I was at an art exhibition this afternoon. It was a strange experience, in that for a very long time now I have seen art in more refined, sophisticated circles, especially if it is a show featuring an established artist. This was more home-grown, more rustic, more (perhaps) gemutlich, rather more pathetic. Frightening, in the context of the media-hyped expositions by personalities like MF Husain, Paresh Maity, Sakti Burman and others, to name just a very few of the luminaries that have PR companies that send me alarming numbers of emails and press releases and, at some stage, images. And, after I just spoke to the artist involved, I realised just how primitive this form of exhibition actually was!
The works I saw were by JP Singhal, once known in Mumbai as a pre-eminent print maker, calendar creator and photographer of the stars. He was not there, but I spoke to him afterwards over the phone. Now 72 and sounding at the start alarmingly tottery, he soon warmed up over the phone to a man who spoke in poetic phrases, albeit rather old-fashioned verse. His voice swelled as he responded to my questions and my interest, and he told me his story with passion, with matter-of-fact practicality, with even gentle self-deprecating humour. He was at one time the biggest name in the calendar business, a man who kept time – days, months and years – for every company in the country and a few outside as well.
Then, he said, he was sidetracked into the film world, where fame – when it comes – is astounding, but oblivion quick, total and brutal. Those who came to him for a start in the movie business (his clients included the now-notorious Sanjay Dutt, Sunny Deol, Anil Kapoor, Mandakini, Zeenat Aman and others) soon turned their backs on him, relegating him to the ranks of has-beens with the cruelty of the here-and-now celebrity. The man who had given up his love for art, his painting, to cater to the demands of a host of filmstars, was now rejected by them.
But he was undaunted, knowing full well, he told me, that he had never gone to them asking for work; they had flocked to his studio, craving his talent and his favour. So he retreated and recouped, finding his inspiration, his creativity, his inner child, he calls it, again. And he started painting once more, portraying his favourite tribal women and children in the ways that he knew so well. Today, he is back in form, he insists, collecting works for a show that will be different and spectacular. When he holds it.
The exhibition I went to was held at an art college in the city. It is a heritage structure, with spiders and their webs that should be as old as the building itself. The walls have peeling paint, the cornices are home to unnamed insect skeletons and mud has created new and interesting mosaics on the cracked stone of the flooring. But the ancient beauty of the structure is no frame for the paintings on display in a hall that is walled with dark blue fabric and dim with bad lighting and clouds of dust. Singhals’s works hung, unlabelled, ever-so-slightly askew, somehow sad, on the cloth backdrop. Stragglers walked in and out, touched the canvas of one, peered at the alarmingly bare breasts of the woman in another and giggled furtively at the blatant display of femininity glaring out of the third. There was no curator to explain what anything meant, no brochure speaking of the artist and no artist to talk to, to find out more.
In today’s world, strange.
No comments:
Post a Comment