if we look at the show as a dominant ‘Madras
School’ show, then definitely it is an interesting show and a must watch
exhibition. The curatorial team of the National Gallery has taken great pains
and efforts to create additional structures to define spaces and establish
niches and pedestals to raise the works to greater visibility and some sort of
divinity. The works of late Nandagopal are displayed with elegance and
exclusivity as the innate themes of the works demand. So many works that were
functioning almost like garden sculptures in the lawns of the National Gallery
are cleaned and brought into the gallery. Imagine, most of works spread in the
lawns unattended and uncared for have been the works of the artists from the
Indian South. Once they are in the gallery, we get a chance to see them in
their art historical context.
(work by Nandagopal)
Some rare paintings of KCS Panicker, Jayapala Panicker, KV
Haridasan, AP Santhanraj, P.Gopinath, C.Douglas, J.Sultan Ali, Janakiram,
Ramanujam and so on are on display. Each historical exhibition like this tells
us that the artists did their best work when there was no market or they were
not heavily depending on their works to eke out their living. The very history
and philosophy of the Cholamandal Artist Village inform us that the artists
were not thinking about making money out of their creative works but from the
works that they created in terms of craft but never compromising their
aesthetical profundity. Cholamandal thus created a benchmark for the artists
and taught them how they could survive when there were no takers for their art;
not even the state patronage. But some egalitarian souls were in the advisory
boards and purchasing committees of the national cultural establishments and they
were instrumental in getting those works collected even when there was no
private patronage for them. So today we have a rich collection of the works
done by the artists from the Indian South in the establishments like NGMA. The
difference is that while the so called Brahminical art historians who led the
scene (like Geeta Kapur, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh and so on) tried to suppress
these works, the ideological Brahmins find no problem in showcasing them. The
shift from Amrita Shergil and Family to KCS Panicker and the Indian South art
really shows a paradigmatic shift in the art historical discourse in India.
(display view)
Till recently V.Viswanathan’s works were not really ‘looked
at’ by the Indian art movers and shakers. Then one day he was picked up by the
Nature Morte and the Kiran Nadar Museum; then his fate changed. How does this
happen? This kind of picking up of artists who are physically frail with
failing health for promotion by the art market shows how inhuman their approach
is; age and the imminent death of any artist with a considerable period of
work/ing history help the auction houses to add yet another vintage artist in
their lot. So here is an artist who has worked for more than fifty years,
hasn’t enjoyed real success in terms of fame and money, but with a gigantic
oeuvre is a treasure mine to be dug into. Now they could create new stories and
histories around him/her and give birth to a new golden goose. But
Viswanathan’s works done in late 1960s are precious gems and a good number of
them are in the collection of the NGMA, which is decently displayed in this
exhibition. So are the works of SG Vasudev and P.Gopinath. Unfortunately there
is no list of artists or an illustrated catalogue, which is a must for these
kinds of historical exhibitions. There is a small take away pamphlet which does
not have much to offer. So I am not able to do justice to all the artists
either. There are so many sculptors and painters from Indian South in this show
who are no longer even mentioned in any kind of modern art history in India. I
wish I had all the names for ready reference in my hand. What I could tell you
at this juncture is to go and see the show.
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