Art: Altaf and Navjot ~ Leaning left, painting right

 (I did this interview in Bangalore in 1997)

Altaf

IT SEEMED like a puzzle to begin with. Jigsaw-like groups of small canvases linked thematically, titled Workers or The Landscape or Behind the Curtain or The Life-death and so on. A maze of picture-sentences, their alphabets in constant evolution. It made sense, until the eye stopped at blank, black spaces at random corners. Was this part of the artist’s spatial overview, we wondered. Or had certain works been left behind at the recent showing at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, where a massive single wall had been crammed with ‘works in small format,’ over 200 of them, like a never-ending pan shot or a panoramic roll of thoughts, not an everyday art show?

“It’s just that some of those smaller works were sold at the Jehangir. And the buyers didn’t want to wait until the show travelled from there to Delhi (in late February) and then back,” explains Altaf, the Marxist thinker as artist, whose works were recently on view at the Sakshi Gallery in Bangalore. And he laughs. A sound that ripples through the air. Through the exhibition space and into the ether beyond.

Navjot

For ideas permeating the ether warm Altaf’s world. As does the parry and thrust of dialectics. Both come naturally to Altaf and Navjot, coupled together by art and marriage, committed to the path of leftist doctrine, following its dictates in both their personal and artistic lives. They have worked with Ekta as artists grouped against communalism in the riot-torn Bombay of 1993, shown their work to aid the Latur earthquake victims, been active with the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust and youth groups like Proyom (Progressive Youth Movement), a cultural group which had students and teachers from various colleges and universities, including artists, writers and poets to raise questions concerning political and cultural issues in the early 1970s and to mobilize the youth. They took their work to schools, colleges and slums through Proyom.

In a bid to demystify the elitist world of contemporary art, Altaf ~ who studied art in London in the early 1960s ~ has taught art and done landmark projects with the socially disadvantaged children of the New Habib High School in Bombay’s Bhendi Bazaar, including a ‘History of India through the Arts,’ covering 1,000 paintings in 1982. Equally committed to exploring new horizons, Navjot ~ a product of the Sir J J School of Art in Bombay ~ has been involved with various similar activities and will soon be interacting  with Adivasi artists working in wood at Kondagaon in the Bastar district of central India to question and understand the stereotypical notions of art and craft. Later, their creative output will be exhibited side by side, to be viewed as contemporary, at both informal and gallery spaces.

Painting by Altaf

 

Navjot is sparkling and spontaneous, willing to engage herself with activities to cast aside social shackles. Softly but firmly, she makes her point. Altaf, gentle and affable, is defined by his ideological stances, accepting obvious contradictions as reality.

What does their leftist ideology mean to them? How does it shape them? At what cost? Has it affected their artistic success? A freewheeling recent conversation while they were in Bangalore offers an overview of this artistic puzzle. Here are excerpts from the interaction:

There is a popular notion of artists as faraway creatures, quietly at work in their studios. But artists are an intrinsic part of society, aren’t they?

Altaf: Any artist working today has to be a part of the reality they are interacting with. After all, they are interpreting imagery that is based on a part of their environment. It would be terrible if the artist was isolated from this reality. Initially, I react in a very subjective way when I’m trying to interpret that onto my canvas. Later, I try as far as possible to objectify that reality so that I can communicate with a much larger audience.

Art by Navjot

Navjot: Artists are intellectuals.  Their political positions are reflected in their works and actions. They like to associate themselves with thinkers from other disciplines. The common man may feel that artists are above the masses, but they are a part of it. They cannot close themselves in ivory towers to create if they choose to take positions, to side with the marginalized and neglected sections of society.

How does that apply in terms of real life events and your work?

Navjot: Consciously, I attempt to make statements about issues and events that affect the progressive political perspective, both as a social and creative being. As I have said earlier, a creative person with a conscious political stand does not want to escape certain responsibilities, and constantly tries to speak through his or her work.

