Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?
| Artists are remarkably reclusive, but Nemai Ghosh documents them at work in a rare book of art. | |
| This much at least has been common knowledge "" that unlike their Western counterparts, Indian painters abhor the easel (with exceptions like Krishen Khanna, Akbar Padamsee and Jehangir Sabavala). They'll lay their canvas out on a table, spread it on the ground or prop it up against a wall. | |
| They'll reach up with the help of a ladder, but more often paint standing up on a rickety stool. They'll listen to devotional music, order endless cups of tea in glasses, deny intrusions (understandably) into this territory, sometimes not even carry their mobile phones into their studio (as Anjolie Ela Menon famously claims). | |
| Some prefer the early morning, others will clock in a nine-to-five working day, still others will paint into the night. An artist's studio, for all the little bits of information that leak out, is essentially a lonely place where they struggle to make sense of the yawning white that faces them. | |
| Now, with a little help from photographer Nemai Ghosh, and a bunch of art writers, we know a little more of what goes on behind those closed doors. This is where F N Souza would confront his nightmares: "I hate the smell of paint," he writes. "Painting for me is not beautiful. It is as ugly as a reptile." | |
| Many might say this is also true of his art "" there is something that is fascinating but also revolting about his paintings. Writes Geeti Sen in Faces of Indian Art (Art Alive Gallery, Rs 6,500), a book that traces the works of 52 artists through their studios, "The creative process is not programmed beforehand, or easily divulged even to those who create, who do not fully comprehend how their work evolves... It becomes then a fascinating experience to watch them in the studio." | |
| Some of us may be privileged to be invited into artists' studios, or to be able to bully our way in to observe Jogen Chowdhury draw a "curving nonstop line to inscribe a sultry sensuous woman", to watch Ram Kumar layer "thick impasto colours directly on canvas", or observe Gulammohammed Sheikh's "smudging of black ink with fingers to effect the vibration of trees", but for the vast majority of those whose closest contact with an artist will be their works of art hung up in a gallery, Nemai Ghosh's outstanding photographs documenting artists at work in their studios is a truly outstanding achievement. | |
| Ghosh, before he found his muse among the world of art (thanks to Manjeet Bawa and the book's editor, Ina Puri), was the shadow that dogged Satyajit Ray, camera in hand, recording every living, breathing moment of the filmmaker, bereft of a life outside Ray's studio or life. | |
| Yet, even in that hypnotic, charmed circle, he had captured "" inadvertently perhaps "" the artist Benodebehari Mukherjee at work. Satyajit Ray was making a documentary on the artist, Mukherjee was painting, Ghosh took his pictures, but the question that he took away with him was profound: How did the visually impaired artist paint? | |
| Ray's interest in art, Ghosh's assignment to photograph Rabindranath Tagore's paintings and sketches in Santiniketan, chance meetings with collectors and other artists, it all added up. | |
| Ghosh found himself invited to senior artists' studios, his camera never far from him, and soon enough he had a respectable portfolio of shots, enough to enable Art Alive to commission him to shoot some more for a book. | |
| Shattered after Ray's death in 1992, it proved a (somewhat late) healing commission for Ghosh. "In the process of this project, the void and emptiness filled," he says. "I am ready once again to face the challenges life has in store for me." | |
| Although some portraits in the book date from the seventies, the majority were done in the last years, and reveal, alongside commentary by Geeti Sen, Keshav Malik, R Siva Kumar and Samir Dasgupta, facets that are engrossing. | |
| M F Husain, for instance, never far removed from his cell phone "with its ringtone of a rooster crowing, crowed intermittently with calls from friends and collectors across the globe" even as the grand master "moves like lightning, loath to waste a single moment, painting, painting, and painting". | |
