Brush with the bizarre
THE MOST SUCCESSFUL CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS DON’T SEEM TO CARE ABOUT BEAUTIFUL; UNCONVENTION-AL AND UNCANNY ARE WHAT MAKE THEIR WORLD GO ROUND
Athing of beauty may be a joy for ever, but for successful contemporary Indian artists, it is the bizarre and unconventional which gives them the kicks. Modern art, which commands lakhs if not crores, turns logic on its head and sometimes manages to throw up a surprise factor by presenting the extremely ordinary as extraordinary. For instance, I’ll Get You My Pretty — a title with a reference to The Wizard of Oz — by New York-based Rina Banerjee, is an installation that has a three-feetlong, otherworldly creature with a skull in place of its head as the central piece. Hovering above is a huge dome with white lights and below the ready-to-fly monster is a map of the world made of shells, sand and mica. A critic described it thus: “In short, the installation was quite a sight. Bizarre, gaudy, sinister in a darkened room, over-saturated with potential narratives, highly specific, weirdly gleeful and mysterious.” The Kolkataborn artist abandoned a career in science to pursue art and is now supported by leading galleries of the world. Her background in polymer engineering is perhaps responsible for her obsession with different kinds of fabric but she also makes use of disparate objects such as taxidermy alligators and wooden cots, fish bones, ostrich eggs and light bulbs to achieve an effect that often borders on the macabre. Rina explains that in her view, all that is “visible” is beautiful. “The bizarre and unconventional are in fact more visible and they beautify themselves. The poor, the sick, the aging, the hopeless youth... corruption, oppressed... misery of so many… if it could be swallowed by a single beauty, we could all rest in peace like sleeping beauty,” she says. “I think many artists, like other people, are as attracted, if not more, by the unfamiliar.”
Often called India’s Damien Hirst, Subodh Gupta commands huge price tags for his works like the British artist but the comparison also has to do with the seemingly weird installations that both often come up with.
Subodh, who became the first in 2008 to break the $1 million barrier in sales, had made headlines early in his career when, as part of a performance, he lay naked in an open field after smearing himself with cow dung. Another time he went Full Monty after greasing himself with Vaseline. But over the years, he has perfected a style which involves creating art out of readymade objects, especially
As part of a performance, he (Subodh Gupta) lay naked in an open field after smearing himself with cow dung. Another time he went Full Monty after greasing himself with Vaseline
Indian kitchen utensils. Subodh doesn’t think twice before asserting that art is not at all about beauty. “For me, art is about love, it is about time. It is also about reality where there is beauty as well as beast,” he tells us.