After the 1993 riots, this myth or belief about Bombay being a cosmopolitan city was shattered. Rightwing fundamentalists instigated the riots and then, under the guise of communal tension, builders and the underworld took advantage to grab prime land by destroying certain slums and the properties of the minority community who had been living in the city for generations. I believe it is only when people speak critically about such events that it makes a difference.

You will be amazed to know how active certain organizations and Bombayites were in organizing relief work for the affected. Artists joined in peace marches. SAHMAT organized a Kabirvani and street theatre. We got together to paint a 100-foot canvas at Marine Lines. It’s important that people speak their minds, rather than keeping quiet. It has happened throughout history. Intellectuals have taken up political or critical positions all over the world. Take Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, for example.

Altaf: Sartre and Beauvoir had a critical commentary, but there were other intellectuals in France at that time who felt they should not get involved in something alienated from their field. Similarly, in India, we have intellectuals who do not want to get involved in issues, though committed people do. ‘Intellectual,’ I think, is a bad word. We should say committed thinkers or artists.

Navjot: Since creative people ~ like writers, poets and painters ~ are normally self-employed, they can speak about issues more freely than those who choose to work with the establishment. But it’s not that the masses cannot take a position.

To what degree have these commitments affected your art?

Altaf: When I was studying art in London, we didn’t recognise political consciousness as part of a creative process. We thought of it as something separate, not interconnected. It was only when I started working in a factory in London after my father discontinued my allowance that I met a group of young Marxists ~ Pakistanis, Indians, Sinhalese, East Pakistanis (there was no Bangladesh then). Another student, who was secretary of the Young Communist League, influenced me a lot.

When I returned to India around 1967, there was fantastic turmoil ~ the student movement, the Naxalbari movement, political waves because young people wanted to change a lot of things. On my return, I also met some university professors and students. We had study groups and talked about the left movement in general.

I was painting, but not as much as I would have otherwise. I was confused. I was questioning the whole importance of the act of painting when the social and political situation was in such a flux. It was inevitable that my paintings showed a strong political bias ~ workers, strikes and factories; the contradictions between the management and the workers. Very graphic interpretations. I think, over the years, these have become more subtle. Besides, there are personal and social problems ~ the contradictions a person with my background faces, the alienation we feel as individuals. My art took on a more social context, but the political context has always been there. Only, now I don’t do what would be called Marxist paintings, but I do paint with a Marxist consciousness. I think another artist would tend to look at the same themes very differently.

Painting by Altaf

Navjot: At art school, we were not encouraged to associate ourselves with any political groups or to take strong positions, but my introduction to Marxist philosophy through Altaf at this stage made me aware of the function and relevance of the arts in a society. I had been brought up with the Sufi and Kabir kind of values of humanism, which speak of how to be a good human being by drawing from different religious and cultural values. But it did not really deal with caste or class issues. Marxism has taught me to question, analyse and look at situations in relation to one another.

Like Altaf said about the Marxist consciousness, within that one is constantly questioning. When one has a perspective, one has a clarity about what one wants, which helps in making decisions concerning one’s art practice as well.

In India today, there’s an open debate about art as commerce. It’s often a question of spiralling prices or which names sell. Has your ideology affected you in the art market?

Navjot: Should one say that such art does not sell because in its content it is critical of the establishment and lots of people may have problems with it? Or that works which are non-political in their content do well in the market?

Many of my paintings, which have been sold for high prices, deal critically with political issues. What does affect sales is when collectors feel that a work does not have a resale value ~ such as installation art, video art or art made of fragile or unconventional materials. It is true that many artists who have had strong political stands have had their paintings sell very well but have received little support, after making shifts in their art practices. I have been confronting this problem since I shifted to installation art.

Altaf: Artists have to deal with this contradiction because we all, after all, live in a semi-capitalistic society. We would still like to operate within an organised system, which is controlled by the very people we are critical of. So, this contradiction is part of our struggle as painters.

