We Aksi Make Art

How would you expect the company that also makes steel to pay tribute to the countrys national heroes and commemorate fifty years of independence? By installing the latest in the line of ladle furnaces and slab casters? No. TISCO would never settle for anything quite so predictable. Instead, the soaring white columns and well-mowed lawns of Tata Steels Russi Mody Centre for Excellence (RMCE) was venue for a three-day artists camp to commemorate the occasion.

There was Jamshed J Irani, managing director of Tata Steel, gingerly wielding the paint brush, rubbing shoulders with some of the front runners in the contemporary art scene. As the 19 painters and sculptors from the Society of Contemporary Artists poured into the RMCE at 10 am sharp on Netaji Subhas Chandra Boses birth centenary to finish their work, the green belt of the city of ferro alloys stirred itself awake to another frenzied session with chisel and paint brush.

The camp site was reminiscent of a small town mela. A counter in a corner served hot drinks and snacks. Clipped to easels stood half-done paintings; paint brushes and palettes lay strewn about. And the infectious air of bonhomie about the place attracted local residents, who came to watch and muster the few autographs they could.

Irani had mastered the perfect line for the occasion. The art camp is part of our community welfare project, he said, where the city itself would have an enriching experience in the world of art. It is a tribute to the people of Jamshedpur.

Barring a few biggies like Bikas Bhattacharjee, Sanat Kar, Manu Parikh, Sunil Kumar Das and Amitava Banerjee, nearly all members of the Society of Contemporary Artists had travelled from Calcutta and Shantiniketan to the camp to contribute colourful strokes to the steel grey city. Senior painters like Ganesh Haloi, Shyamal Dutta Ray, Dharmanarayan Dasgupta, Lalu Prasad Shaw, B R Panesar, Suhas Roy and Sailen Mitra shared their views with younger painters and sculptors like Bimal Kundu, Aditya Basak, Manik Talukdar, Manoj Dutta, Sadhan Chakraborty and Swapan Kumar Das.

Tata Steel provided the equipment and financed the project, costs running into a few lakhs. The steel giant also promised to contribute a sum of Rs 2,500 per artist to the guilds medical trust fund, apart from a token Rs 7,500 to each participant as a goodwill gesture.

The artists, on their part, were to complete at least two pieces of art by the end of their stay. The organisers could claim one of the pieces as a keepsake, while the rest were displayed by Chitrakoot Art Gallery at an exhibition-cum-sale on January 27. For senior artists like Ganesh Haloi and Shyamal Dutta Ray, whose works command an average market price of Rs 40,000, the compensation was but a token. It is Tata Steels contribution towards the medical fund that has been the incentive, they said.

Of course, the experience was not free of minor travails for the artists. For one, the artists per force had to choose between oil and acrylic. Lalu Prasad Shaw and Aditya Basak were very evidently ill at ease with the medium and the quality of the canvas. The first coat of paint is taking too long to dry because the canvas is definitely not top grade. We should have specified the quality of the material, Basak complained, chain-smoking, waiting for his canvas to dry.

The workshop situation also demanded a difficult pace of work. Ganesh Haloi and Shyamal Dutta Ray missed the quiet of their own studios. And since Tata will be choosing one of the works for their own collection, I cant work with a free mind. The work will have to match the taste and need of the organisers, said Haloi, adding splashes of green on his second landscape in the abstract. The first, more hastily done work is ready. Haloi felt that this would be the organisers pick chosen as it had been done on more simplistic lines.

The constant flow of visitors also began to get irksome. The crowds got to be a major problem at the first Tata Steel art camp in 1993, so this time the site is not visible from the gates of RMCE, says Dasgupta, deftly sketching a human hand holding a stick of charcoal protruding from a flower vase.

My style of working always ends up in a personal struggle between the painting and the creator in me. It is only when I have been able to conquer all the elusive colours and the strokes, that I actually begin to give my work final shape, said Haloi, who was beginning to find the inquisitive peering over his shoulders rather alarming. The sculptors were more comfortable with the crowds. Bimal Kundu , Niranjan Pradhan, Ajit Chakrabarty and Manik Talukdar managed to give wonderful shape to scrap iron and waste material from the Tata Steel factories.

The salubrious surroundings and Hafis Contractors architecture could not quite satisgy the artists. Art camps of this kind are in vogue but one wonders about the quality of work produced in the process, mused Haloi. More so, if your time and equipment have been paid for by corporate houses.

But all grievances were forgotten in the evening as the art camp members exchanged niceties over tall pegs of Scotch at an elite gathering of the top brass of Tata Steel at Iranis residence. Said Manoj Dutta, This is a rare opportunity for self-taught painters like me. I was working in acrylic for the first time, with some useful tips from Dutta Ray. Dutta has made 50 years of independence the theme for both his still life works.

Sponsorship of art by corporate houses is passe now. Tata Steel itself has had a long innings at it, one of their first efforts being a calendar in the 60s depicting Indian art. This occasion too will find its way to households across the country, Tata Steels choice works tucked between the pages of diaries.