Artist Paresh Maity is among the most disciplined people I know. Having observed him up and close, I can avow that he allows nothing to distract him from his early morning wake-up. He takes long, brisk walks and practices yoga vigorously. He might enjoy making a splash in his outré costumes that he designs himself but you will rarely see him at parties — where, he won’t join you for dinner, in any case, because he’s probably already eaten his regulated meal. He’s picky about his oats, he’ll only have herbal tea with ginger through the day, his choice of high-fibre biscuits are not locally available, and freshly cut fruit and juices travel with him in his car every time he sets out on an errand. He doesn’t drink much beyond the very occasional glass of red wine, and he doesn’t smoke.
He might therefore be excused for being perturbed because a recent commission of landscapes for ITC cigarette brand Flake in West Bengal has got the knickers of the anti-smoking lobby in a twist. The familiar Maity landscapes printed on one side of the packets might excite the purchaser enough to ask for the pack with the Howrah bridge print, or the one of Victoria Memorial, but to suggest that it encourages smoking, or that a senior artist should not be associated with a tobacco brand is nothing short of hypocrisy.
Artists cherish public commissions because it’s the closest they can get to a mass market, an attempt to reach out to a public that remains largely wary of galleries and the traditionally elite patronage of art. Which is why they accept commissions for calendars or, at least, happily serve up images of their artworks for any such popular endeavour. But should they accept commissions for mere labels and packs?
The iconic Marlboro campaign with horses in the wild has become a benchmark for a series of equestrian artists who paint, or photograph (and, more likely, Photoshop and photomontage) similar scapes. But cigarette packs themselves have never before carried artworks, a first that Flake seems to have pulled off to distinguish it from other stylishly packaged cartons for which companies spend a good deal of money. In that sense, how different is Maity’s art from, say, some art director’s work, and it would be a poor day when we start shunning people because of their professional association — no matter how close or distant — with a tobacco company.
If Maity’s lyrical landscapes will give the smoker pause to think about the artist’s work and bring him a little closer to art, then it will have served the same purpose that Grover’s wines with their labels by artists Rekha Rodwittiya, Rini Dhumal, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Jatin Das and — oh dear — Paresh Maity, did. Have these artists promoted wine drinking? It would be silly to imagine so, but if in the bargain wine drinkers have enjoyed the art on the label, surely there’s something to be said for it.
Wine and liquor at least have historically had associations with art, not least Andy Warhol and his work for Absolut that has since become pioneering, so that artists in different countries — India’s Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher included — have created works of art around its bottle. In the past, art was used to sell everything from textiles to sewing machines and medicines before being replaced by photography, glamorous models and graphics. But anyone can make a case for its return, whether on chocolate packs or condensed milk tins, and if Flake has chosen to show the way with Paresh Maity’s pictorial aesthetics, I, for one, am all for it.
Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated
