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Ashrafi S. Bhagat

Articulations: Voices from Contemporary Visual Arts By Aditi De Publishers: Rupa & Co. Price: Rs 495

It's a wonderful feeling to meander through some of India's finest creative minds. The publishing industry has proactively brought out books on art in the past decade. There has been an outpouring in diverse formats ranging from monographs on individual artists or groups of artists to schools responsible for the development of modern art. A publication featuring a series of interviews with the best creative minds of the country makes for interesting reading. Articulations: Voices from Contemporary Visual Arts by Aditi De gives insight into the artists' methodologies, ideologies, their concerns and interests, providing the reader a better comprehension of emerging visual statements. Aditi makes audible those particular "voices from contemporary visual arts". Cast into the role of icons through their creative upsurge, these artists have been instrumental in establishing trajectories that defied the normative and stereotypical, to configure artistic assertions that make them individualistic. Nineteen artists find their presence in this book.

Through interviews, the author has deftly portrayed the constellation of artists that dot the Indian visual art galaxy. Well known names from the field of painting, sculpture, photography, design and cartooning, they largely signify their presence in the book for their unique role in shaping the contours of the emerging trends in modern and contemporary Indian art.

The classification by the author indexes each artist's intellectual arbitration in choosing to work with a particular set of ideology, concepts or mediums that inherently define their vision. The book has been laid out with descriptive captions that symbolically become the voice of the artist.

Thus the contents read as follows: The Creative Canvas: K.K. Hebbar, Akbar Padamsee, J. Sultan Ali, Manjit Bawa, Jatin Das; Easel of the Eye: M.F. Husain; Master Strokes from Madras: Achuthan Kudallur, V. Viswanathan, K. Haridasan, Redappa Naidu; Shades of Satire: R.K. Laxman; Gender as Genre: Nilima Sheikh, Rekha Rodwittiya, Arnawaz; Politics of Art: Altaf and Navjot; A Brush with Bangalore: S.G. Vasudev, Yusuf Arakkal; The Fine Art of Design: Dashrath Patel.

The author uses interviews as the medium to encounter and communicate with the artists. Through relevant probing and empathetic questioning, Aditi opens up the artist's mind space, winding through the maze of his/her complex interpretation of contemporary life. Making the book significantly reader friendly is Aditi's lucid, pictorial and versatile language that firmly grips, in either allowing the reader to saunter with her or/and halt contemplatively as the reading demands. Particularly, one does not easily associate Husain as a photographer in the early 1980s. Singularly, his intervention within the domain of popular culture, capturing through the brush of his camera and painting with light, the cinema hoarding abounding in the city of Madras. On the contrary, by portraying R.K. Laxman, she opens the space for the alternative art of cartooning within the larger domain of fine arts and design. Or, for that matter, Dasrath Patel's experimental and economical forays into the world of design from the scaffolding of fine arts.

In the Author's Note, Aditi clarifies her reason for these direct interactions with the artists and the kind of questions she raised. What makes them tick? How do they relate to our social content? Do audience, readers and other `consumers' of art relate to them as flesh and blood people? And many other questions on the artist's relation to the institutionalisation of art and the common public.

Through sensitive interrogation she throws light on various issues that concerns his/her creative realm and the desire for recognition and acceptance. She negates the perception that the artist can only be a creator and is not capable of assuming other roles. In her note, she highlights the artist as an activist using the instance of Rekha Rodwittiya and her feminist interventionist ideology that tends towards de-eroticisation of the male gaze. She also interacts with the student community and even prisoners (Liverpool 2001).

Navjot raises issues of the status of urban artist versus the rural, questioning the divide between artists and craftsperson and the quintessential urban conceptual artist signing a work created with the aid of another skilled hand. Or Arakkal who, inspired by Picasso's seminal work `Guerinica', created a large 15' x 6' triptych, as a sensitive being reacting to communal disharmony in Gujarat to lodge his protest, as he could not intervene directly.

Aditi, in venturing to publish the interviews recorded over a period of 21 years, beginning 1980, has marvellously provided a large canvas of visually interactive dialogue with artists from different parts of the country. As printed words they will remain enduring vignettes of artists' personality and their intellectual bearings on variousissues ranging from art to society and politics. What is loud and clear is their passionate commitment and single-minded pursuit of their vision, in the face of sheer apathy to modern or contemporary expression.

Nearly all of them passionately feel the lack of exposure and proper instructions in art at the school level, confirming that it is not merely drawing and painting but the larger question of art education that would enable future artists to conceive ideas and communicate them both visually and verbally. All of them speak strongly against the apathy of apex cultural institutions towards the patronage of arts, and the politicisation and nepotism rampant in them. The book opens up opportunities for academic ventures, particularly research, within the realm of visual arts.

The cerebration of contemporary creative and artistic expressions are facilitated through such dedicated and open-minded efforts. The artists' responses offer insights to art historians and critics. Since culture studies are primarily premised on interviews, reviews, monologues, dialogues etc, this book will go a long way in enhancing the study of contemporary Indian art.

With a foreword by Sadanand Menon, the book also offers select bio-data of each artist. The font size makes for easy reading.

Picture by Raghavendra Rao

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