You are right in saying that art collecting has become a fad. Art collecting has become a social status symbol. But I’d like to believe that there are certain collectors who, in spite of paintings which they find critical of them, look at it in terms of how seriously the artist is working, how deep his commitment is, or how the artist has grown. They’re now looking at artists very differently from what they did ten years ago. That’s a positive thing among the negative things that have happened.

Negative? For instance, artists have gone into status consciousness ~ I mean all of us have ~ thus losing sight of trying to objectively evaluate ourselves. Of course, after the (much-hyped art) auctions, a completely superficial market came up. Many artists got carried away. They put artificial prices to their works, taking advantage of the situation. The young artists especially became so aware of the good market value that, though they’re very talented, their questioning was on a different level ~ like making a good catalogue, rather than the issues they needed to deal with themselves. Now that the market has settled down, I think artists will again start thinking about the issues they need to.

In the Indian context, artists have to be a part of the existing social system. If you could redefine the system your way, how would you do it?

Altaf: If artists didn’t have to work under these economic pressures, we could work on a more collective basis. That would be ideal. Today, everybody is so conscious of individuality, an idea that capitalism has brought in. Yet it is impossible to really be an individual in that we all borrow, take in influences. In society, it’s inevitable that we all interact with others. The Russian thinker Plekhanov said, ‘Art can only become really universal, it can only really go down to the people, when artists disappear.’  

But it was once like that. Look at our temples, our traditional sculptures, the miniature paintings. We don’t know these artists, who worked collectively to produce great works of art. I think capitalism brought in the notion of individuality because they wanted to marketize art. Even in the West, art was initially commissioned by the church or the nobles, usually a mural done on the ceiling or the walls. It’s interesting ~ only after art became a commodity did they start making works that could be transported from one place to another.

Today, we’re trying to follow the West. Many of our art critics and historians are very impressed by them. I think it’s good to categorise; that’s why we have a bio-data in each of our catalogues. To democratize art would be the ideal way, but I think we’re leaning more and more away, becoming more individualistic, more into ourselves.

Wouldn’t the democratization of art mean its popularization to an extent? Has it worked in your lives?

Altaf: On my return from London, I had the option of working in my brother-in-law’s factory or with children. Because of my ideological commitment, I chose the second. The schools I worked with were mostly from a very poor strata, in Bombay’s Bhendi Bazaar. I tried to make my students feel the importance of art in relation to their own reality, but I don’t think I had much success. Art wasn’t really a subject they had to pass. And they had too many other problems to cope with. So, we had fun. I even played cricket with them. But they did some amazing creative work.

Later, when I returned to the same school as a project officer, not an art teacher, I did three major projects in three years. The first was the most important ~ a history of India through the arts from 5000 BC to 1947, for which I collected 1,000 paintings to show their importance visually as social, cultural and historical documents. Later, the State Education Ministry sent notice of it to all the schools in the locality and over 15,000 students saw the project.

Navjot: It’s a relevant point and we did try dealing with it in the 1970s by taking our works outside galleries through Proyom. But in the absence of any such art movement and support, it is very difficult to function on one’s own outside the gallery system, especially if one is showing paintings and sculptures. Also, since we have no real tradition of visiting galleries to see contemporary art, it becomes important to have more public spaces like the Jehangir in Bombay and Triveni in Delhi to generate interest in viewing art. 

Sculpture by Navjot

With the installation art I’m engaged with now, it is possible to move away since there is a relationship between the concept of the work and its place of production. So, no single site may be suitable for different installations by the same artist. I like the possibility of viewers’ participation in installation art. I had intended this with ‘Links Destroyed and Rediscovered,’ a collaborative work.

