Indian artists exhibition

The creative edge of Marxism SUNEET CHOPRA The art exhibition organised in connection with the CPI(M)'s 18th party congress gave Indian artists an opportunity to come together to restore the perspective of an independent and secular India. PICTURES: K. SATISH Ankur Rana's painting is a comment on Marx for today's youth. THE art exhibition, `People in Progress', inaugurated by Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet at the Arpana Gallery of the Academy of Fine Art and Literature on March 24 to raise funds for the 18th congress of the party was significant for many reasons. First, not since artists like Nandalal Bose and his Santiniketan friends helped decorate the venue of the Haripura Conference of the Indian National Congress in 1936 have so many artists come forward to support a political party cause. There were 85 artists represented in the exhibition. And the quality of the paintings, drawings and photographs they contributed was so high and the concerns they evoked so genuine that it was not difficult to sell them to raise funds for the congress. The vision of the exhibition was clear. It began with a powerful anti-imperialist work by Veer Munshi, an artist from Kashmir, presenting the oil-greedy policy of United States imperialism as destructive, savage and negative. But anti-imperialism by itself was not the sum total of the presentation. Rahul Arya's life-size painting of a rickshaw-puller resting after a long day. Next to Munshi's painting was the work of Dharmendra Rathore of Rajasthan - a village youth contemplating a magnified atomic particle. And next to this was the work of Mohan Singh of the Delhi College of Art, representing a couple of modern young teenagers. The message was clear. The thrust of the 18th party congress was not just anti-imperialist. It also wanted to project a scientific and modern alternative to a crisis-ridden and rotten system controlled by monopoly capital and landlords. The second panel placed contemporary Indian art in a historical perspective. There was a digital assemblage, a photomontage by Vivan Sundaram of his grandfather and his aunt, Amrita Shergil, representing the close interrelation between the anti-colonial struggle and India's contemporary art. Next to it was a peasant family at a fair by the Bengali artist Bijon Choudhury, reflecting the drastic change of the Indian peasant from being a subject to becoming a citizen. And finally, the panel contained a charcoal drawing by former Prime Minister V.P. Singh, who hails from Uttar Pradesh. It showed hand carts lined up like an army of the working class. The second panel also put India's political struggles and the development of its contemporary art in a historical perspective. The two panels were there to remind the viewer that art is a discursive activity reflecting political realities and that these realities are rooted in history which cannot be wished away by glib talk of the `global village' and the `universality' of aesthetics, with our contemporary artists functioning as clones of Western trends. Yati Jaiswal's vision of change with a prespective. Three other paintings held the exhibition together with a binding theme. A large canvas of the young radical artist Yati Jaiswal from Delhi showed ant-like human beings nibbling away at society, but the anthill formed by their nibblings reminded one of an eye. The message that came across was: while people tore down the social structures of the past that oppressed them, a vision was required to effect a change that would carry society forward. This theme of the need for a vision was picked up in a `Bindu' series painting by S.H. Raza and in a large canvas showing an eye, by Anju Badhwar Vora. The message of the three paintings was that while change was inevitable, mere destruction of the old society was not enough to ring in the new. That required vision and organisation, as Karl Marx had pointed out in the Communist Manifesto. From here, one moved on to images. There was the imagery of the Bhakti movement in Arpana Caur's painting of Guru Nanak. Rahul Arya had done a life-size painting of a rickshaw-puller sleeping after a hard day's toil. Abani Kant Dev had done a powerful mixed-media work of a peasant woman drinking coconut water. Atul Sinha had a large sculpture of people welded together. Ritu Singh's red canvas showed a rippling crowd, that gave one the feeling of the life behind the red flag. Saba Hassan had drawn a massive canvas of people and the places they were getting to. Apoorva Desai had created a complex unity of the worker and his product, which was also the theme of Manoj Nayak's painting. Clearly, the artists were willing to express their ideas through their work. Paintings by Vivan Sundaram. "There was a time when intellectuals, and the artists among them, gave direction to our society," said Anju Badhwar Vora. "Today the market does that and we artists are merely models at a fashion show. I am glad to be part of such an exhibition because it allows us to reclaim ourselves from the insulting position the market has placed us in." The exhibition has not only awakened a sense of political responsibility in artists, but has also given their collective effort a chance to challenge the ephemeral five minutes of fame that consumerist society has reduced them to. Participatory masks are off. The artist now mocks them, as Abhimanue does in a major work, `Participants'. Young artist Ankur Rana's painting had Karl Marx pillion-riding on a motorcycle with a guitar on a shirt advertisement in front. Clearly, the younger generation sees Marx in a new light. But there is a warning too, in Soman's red shirt, where he tells the user to wash it in `polluted ideology' or the colour will wear off! Paintings by Bijon Choudhury. It is interesting how artists come out in support of political movements at times of crucial changes. In 1936 they sided with the Congress to counter British imperialism. Now, 70 years later, they have come together with the hope of restoring the perspective of an independent, secular India geared to progress and to cope with the onslaught of consumerism and plunder by the multi-nationals in a unipolar world dominated by U.S. imperialism. Indian artists draw on international influences and appropriate them in their own formats, as Durga Kainthola does with her image of Kali blended with anti-war motifs of Picasso's `Guernica' in a powerful contemporary miniature. They do it, however, with all the expertise and variety that has given Indian contemporary art a global importance. This exhibition showcased the talents of artists like Subrato Kundu, Shamshad Husain, Rahul Arya, Abani Kant Dev, Jagdish Dey and Indrevir. It showed what could be done with ceramics in the abacus-like window art of Siraj Saxena. The trajectory of the independent development of India's abstract tradition was reflected by the works of S.H. Raza, Adimoolam, Sridhar Iyer, Kavita Jaiswal, Vijaya Bagai, Nupur Kundu and Jenson Anto, to name only a few. Arpana Caur's portrayal of the journey of Guru Nanak. The photographic medium was used in the works of Vivan Sundaram, Karan Khanna and Murad Ali.