For some artists the idea is central to their creation of canvases. It allows no room for either the familiar or the sentimental
In December last year, when Christie’s auctioned an Untitled painting by VS Gaitonde for a record-breaking Rs 23.7 crore , the world—and India—sat up to take notice of the artist who had largely been ignored in his lifetime. Over the years, his fame and market had grown, but only among the cognoscenti. For the average Indian, Gaitonde’s art was difficult to grasp because he did not paint in any recognisable form, the bulk of his estate consisting of colour palettes. Even though these appear luminescent, the result of intense layering, for the average viewer there is no central idea that fixes the image in their mind.
It is this that makes abstract art difficult for most people to relate to. A landscape or a portrait, a still-life, or a work of figurative narration that communicates a key episode, usually from history or mythology but also social situations, make up the bulk of modern art. Even within these genres, distortion can sometimes render them difficult to comprehend. So why does an artist move to the abstract? The primary idea here is to communicate something without giving the viewer anything tangible to hold on to. In the case of Akbar Padamsee, it was his “metascapes” or internalised landscapes. Gaitonde termed his art “non-representational” because it was intended to communicate nothing more than a canvas you could gaze at for its depth and play of colour. On these pages, the works of some of India’s leading artists lay out the richness and joy they stand for in the diverse ways they use to represent the idea of art that isn’t merely about replicating nature and the environment as it exists, but as it appears to them.
ZARINA HASHMI
KCS PANICKER
(This story appears in the March-April 2014 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)