There’s also the issue of affordability…

Navjot: I personally dealt with this in the 1970s and 1980s. I did black-and-white drawings on Norway tracings to make silkscreen graphics. Signed prints were made available for Rs. 25 or 50 each, and students, journalists, teachers, artists could afford them. I remember buying a signed screen print by Vivan Sundaram for Rs. 5 in 1972 or 1973.

Artists still make good photographic works or xeroxed reproductions. People need to become aware that if they want a work of art, it does not really matter if it is a reproduction and not a canvas or a water-colour. I’d personally prefer to live with a good reproduction than without any work of art.

Has leftism, Marxism in particular, helped the artist community?

Navjot: Philosophy could help an artist to understand the nature of the social set-up that he or she lives in, and the function of art in its historical context. It helps one understand that nothing is static and change is inevitable. But in the context of art practice, the moment an artist problematizes his or her works, by taking risks in breaking away from the expected norms, he or she feels isolated. Philosophy can help analyze how an artist chooses to situate his or her practice. I believe that art lovers and supporters too need to educate themselves to understand the changing needs and shifts in art-making processes. Otherwise, there cannot be a parallel growth.

Has your political stance affected reviews of your work?

Navjot: Critics who understand my stance or believe in a dialogic process have been able to review my work from that perspective. Otherwise, you know what John Berger has said, ‘The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe in.’ And to look is an act of choice.

(Sunday Herald, Bangalore, 1997)

 

Writing: CS Lakshmi ~ The little bird's long journey

(I wrote this in 2005)


The purpose of SPARROW is... to inspire people to find sustenance in the stories of women who have lived before them and women who live and work amidst them.
— Annual Report, SPARROW, 2003-04 

C.S. LAKSHMI of the Mumbai-based Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW) is distinguished by unusual personal qualities. She was in town for the recent release of The World of Maya, a SPARROW trust publication in tribute to the late political cartoonist, Maya Kamath. Originally set up in her bedroom in 1988, its founder-trustee and director Lakshmi took time off to cue us into the archive's work. Such as conscience-stirring workshops for college-goers following the 1992 Mumbai riots.

That's besides documentation of women's studies pioneers such as Dr. Vina Mazumdar and Dr. Neera Desai, legendary writer Mahasweta Devi, theatre activist Mangai and lawyer-activist Flavia Agnes under the Global Feminism Project. Or photographic records of Women and Work in Chennai (including a fishmonger and an idli vendor). Even a book on three generations of women in a Kodava family. Or a tongue-in-cheek, insight-bright media watch on underwear advertising in print — and its impact on customer identity!

"At this point, I see myself as a feminist who has lived without compromise," declares Lakshmi, who holds a Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University on US policy towards 1956 Hungarian refugees from communism. "I've never compromised where my writing in Tamil (as Ambai) is concerned. Nor about funds for SPARROW (mainly from the Dutch agency Hivos since 1997). That's because all our trustees — Dr. Neera Desai, Dr. Maithreyi Krishna Raj, Dr. Divya Pandey and Dr. Roshan G. Shahani — are committed to women's studies and issues."

How did SPARROW, now housed in 2000 sq. ft. of temporary rented space, come into being? While studying women writers in popular Tamil journals in the 1970s, Lakshmi met a generation from the 1930s-50s. "My constant query was: where does their mental and physical space for expression come from? You get amazing answers to that," stresses Lakshmi. "I admired their principles, even when we didn't see eye to eye."

That's when she chose to further research women through non-traditional source materials — such as diaries, letters, even oral history — in a trust initiated with personal funds. "These were considered soft materials, unlike official documents," asserts Lakshmi, still engaged in an illustrated social history of women in Tamil Nadu.

A painting exhibition in 1992 was SPARROW's first major fund-raiser, enabling the archive to shift to a small Juhu room with a part-time librarian. "But when the Mumbai riots happened, we were totally shattered," Lakshmi recalls. "That's when we decided to have a five-day workshop on communal harmony for college students. We showed them films from the Partition onwards. Many participants were attending without telling their parents. We realised how much more we needed to do."

