Finding the elusive India connect

There was an opportunity for me to visit a large multi-use building recently that is as modern as modern can be — replete with miles of glass and chrome and steel — to curate appropriate works of art to populate their space, not losing sight of the India connect. For sheer reasons of the vastness of the spaces and their multi usage made the task a relatively challenging one. Needless to say, working within the ubiquitous budgetary constraints is always tight-rope walking. But having said that, keeping the visual aesthetics in place wherein one is making spaces look global and international and yet Indian in genre and idiom is rather intellectually stimulating and aesthetically satisfying from the point of view of keeping art in the focal forefront.

My constant endeavour is to facilitate people and organisations to identify art works that are high in quality so as to build collections and not merely populate spaces with art. After all, art costs money and good art needs huge outlays of investments and my attempt is find long-term investments that will necessarily grow and eventually not only pay for themselves, but also pay for some other works that may not have grown as exponentially. I always quote the example of the Maurya Sheraton Hotel in Delhi, which at one point of time – I think it was in 2006, was evaluated at `300 crore (building and land on prime location) and its art collection was valued at `350 crore. Now I am sure the schism would have grown even further – in favour of art.

While I sift through hundreds of art works to find the one piece that will be a correct fit for a particular space, for me the journey is an end in itself for I immensely enjoy the process. In a way it is like living a dream to see the vision of the idea to fall in place. My attempt is to find the India connect that sometimes proves to be elusive for I choose to stay away from obvious genres like folk, tribal, traditional for these have been done to death. Within these idioms too my effort is to find the really contemporary if quirky examples. My current favourite is a selfie-taking couple in the Kalighat style. A Madhubani style painting with the Ganga emanating from Lord Shiva’s matted locks and ending up polluted as it reaches the ocean is a perennial darling. We as a culture have very conveniently overlooked contemporary idioms in the folk, traditional and tribal and like to paint them into the museum or kitschy corner and not as a living vibrant tradition that it is.

When taking of global connects, I find that while we have a fabulous footprint of classical dance and music — it is a matter of great pride that our classical dancers and musicians have spread the word as great cultural ambassadors in remote parts of the globe — many of them are visiting professors in universities in the US and Europe. However, the outreach of Indian visual arts for several reasons has not been even comparable.

The reasons are not too far to seek. We, as the art fraternity and our audiences, have supported figurative art in the guise of appealing to the rock bottom denominator, we as curators and art patrons have played along. That is the starting of a lopsided growth of a kind of art. For figurative art tends to be region specific and consequently doesn’t have that wide an appeal especially in the international arena. Out of its regional context it might find place as best as a small size curio, but can never really hope to find too many takers in a larger context or space.

Admittedly it is also to do with a lack of sensibility for cultures beyond one’s own purview of experience. In any case, the levels of diversity in the Indian context are also mind-boggling. But it is also true that figurative art of different genres in the same space tends to look overcrowded. However, the same style or same artist in small doses can look soothing thanks to continuity. I was reminded of a line that an architect friend used to say — a building and its interior space must breathe with one person’s breath. The architect, curator and furniture/interior designer should ideally be aesthetically on the same page from the very early planning stage. For sometimes works can look super imposed like patchworks stuck/pasted on to buildings. But it is always not possible for sheer reasons of logistics, but it is a Utopian dream that I always like to nurture.

The policy of new public buildings which have to now follow the rule of two per cent of the total cost of the building for acquiring art works before getting a completion certificate is one of the best ideas for sustained patronage. However, this percentage can be increased to make it attractive and viable for the artists to sell to institutions at a logical price and not necessarily the market price. Not for a minute am I propounding compromising quality, but a relatively equitable distribution goes a long way in making arts self-sufficient. For their part, artists too should support such ventures for it should be a matter of pride to have your work as part of the national institutions.

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com