| K G Subramanyan "works with the brush held upright and above the middle of the handle" signalling the "absence of a plan that holding it at either ends would have suggested". | |
| Akbar Padamsee works from his "tony South Mumbai apartment" where the "raucous babble of the streets below is muffled", perfect, it might appear, for his nudes "lost in soliloquy". Jeram Patel's studio "has a weariness about it", the result perhaps of "stacks of newspapers, piles of books, a flight of stairs leading to another floor he often finds difficult to climb". | |
| In sharp contrast, Himmat Shah, "a man who has no attachment", his new studio notwithstanding, has "no baggage", only "a collection of books". Sakti Burman paints from a "sun dappled room that is filled with the presence of his family", the studio "cluttered with paintings in various stages of completion, deep armchairs and assorted bric-a-brac". | |
| In contrast, Rameshwar Broota's "workspace is reminiscent of a monk's cell, books in steel almirahs, a worktable bare but for a computer...the walls are empty but for a concession made to a portrait of his beautiful young daughter". | |
| Ganesh Haloi begins his day "with a cup of tea in his studio...the early morning sun streaming in through the open windows" in a routine that has never varied. | |
| Arpita Singh's treasures "" white cushions on low divans, yellow rugs, bottles, a bookcase, a family clock "" are "assimilated into her paintings: chairs, tables and sofa sets, clocks and bottles, rugs and pictures come alive, talking to each other in a make-believe world of magical enchantment". | |
| Anjolie Ela Menon, in her bustee studio "often paints seated on the floor, listening to music". Yusuf Arakkal sometimes sits down "on his haunches to work, sometimes stooping by a tilted easel". | |
| Prabhakar Kolte "is much like a cook in a kitchen", the analogy not so much because he wears shorts and an undershirt to paint but because of "the mess of paint and drippy tubes". | |
| Manjit Bawa, now tragically in a coma, "loved the mountains and for him his large wood-panelled studio in Mehar's Hotel, Dalhousie was the ideal escape from (the) demands of city life" There "he was up at the crack of dawn and in the studio through the day sketching, painting, working patiently...the only breaks he allowed himself were walks in the forest and, on occasion, long drives". | |
| And myriads of other insights, such as rum-loving Paritosh Sen articulating his ideas through shelves full of books, S H Raza sifting through five decades of collected memorabilia on India to paint his distinctive idea of India at his studio in Paris. | |
| If Sabavala is "duly distanced from the trite of the day", Ram Kumar "sees the world as if from the heights, remotely, with a sober eye". Krishen Khann likens painting to cultivating "a piece of earth" and Satish Gujral is "a dual creature aware of existing in radically different spheres, governed by different laws". | |
| Tyeb Mehta's "terse line drawings...speak out his agony", Shyamal Dutta Ray's "Calcuttan Vintage" works have been created in "cooped up suburban spaces", Paramjit Singh sustained his passion for landscape from studios in Delhi and in Andretta in the Himachali Himalayas, Madhvi Parekh fills her studio "with books, paintings and the paraphernalia one gathers as one inhabits a space over two or three decades", while Sudhir Patwardhan, now that he has given up his medical practice, "works alone through the day" in a "clean and quiet space, with book-lined walls and a few chairs". | |
| Amit Ambalal paints as the radio fills "the large room with voices, songs and commentary", and Vivan Sundaram sits at a worktable, its legs entirely made up of empty Coke and Heineken cans. Nilima Sheikh's studio "is spacious", its "huge windows looking out to...lush verdant trees", while Amitava Das "by choice, prefers to work in an enclosed space, womb-like". | |
| The text is often inconsistent, a critique of works in some cases, art history in others, instead of documenting the works in progress and the studio environments the book hopes to showcase. | |
| But the pictures are evocative of the environment these artists have created for themselves, ephemeral worlds rooted in the reality of the smell of paint and the logistics of stacking canvases, mixing paint, letting in light. Hunched over their work, lightly kneeling forward, or towering over a canvas... | |
| Nemai Ghosh's pictures tell a hundred stories each.
| |
