Hang with the best

Art collector Ashish Anand tells us about the professional way to display art at home.

Buying good art isn’t easy. Not only should the artist be well known, but choosing the right art work is a challenge for the uninitiated. Tougher still is learning how to hang the art in an appropriate manner. Delhi Art Gallery director Ashish Anand says, “It is important to see the collection and then decide what goes where.” Anand, who also has a large personal art collection, uses his own home to illustrate this point. Paintings hang on every wall of his house. A careful perusal with Anand’s help reveals that the paintings haven’t been put up thoughtlessly.

Says Anand, “The most important space in a house will be the drawing room and the master bedrooms. The more intimate pieces will go in the bedroom.” At one point Anand had an F N Souza nude on top of the fireplace in his bedroom. Souza’s erotic art from 1984 also hangs in the bathroom in Anand’s home. Says Anand, “If you have 50 paintings in your collection, you will have some favourite pieces. The smaller intimate pieces are in my bedroom and bathrooms.”

In keeping with his philosophy Anand has hung an M F Husain in his drawing room, in a niche, thereby making an observer notice it. There is a cluster of eight works next to the Husain, and a K H Ara work on the adjoining wall. Says Anand, “The walls are all painted with rich colours. My living room walls are red in colour, so I have chosen paintings with that colour in them.” The other important detail that Anand points out is:

“You should always hang paintings at eye level.”

There is a Jamini Roy on the wall next to the door and two Modernists. Advises Anand, “You have to try different permutations and combinations to get it right.” Making sure that the red theme of the living room isn’t broken, Anand has placed a painting by Sohan Qadri with abundant use of the colour red in the lobby area. Says Anand, “By doing that,

I have extended the space. It makes the drawing room look and feel bigger.”

The difficulty of making your art collection fit around the limitations imposed by the fixed boundaries of a house was faced even by someone as adept as Anand. He says, pointing to a staircase that stands in the middle of the lobby and leads to the bedrooms upstairs, “This staircase was the most challenging. I have put up 50 paintings here and to get it all right was tough.” Anand has used paintings from different genres and periods around the staircase. Should there be a method to the art-hanging madness? Anand answers, “Here it is the concept rather than individual paintings that makes the difference.”

As Anand takes me through his house introducing me to his enviable collection, he leaves me with these wise words about how to hang art: “There is no formula, what you need is a keen eye.”