The Saffronart auction, and Christie’s and Sotheby’s in London, seem to have brought back the sparkle in the art world. But the reality of auctions is far different from the real world market which is still groping. While gallery owners wax eloquent on good times and discounts, one show that caught my eye was a budget beauty of affordable art at Gallerie Nvya at City Mall at Saket, New Delhi.
All works in the show are within Rs 1 lakh and there are some great bargains to be had. However, one must write about the two-paper works of Arpana Caur, the high priestess of the contour in contemporary art. Caur’s first work is a single slipper which she calls Mahatma. Caur is an artist who has, over the years, explored time as a constant and created metaphors of change with certain evocative images. The slipper — ancient in its vitality and minimal in intent — is a physical as well as primary composition because it signifies not just the object, but the travels of the Mahatma who began his sojourn with his philosophy of Satyagraha and ahimsa.
According to German art writer Ernst W. Koelnsperger, “Inside the Indian art circle and in the international world of painting, Caur represents an autonomous quality.”
He says: “She mixes different layers of time, linking them to differing methods of painting... Energy, spiritual power and the world of growth and organics determine the active men in the pictures of Caur... The situation of Indian women, and women in general, becomes intelligible and clear by a timeless presentation.”
On a primary and physical level, Caur’s paintings celebrate the human form. The self-taught artist is particularly known for her sensitive depiction of women. Swamping her large-sized canvases with resonant colours and motifs, she perceives and profiles her protagonists in their physical as well as cerebral landscape. Her heroes could be ordinary people or evolved souls, mendicants and mystics. Interestingly, these two paper works with pastel are brilliant conceptions that echo her tryst with time.
Look closely and you find that Caur’s work can be seen to continue the line begun by Amrita Shergil. It is feminine and feminist in its perspective, with portraits of women placed in a contemporary urban context. The erotic is downplayed in favour of the sturdy: the critic Gayatri Sinha states that in her paintings, “there is no hint of an expressive sexuality; woman and nature are both symbiotically tied in a circle of perceived threat and uncertain renewal.” Her work responds to the surroundings and events of her life, from the crowded Patel Nagar of her childhood to events such as the rape of Maya Tyagi and the widows of the Chasnala mining disaster.
Punjabi literature influenced Caur’s artistic perspective, and writers, such as Shiv Batalvi, Amrita Pritam and Krishna Sobti were visitors to her home. The literature and philosophy of Punjab contributed to the strains of melancholy, mysticism and devotion that may be felt in her work, while the Pahari miniature tradition provided inspiration for Caur’s manipulation of pictorial space. Despite her diverse influences, however, Caur’s subjects remain firmly rooted in the quotidian world of the woman, showing women engaged in commonplace acts such as daydreaming or typing.
The repeated motif of clothing in Caur’s work both confirms and subverts the traditional picture of women. Sinha writes that "the image of women sewing quietly, within the acceptable parameters of femininity, is in a way liberated by Caur, as the woman is placed outdoors, embroidering larger destinies. Instead of a feminine, income-producing function, it becomes a political comment on women’s productivity.”
Both the works at Gallerie Nvya reflect Caur’s femininity as well as her commitment to the mesmeric power of the contour. What is arresting in both works is the incorporation of abstract and textured spaces. This was a much-later development in keeping with her slow and steady progress based on her own perception and experience. This is the basis of the authenticity of her art and its continuity.
Her earliest works are those of an outsider looking at the colourful world of galleries behind plate glass, but then there are works of the mid-’70s that envisage the breaking up of that window to “let the outside in”.
In fact, the inside-outside theme predominates in her work of this period. She contrasts the drabness of one sphere with the brightness of the other. What is interesting is that the duality does not hold her down. Sometimes the inside is drab, sometimes the outside. She is her own master and these two works are the crown of the latest show.