Somewhere between the cutting edge and the masters, artists who rule the marquee
The discourse in visual art is usually articulated around the masters and their legacy, or constructed by the rising stars. As a result, critics and curators tend to marginalise those who base their work on popular aesthetics. Yet, these artists form the bulwark of the market and include well-known names with a consistent body and quality of work. To the public, they represent the face of Indian art without having to carry the burden of social engagement, thereby, believing in art for its own sake.
VIEW AS SLIDESHOW: Indian art: Meet the masters of popular aesthetics
Chasing the bloom
SEEMA KOHLI (b. 1960)
Soham Hansa
Ink and acrylic on canvas with 24 carat gold and silver leaf
68 x 71 inches
It is unlikely that Seema Kohli, who struggled to break the shackles of a conservative middle-class upbringing, could have foretold her success. Essential to Kohli’s work,
and central to it, is her choice of winged figures seemingly afloat over a universe consisting entirely of lotus blooms, rooted trees and quiet cityscapes.
If the artist’s effervescent colours reflect her view of nature and mankind in organic harmony, the reason is the strife she sees around her. She hopes to arrive at a meditative-like quietness despite her busy palette. These are works that capture her inner struggles and insecurities, and she pays ode to the feminine principle without deflecting or indicting the male principle.
Kohli has read the scriptures and most sacred texts and these imbue her works. Yet they remain secular, never sacred. Her winged women are a reflection of her wanting to break free from socially imposed norms, something she captures in her performance pieces and videos. These penetrating and perceptive artistic practices are underscored by a scathing commentary on perceived notions of propriety and ownership.
Popular on the international art circuit, Kohli has, in recent years, begun to turn the figurative element of her paintings into bronze sculptures, cutting through the confines that artists find themselves slotted into.Master of the aesthetic
PARESH MAITY (b. 1965)
Eternal Peace
Oil on canvas
54 x 54 inches
The origins of myth
SIDHARTH (b. 1956)
Ganga
Silver leaf and mineral pigments on canvas
72 x 216 inches
If, in the past, he had made the cow the subject of his practice, he has spent the last few years conducting research on the Ganga, exploring myth as one element but also investigating its environmental degradation and pollution as elements that have entered its flow. This has meant a good deal of travel, collecting facts, conducting interviews, listening to marginalised voices, while tapping into the repositories of music and dance that play along its shores. This quintessential mode of enquiry is rare in these times when the demands of the art market rarely allow an artist the luxury of such study.
VIEW AS SLIDESHOW: Indian art: Meet the masters of popular aesthetics
The world at home
VINITA KARIM (b. 1962)
Emerald Island
Acrylic, embroidery on Dhaka muslin, gold and copper leaf on canvas
59 x 57 inches
Attracted towards depictions of light in nature, of pearly dawns and flushed sunsets, Bhaduri seems to enjoy the glimpses in her reflections, as reality breaks up in rippled impressions, causing us to look closely at the object of her attention. She paints from memory, increasingly finding a pensive quietness that she seeks out in the confines of her studio. Though she works across mediums, it is oil and canvas that appeal most to her —perhaps because each layer and reflection has the magic possibility of stories untold, left for the viewer to discover at leisure.
Feminine, feminist
KANCHAN CHANDER (b. 1957)
Devi Nouveau 4
Mixed media on canvas board
48 x 32 inches
This painstaking and laborious homage and deification does not take away from her principled stand of femininity and feminism as complementary ideologies, the one as fantasy and an object of fetish, the other as a symbol of terrific and terrifying power. For her, the body is both trade in stock as well as reverential, both brothel and altar. They question the patriarchal view of society and how women view their own body in its everydayness as well as mystique.
In forcing us to think outside our comfort zone, he reinforces stereotypes. The wide-eyed, brightly painted ingénues of his paintings are part of the tapestry of our lives. Each figure in his paintings forms an integral part of the relationships he explores in the form of a tableau or a diorama, lives laid out in front of our eyes as if for dissection and to fuel the rumour mills that keep our social discourses lubricated.
VIEW AS SLIDESHOW: Indian art: Meet the masters of popular aesthetics
Having once entered his rainforest, one parts the canvas leaf by leaf to discover a wonderful world that could arguably exist in a corner of one’s own garden. Senanayake’s forestscapes may consist of parakeets and heliconias but, thankfully, there are no serpents in his paradise.
The mortal immortal
MANU PAREKH (b. 1939)
Flowers from Heaven XIII
Acrylic on canvas
100 x 80 inches
Known principally as a landscape artist for his enduring ode to Benaras, Manu Parekh distills part of it in the manner of still-lifes or temple offerings. For Parekh, these have a subcutaneous erotic layer, a reference to fertility and lushness in nature, akin to human sexuality. Drawn to the idea of this robust sexuality, he notes that it forms part of the sacred in India. The flowering blooms, their intoxicating scents and overpowering attraction for birds and bees, and their consequent state of decay and the passing of life suffuses his canvases. Heady with the fragrance of ritualised ceremonies, Parekh revels in the classical allusion to these floral offerings in an abstracted sense. His representations, then, can be a suggestion of strewn petals, or they can be elaborate arrangements, but the bower he recreates holds within it the secrets of nature itself.
(This story appears in the May-June 2016 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)