That experience led to oral history student workshops on Dalit life, even tribal struggles. And visual history ones on traditional sculpture or classical dance. Even film-based sessions on popular movies or filmi geet. Transcript-based booklets emerged from each of SPARROW's 14 workshops.

What fans the sparkling-at-60 fire within Lakshmi? Perhaps her nationalistic, Gandhian overview from a post-independence generation. Or could it be her avatar as the lauded Tamil fiction writer Ambai, which first bloomed at 16? Her short stories focus on relationships, brilliantly observed, wryly commented on, totally contemporary. This characterises the Sirakukal Muriyum and Vittin Mulaiyil Oru Camaiyalarai collections, some rendered into English as A Purple Sea. But Lakshmi is equally celebrated for her 1984 critical work, The Face Behind the Mask, a study of women's images in modern Tamil fiction.

"To me, a feminist is a woman who leads a non-degraded life," Lakshmi concludes. "That is every woman's right." To the SPARROW trustees, their work no longer signifies a commonplace bird. Instead, it could be a viable cry in the wilderness.

(The Hindu Metroplus, Bangalore, 2005)

Art: Akbar Padamsee ~ The mind is the man

Akbar Padamsee

FACE TO FACE, Akbar Padamsee resembles the academician rather than the artist at first sight. For his eyes are keenly in quest of insights behind his gold-rimmed glasses. For his mind veers down avenues of thought with amazing grace. For his life appears to be an open classroom, where encounters with the unknown result in illuminating lessons.

Padamsee, at 65, has a reputation that precedes him. As a philosopher, as much as a painter. As a scholar of Sanskrit linguistics. As a creator of mathematical colour graphs. And as a self-defined ‘grammarian of art.’

Trained at the Sir J J School of Art in Bombay (now Mumbai), Padamsee ventured abroad ~ in pursuit of knowledge ~ in the early 1950s. With Paris and Mumbai as his dual home bases since then, his eclectic obsessions have led him down rare and rambling routes ~ delving into Chinese painting, discovering the planes of African sculpture, wandering through the treasures of Italian art. Yet, underlying each phase runs a river of questions, arising from an unbounded desire to seek, to find, to know.

As a result, Padamsee’s work seems like a celebration of cerebration. Whether expounded as ‘metascapes’ or landscapes of the mind, or the much-debated Christ series, or the lauded and luminous nudes. No matter what the theme, the form is subjugated to what he defines as the ‘look’ ~ the underlayers of depth, of emotion, of revelation.

The ‘look’ pervades the series of heads by Padamsee exhibited at the Sakshi Gallery, Bangalore (July 8 to 27, 1993). The paintings, in Chinese ink on handmade paper, are ascetic yet emotive, recalling an atavistic lode inherent in all humankind. The stain, the stroke, the wash, the line are suffused with undercurrents, with thoughts unspoken, with questions unasked.

Seeking to demystify the man behind the mask, one chances upon a sure-footed explorer into uncharted realms, whose open-ended answers spark debate and ignite initiations afresh. He does not shy away from ideas or argument. Quietly, with humour and without dogmaticism, he shares both perceptions and views.

Because, with this artist who carries his fame almost reluctantly, the mind is eventually the man.

To encounter Akbar Padamsee in a 90-minute interview is to be refreshed by frequent surges of discovery, as the following excerpts illustrate:

Do you see yourself as part of the mainstream of 20^th century modern art?

I don’t know what the mainstream is. It’s so vast and varied, and everybody seems to think they are the centre of the world. (Laughing) When Gauguin was leaving France, all his friends said: ‘Why are you going to Tahiti when Paris is the centre of the world?’ He replied, ‘The centre of the world is in my brain.’ Fantastic answer! Every painter should feel that way.

Having lived 20-odd years of your life in Paris, do you feel cut off from your Indian roots?

