Heavy Fuel

Good question, since Tulis taking his biggest gamble yet a maiden foray into the world of art in the form of his book, The Flamed Mosaic: Indian Contemporary Painting. With a Rs 4,000 price tag spiralling it into the upper echelons of coffee table books, this hefty tome is being projected by its author-producer as the only one of its kind, much more comprehensive than most.

Comprehensive is about the size of it. The book originally weighed 14 kg, but was edited down to about half that, a gesture that will be appreciated by readers and their wrists. The launch, held at Calcuttas Oxford Bookstore a few weeks ago, was attended by artists such as Veena Bhargava, Paritosh Sen, Dharmanarayan Dasgupta and Shuva Prasanna.

 

This is not just another coffee table tome, claims the author, who produced the book under the aegis of The Tuli Foundation for Holistic Education and Art (HEART) in association with Mapin Publishing. Tuli avers, The Flamed Mosaic will filter down to the masses and build an integrated infrastructure for contemporary arts with a focus on the holistic roots of knowledge. The book is subsidised and heavily underpriced, according to Tuli, who points to the prices in the global artmart.

To underline the fact that this is a serious event, more launches are in the offing. On February 28, The Flamed Mosaic debuts at the brand new National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai, after which it will travel to Delhi, Baroda, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Madras. A festival of Indian contemporary art is also in the offing, to be held in March and April this year.

Thats quite an agenda, accomplished with a little help from the corporate world. Corporate houses have an arrogance; they feel that the economic value system has the power to absorb the aesthetic value system, says Tuli, quickly adding that sponsorship is the stepping stone to a better relationship between the worlds of art and business. Twenty thousand copies of The Flamed Mosaic were sold in advance to about 35 organisations including some top-notch corporate houses to raise Rs 55 lakhs towards production costs.

Immaculately dressed in loose, milk-white trousers and shirt, his gelled dark hair set in long careless locks, Tuli could easily pass for a fashion designer. The resemblance lasts only until you discover that he has been deeply involved in the artmart since 1993. A graduate from the London School of Economics (LSE) and St Catherines College, Oxford, Tuli is not enthusiastic about promoting the Queens English back home. He consciously drops his gs from his verbs: Were losin respect for literature, and Im in the process of creatin a book and seducin laymen into some serious readin, without makin compromises. Somethin everybody would be proud of.

Tuli prefers not to elaborate on his personal life, volunteering only that his early schooling was in Mumbai, that he married while working on this project and that his parents live in Delhi. Jetting between UK and India, Tuli was drawn into the world of art after he took in an auction here. It was merely curiosity at the beginning, and being an outsider to the art community, there were few pre-conceptions, Tuli says.

HEART was formed in short order, with a team of advisors featuring names like Rupika Chawla, Mallika Sarabhai, Pheroza Godrej, Renu Modi, Rajit Kapur, Priya Paul, Reshmi Poddar, Ebrahim Alkazi and Professor Mehgnad Desai. The perfect mix between aesthetics and economics, in other words.

Most of the work for the book was done the same year by Tuli, though the book itself took three years to be published. Private collections and organisations were tapped by Tuli in order to photograph the original works. I visited several Indian metros and small towns, clicking about 400 pictures and putting together the fragmented world of 48 artists, he says. The editing, several kilos worth, was done by Shernaz Cama. Abridging proved to be the major difficulty, admits Tuli. I chose to present my first meetings with various artists, rather than later dialogues, in the form of abridged conversations. In passing he adds that he had been working on six projects simultaneously; the book was just one of them.

Covering over a century of history, The Flamed Mosaic attempts to explain the unifying nature of aesthetic force through which art moulds and reflects contemporary life. The works displayed cover a wide range of media from acrylic, oil, enamel and gouache to charcoal, tempera and water colour. There are 307 illustrations, over 266 of them in colour. Tuli goes into great detail on how creativity and aesthetics can help build a value system. I have spent most of my time fighting a system which is corrupt, he comments.

He shelved new artists: Thats a totally separate project. Shantiniketan muralists have been well-represented, with Tuli displaying the works of Somnath Hore, Benodebehari Mukhopadhyay and KG Subramanyan in great detail. Hore, Vivan Sundaram, V S Gaitonde, Jeram Patel have been presented back to back with MF Husain, Ganesh Pyne, Jogen Chowdhury, Anjolie Ela Menon, Satish Gujral, Bhupen Khakar, A Ramachandran, Krishen Khanna, Gieve Patel, Akbar Padamsee, G M Sheikh, J Swaminathan and others.

However, some art lovers and connoisseurs have their reservations. Says Dharmanarayan Dasgupta, The book concentrates on artists from north India and is not very comprehensive. It also lacks value-added knowledge. The problem is that such books, because of their material value, will be preserved in archives, libraries and art galleries for the future.

It remains to be seen whether this wager will pay off, but Tulis covering his bets. In case his non-fiction debut flops, hes hoping that his first novel, Mosaic of Missing Pieces, waiting in the wings for a nod from the publishers, will do the trick.

Tulis future projects include a wide range of publications and films to establish photographic and textual documentation of contemporary Indian art, all on CD-ROM, with a documentation centre and an educational complex thrown in too. Will one of these work out? As Tuli himself might say, you can bet on it. n

Corporate houses have an arrogance; they feel that the economic value system has the power to absorb the aesthetic value system, says Tuli