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| Charcoal on paper - 10"X18" |
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| Charcoal on paper - 8"X14" |
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In its Euro-centric orientation, art seems to have acquired a rather narrow
(classical) definition, in the minds of the lay viewer - an idealised naturalism of
the tangible world.
Although this unfortunate misconception, in due course
of 'modernity', may have finally been corrected for Western viewers, we in India can hardly
boast of the same.
Thanks to a long and influential history of British colonialism, resulting in a serious collapse
of indigenous worldview, we have, in my opinion, spent the best part of the last century in mindlessly aping the West.
This has had its effect on all aspects of our life, including art. Even the so called post-colonial art movements of my
country fail to actually come up with a genuinely new and indigenous
language for modern Indian art.
So, for the lay person, art remains either a strictly naturalistic representation of visual
forms, or something that goes totally over one's head!
These three sketches, part of a relatively small
segment of my work, try to follow the so-called academic style as it has percolated into contemporary Indian art.
Personally, I detest such exercises; I find them to be inane and restrictive!
In the following pages you will see pictures that
try to achieve an amount of extra communication; the human form lingers on but acute abstraction (simplification) and basic design-harmonies are the driving forces.
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