I went to Paris when I was 21. Luckily, my father ~ a businessman ~ had left me an independent source of income. So, that’s how I went to Europe on my own, not on a scholarship.

Almost all the access I have to India is through books, through literature, through reading. I’ve been studying Sanskrit for the past 15 years, reading texts in the original. The Gita. The Vedas. The Upanishads. To me, that is India.

It all began with a chance encounter in Paris. I came across Vivekananda’s Rajayoga in an American bookshop. He wrote it in English for the western reader. It was so beautiful that I learnt all the sutras by heart.

I said to myself, ‘One day, I must study Sanskrit and read it in the original.’ Twenty years later, I asked my professor at the J.J. School if he’d help me to learn Sanskrit. He asked a Dr. Godbole, who said, ‘I hope you know Devnagiri.’ I didn’t. ‘Then, how do I teach you?’ he asked. (Eyes crinkling with humour). So, I started from scratch, without even knowing the script. I came very late to Sanskrit, which had an advantage because I’m constantly surprised. I read English. I read French. I’m so used to the script that I even prefer Sanskrit in the Roman script!

Has all your life been a quest for learning? Perhaps you’d define it differently….

No, it’s absolutely true. I read for several hours every day. I’m very fond of it. A great source of richness. It gives me access to knowledge. I’m very fond of studying.

Is that a childhood trait? Or one evolved over the years?

I had a very strange school life. I was daydreaming all the time upto the age of 14. When the exams came, my elder brother helped me to study. Maybe I was saved from the kind of education doled out in those schools.

My father died when I was 11. My elder brother, six years my senior, introduced me to good books. Shakespeare. Psycho-analysis. At 14, I read introductory lectures on psycho-analysis, dream interpretations, even the psycho-pathology of everyday life, not quite realizing what it was about. It was like tasting in advance what was going to come.

Besides daydreaming, did you doodle? Or sketch?

There was never a time when I didn’t draw, even at three or four.  My father had this idea that business should enter your blood. Every Thursday, he’d take us to his office ~ to do whatever we wanted, even play! So, I’d draw in his account books.

 (Chuckling) We met somewhere in the middle. I’d been going towards June from December. Laughing, he said, ‘What have you done? Look, if you have to, draw in the margins.’ So, I did, and left the page for his accounts.

How did your stay in France shape you?

To me, the most extraordinary thing about life there was the access to art. Even at the J. J. School, I’d read about Chinese and Egyptian art, my first loves. But it was not until I went to the Louvre that I could see the Egyptian section, the Chinese paintings.

But my great discovery was negro sculpture. The originals were most extraordinary. So radically different from European art. They touched a dimension in me that European art left cold.

I’ve lived in Paris. I recognise that Cezanne is a great artist, but even he leaves me cold. I’m not involved in his work. But when I see African sculpture, I’m deeply moved. But I do have a great fondness for Italian art. Giotto. Piero della Francesca. Cimabue…

(With irritation) In some way, I feel history has been falsified. The Europeans have come up with a cut-off point, the Greeks. The European ego says, ‘We owe nothing to any other tradition but ours.’ No European book on grammar even mentions Panini or Indian linguistics! This is a reflection of not art, but politics. It has nothing to do with culture or thought; it has to do with political decisions. When they talk of world art, there is only Europe for them, with north America on the fringe. But then, they should refer to western art, not world art. The world doesn’t belong to them. 

What of the influence of your travels abroad? Has it had an impact on your work?

About a year and a half ago, I went to China with Ramachandran and Nilima Sheikh. But it made a world of difference because, though I knew the theory of Chinese painting, I’d never seen a Chinese painter use the brush. I even asked a gentleman who was not holding the brush right, ‘If you don’t mind, this is not the way to hold the brush.’ He said, ‘When I teach, I show them the classical method, the way you are showing it. But, when I paint, I hold it like this…’

According to the principles of Chinese painting, the yin-yang, you must load the brush in water first. That’s the feminine force. Then, in the ink. But in China, this isn’t the way they do it now, though that’s how the method originally evolved. They explained, ‘The paper we use is very thin. If we use water, the paper will tear.’

