The aesthetic journey
DESIGN
| Some phirangis buying modern art in India for their collections back home "" and good luck to them, who's to understand those scribbles anyway! Gujarati mirrorwork on shirts and jackets, cushions and bedcovers. |
| Circa 2005. A resurgent, confident India unapologetic about its "Indian" music, films, fashion, food "" and aesthetics. No longer stranded about the struggle to define its popular culture. "Kajrare" and "My dil goes mmmm", photo exhibitions selling out, record prices for contemporary art being sprung by unknown Indian collectors back in India. |
| And somewhere, putting it all together, film poster and F N Souza, archival architectural pictures and Jamini Roy, an oomphy Helen still and Chittrovanu Mazumdar, an organisation that has spearheaded the battle for the recognition of India's popular aesthetics, embracing everything from street art to Tyeb Mehta: Osian's. |
| And at the centre of it, the indefatigable energy of its founder-chairman, urging "" exhorting "" schoolchildren to "open your mind, beta". |
| At the Revisualising India exhibition, recently concluded in Mumbai and Delhi, hordes of kids return mesmerised "" the nude in the painting explained in context and, therefore, no longer obscene; the tones of a film still glorified, opening their eyes to greater possibilities. |
| And somewhere within all this, the art teacher, or lunching kitty lady, mesmerised by the possibilities of discovering a new horizon in aesthetics. |
| It is this possibility that is intriguing. Old pictures and new, but still, just photographs "" right? Obviously, that's the wrong answer: for pictures, drawings, paintings, they're all part of the history of a nation. Pictures from a rally or the cinema, paintings of events or merely doodles, they contribute to the development of a nation (and a nation contributes to their development). |
| Therefore, suddenly, the possibility that a photograph of film actress Nutan, or a poster of Gandhiji with other national leaders (one of, perhaps, lakhs) is a rare treasure, that it communicates an Indian sensibility, and that it's quite acceptable to have these next to, say, an Ara or a Raza. And that these might, in fact, evoke a spill of nostalgia or memories, not dissimilar to the arguments that a work of art might result in. |
| Madhubala's crooked smile (as evocative of Marilyn Monroe's flyaway skirt), early 20th century travel posters, architectural photographs from the mid-19th century, Tipu Sultan memorabilia...all of these, together, define a journey that's part of our common sensibility. |
| Yes, one that keeps a space for Jaya Wheaton too. Today's kitsch artist "" tomorrow's rare collectible? Er, perhaps. |