Going the Kochi Way - Contd..

Dilip Narayanan

Dilip Narayanan, of Open Eyed Dreams, one of the major art promoters in India today, had the foresight in offering all logistical and infrastructural support to the emerging talents in the region and mentoring their shows. “Our objective is to make Kerala the next destination for contemporary art. Major Indian artists and collectors who earlier used to limit their operations to Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata or Chennai are now interested in Kochi in a big way,” Dilip points out.

When Dilip Narayanan started off his tryst with art promotion three years back, art market was an unheard of thing in Kerala. Dilip preferred to work from Calicut and Kochi. He went to the studios of both the senior and upcoming artists who looked at him with a lot of interest and skepticism. “When I went to meet the artists, they felt a bit surprised as they could not imagine somebody getting into an area where there was no hope.” However, his diligence and sincerity has paid off him soon. He could cultivate a number of artists. “I remember artists selling their works for throw away prices and struggling a lot. I took the advice of the gallery owners, collectors and art dealers from the major art centres in India and tried to put their theories into practice. Slowly I could raise the value of the young artists in Kerala,” Dilip Narayanan recollects.

Kochi owes a lot to Dilip Narayanan as it owes to Kashi Art Gallery and the artists who decided to settle in Kerala. Even today some artists in Kerala believe that Dilip is the one who decides the price of the Kerala artists. “No, I am not a person to decide the price of the artists in Kerala. But one thing is there, I work towards raising their prices slowly,” says Dilip Narayanan. The healthy environment of Kochi has helped Kashi Art Gallery and Open Eyed Dreams to function in a positive way. “At times I collect works from Kashi. And at times, I collect works directly from the artists. But now I concentrate more on presenting the Kerala artists in national level,” he says.

Dilip Narayanan took the initiative to establish www.artconcerns.com with the help of the noted art curator and editor JohnyML and now both them function as a bridge between the Kerala artists and the galleries elsewhere. “We are in touch with all the senior artists and galleries. We seek the advice and opinion of leading artists like A.Ramachandran,
Alex Mathew, Bose Krishnamachari, T.V.Santhosh, Baiju Parthan, Babu Xavier,  Chintan Upadhyaya, Kishore Shinde, G.R.Iranna, Manjunath Kamath, Renu Modi, Usha Gawde, Rohit Gandhi and so on. We stand here for promoting the artists and put them in the best light,” says Dilip. Open Eyed Dreams of late has presented several group shows in Kochi,  Delhi and Mumbai. “Now we work with corporate sector to build up right art collections in their premises.”

Chitrakootam: Early initiative

CN Karunakaran, instantly recognisable for the distinct signature of his highly stylised figures and intricately decorative patterns with a strong ethereal affinity to traditional murals and miniatures – and currently the chairman of Kerala Lalit Kala Academy, can rightly take the credit for opening the first private art gallery in Kerala. ‘Chitrakootam,’ a 1,000-sq-ft rented space on the arterial MG Road, Ernakulam, was launched in 1973 with a grand collection of south Indian art, mostly from the prime movers from Cholamandal.

“The initial response to the exhibits, KCS Panicker, Vasudev, Viswanathan, Akkitham Narayanan, Ramanujam, and Damodaran among them, was encouraging. There was a steady flow of visitors. However, the sales returns were not substantial at all,” recalls Karunakaran. A huge oil on canvas painting from Panicker’s Rhythm of Symbols series, for instance, could fetch a maximum of Rs1,000. That top-seller went to a collection of a plantation group, based at Wellington Island in Cochin.
 
Out of every deal, 70 per cent went to the artist, and the gallery’s share was 30 per cent. “At times, we had to struggle to raise money for the monthly rent,” says Karunakaran, who could eke out a living thanks to the commercial assignments from the applied art wing that he ran along with the gallery. Not surprisingly, ‘Chitrakootam’ had to shut shop in 1977.

Meanwhile, Kerala Institute of Arts (made popular in its Malayalam version, Kerala Kalapeetom, as prescribed by the noted playwright CN Sreekandan Nair, who, along with MV Devan, M Govindan and MKK Nair, was among its chief promoters) had begun to make its presence felt. Karunakaran was initially deputed as art instructor at Kalapeetom when he returned home after his long artistic stint in Madras.