How does Indian art today measure up in the world context?

I feel contemporary Indian art is very important. Only we’ve no throwing power. I’m bombarded with European books, American books, but there is no book on Indian art that measures up. Our publications are miserable. The paper is bad, the ink is bad…

So, we have nothing to show because the infrastructure is not there. (Reflectively) But I don’t think we’ve anything to be scared about. The work is there. Our time will come. 

How do you feel about the recent boom in the Indian art market?

(Sighing) To my regret, the painters who’ve got the highest prices are mostly mediocre artists. But there’s nothing you can do about it because bad taste prevails. In the market, those who’re buying have no idea of what art is. They value art according to their measuring rod, which is of no great consequence.

What would you pinpoint as the basic problems facing Indian art schools today?

The problem is not teaching, it is learning. If you can teach somebody how to learn, then you have achieved something. Most schools have instructors, not teachers. They are just there for the job, or for the money. (Reflectively) You cannot really teach anyone art. But if you can draw somebody’s attention to a book, that is learning. One of the most incredible books that has appeared in the last 50 years in Paul Klee’s The Thinking Eye. It is in two volumes; the other is Nature of Nature. Another great book is by Moholy-Nagy, a Hungarian who was part of the Bauhaus at Weimar.

The way art schools enforce discipline is by making students work. There is no time to ask questions or to think. It is a magnificent method to stop you from thinking. In some prisons, they give you certain drugs to make you sleep. This is a different way of drugging you with work, so that you do not ask questions.

Are you still active in art education?

I love talking and teaching, but the opportunities are not there. The last chance was at the Stout State University, Wisconsin, in 1967 (on a Rockefeller III Fund fellowship), where I was teaching about Paul Klee.

After a week, I was called by the department chairman, who said, “There is a complaint that you are teaching all the wrong things.”  I asked others on the art faculty, “Let us compare notes. Do you know The Thinking Eye and Nature of Nature?” They did not. “Do you know that Mondrian has written a play?” They did not. “Do you know Kandinsky’s spiritual notes?” They did not.

So, I said to the chairman, “Sorry to say this, but your staff is ignorant. Your library lacks these books. I think you need to stock these books and ask your teachers to read.” It is very strange. To go to America… and find this.

(Sadly) Once, at the Artists’ Centre at Bombay, I chose to speak on the Eleven Senses, based on ancient India treatises. There was not the slightest interest or curiosity or astonishment in the audience. So, I said, “Either you are very aware of this and I am saying nothing new. When I discovered this a few months ago, I was totally elated. Were you aware of this?”

No. What they wanted to hear was about the latest things in art… I said, “The latest thing in art is that painting is out!” I was disgusted.

How did you experience film during your Nehru Fellowship in 1969-70, when you set up the Vision Exchange workshop in Bombay for artists and filmmakers? And made four short films, including SYZGY, which animates a set of your geometrical drawings?

We had a compact group of eight or ten, and we worked together for four years. The group included Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, K.K. Mahajan, Nalini Malani, Gieve Patel (he’s a psycho-analyst)… They are all very well-known now.

Once, Mani Kaul wanted mist for a scene. But there was none at the location. Mani said, “Do not worry, just see the results.”

He shot normally, but when we viewed the film, it was all misty. He had pre-shot the reel against a dark wall with special lighting for ‘mist,’ then re-shot it with all the characters. (With animation) Gieve Patel wanted to shoot the Irani restaurant chairs. “I should see only the chair, nothing else,” he told K. K. Mahajan, who got exactly that by using a telephoto lens.

During the fellowship, we had only a vague aim: if people of different disciplines work together, what will happen? I thought we could educate each other. So, Mani Kaul learnt to do etchings. I learnt about photography and film-making…

Should reviewers bridge the gap between the artist and the public?

