He won’t talk prices, but Anoothi Vishal catches artist Subodh Gupta experimenting with some unusual materials in his sprawling new “dream” studio.
“No one can tell me what not to do here,” says artist Subodh Gupta with obvious pride in his voice. “There are no landlords who can complain about paint being spilled on the floor or nails driven into the walls to hang canvases, or noise… it’s mine to do as I see fit… as for noise, you can’t even hear what is happening on the floor below,” he adds.
The concept of space may mean different things to different people. And Gupta is the first to acknowledge that a big studio is hardly a necessity for great, or even good, art: “There are artists who work out of their briefcases because their medium allows them to.” But apart from the sense of ownership that accompanies it, one’s own space can be strangely liberating too. And that’s something that Gupta is finding out.
In the process of setting up what he calls his “dream studio” — sprawled across two huge floors designed by architect-friend Rajiv Saini; one that functions as his private work area, the other for assistants, and a basement to allow for storage of his larger works — Gupta finds that his new and larger domain allows him to think more freely as an artist. “You can judge something better… distance yourself from it…” he points out practically enough, before turning around to face a new series of paintings-in-progress lined up in his office. “I look at these every day, wondering what to do next.”
In the modest, rented flat in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, where Gupta began his journey almost two decades ago, “painting, cooking, living and having our children in the same space”, this kind of creative freedom would never have been possible. “There was a time when I worked on a painting that was the same size as the floor in the room. So I had to take the bed out when I wanted to work and take out the work when I wanted to sleep,” he says. It has been a long journey since and even if the artist is today reluctant to talk of (falling) prices, those are days he will never visit again in all likelihood.
In its place has sprung up this dream studio (Gupta doesn’t quite remember the exact area but reckons “it must be about 4-5,000 sq feet”.) where we sit comfortably on a scorching afternoon, sipping homemade buttermilk from a new mini fridge in a corner. The couch, spacious, comfortable but simple, has been designed by Gupta himself as has his large work table, strewn with odds and ends, that shows up a shiny, “ultimate, all-in-one”, as it is called,
24-inch iMac desktop computer. “I only use iMac,” says Gupta, “It’s like my pencil,” he smiles, asking, “Why must there be this romantic image of an artist who is always poor and with a jhola when everything around has changed so much?” A pencil become a computer?
Next to the work table lies another of Gupta’s new works — a pile of “potatoes”. These are actually cast in bronze, referencing Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters amongst other things, besides reflecting Gupta’s own preoccupations with the humble and the mundane: Steel utensils, if you like.
A pile of the latter sits in one corner (and there’s a dedicated helper removing labels from another pile downstairs), sourced from old Delhi, though Gupta says he’ll be scouting around in Chennai too for more stainless steel, a material he remembers from 30-years-ago when, newly launched for household artefacts, it was considered a luxury. But if the first image that comes to your mind when you think of Gupta is that of gleaming steel, think again.
Gupta’s work space is witness to a new experiment using a startlingly unusual medium to fashion his “utensils” sculptures: The artist is now using marble, the quintessential “rich and beautiful” medium. to express his concerns with the mundane and the commonplace. For a while we talk of this strange juxtaposition before Gupta pips up to say that there is a thin line indeed between advertising and art and an artist’s job is to know it.
On the floor below, the last of the chaotic construction activity is taking place. The studio will be complete in another month’s time. And there are carpenters busily making huge tables where Gupta’s assistants will eventually work. There’s dust waiting to settle, covered up canvases, incomplete sculptures as also a kitschsy shrine to Vishwakarma, the deity of masons, architects, carpenters and the like. Some of Gupta’s biggest sculptures, the 30 x 40 feet ones, happen in factories elsewhere — as we speak, he says, there’s work happening in London and Singapore that he has conceptualised. And he is used to storing works in other people’s (considerably) bigger homes. So strictly speaking, this space isn’t a necessity. But because he’s been able to buy it with his own money, “it is my baby”. The “bad part” about having it may be “if you have the space but are not able to create anything”. That’s an artist’s worst nightmare.
It won’t be visiting this space any time soon, though.