(Thoughtfully) Quite often, these people can write well, but they don’t have the right response, the knowledge, the sensibility to react. They confer their esteem upon a work that is unworthy. That creates confusion in the minds of readers. But that is a world problem. It is not specific to India.

Now, a place like Paris is very commercial. The art dealers have got the critics in their pay. With each magazine, they say, ‘We’ll give you so much of publicity per year.’ It’s an annual contract. It’s understood that all the exhibitions at the gallery will be well-reviewed. It’s done very subtly. The gallerists ask the critics, ‘Will you write the introduction for the artist’s catalogue?’ And they pay so well that it is disproportionate to his work. The rest is understood.

What phases has your work evolved through? Has your focus, your methods, your motivations changed?

I’d rather talk of some of my permanent preoccupations. Certain obsessions have remained, though the mode of inquiry has changed.

I’ve always been interested in the head and the look. Not the shape of the eye, but the shape of the look. The look has got no form. What is the form of a look? It is the formless aspect of the form. Why does a certain form move you? It’s not because of the form, no matter what its dimensions. It’s something else in it.

(With conviction) I’m very taken up by these three words ~ yantra, mantra and tantra. The suffix tra means instrument. When the mind is the instrument, I say mantra. When the conceptual side is the instrument, I say yantra. When action is important, it’s tantra. Today, people are only interested in doing it. Tantra. They only say, ‘Tell me how to do it.’

The grammar of art fascinates me. People keep saying, ‘Why do you make paintings like these? They’ll never sell.’ But that’s not my concern. I’ve never made a painting with a view to selling. If it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell. 

In this series (at Sakshi), I’m inquiring into how to use a brush. (Forcefully) If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. I haven’t done it so that you like it. I’ve not done it to please you or flatter you or tease you. That’s not my job…You see, I depend on very few people. If I have one collector, I’m saved.

Is there any one medium you find especially satisfying?

I’ve tried many media, but I always come back essentially to ink and brush. Because it is the most direct, the most simple. And I also like to take the unknown into confidence. If I work with brush and ink, I can’t completely do what I want. The ink takes over, the brush takes over, the paper takes over. All that is very welcome.

Some people say, ‘Isn’t that accidental?’ I say, ‘No, that is the unknown. You must have a partnership with the unknown. You are doing something to invite the unknown to express itself.’

But the unknown is so much a part of our daily lives….

In fact, by rejecting the unknown, we are impoverishing ourselves. ‘I don’t trust this. How did this happen?’ Trust it; it’s the only thing that matters. All that you think has been done wilfully is all nonsense. It is only this moment that is the truth. You are rejecting the truth. For what? You’re not trusting yourself. It’s a gift that comes to us, and you’re saying, ‘No, out! I want all the mediocrity of daily existence.’ That is the dross.

What are the greatest rewards of your life as an artist?

The joy of working. As Abhinava Gupta, the 9^th century philosopher, once said, ‘I worship because of the rasaswad.’ There is no reason for distance during the act of worship. In the abstract, there is no duality. It is advait, it is oneness, until you are caught in birth and death, pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness.

The moment I dip my brush in black ink and put it on white paper, that is duality. After the rasaswad, what more than I ask for?

It’s not just painting. I love looking at work also. And reading. Watching films. Anything that gives me food for thought.

Like your favourite lines from the Upanishads?

Yes, I was very moved by these words from the Isa Upanishad. There’s a formlessness about great poetry that moves you. It’s the look, not the eye.

Addressing the sun, the speaker says, ‘Remove the glare, so that I can look at you face-to-face because I’m the very person that’s yonder; I’m the sun myself. When the heat of the sun reaches me, let the body be reduced to ashes; but may the mind remember, remember, remember… Om shanti, shanti, shanti…’

(Originally published in Sunday Herald, July 1993)