Best Art Worst Times

Uma Nair

MY 50TH SOLO SHOW boasted an artist to me and it set me thinking.

A study in the West says bad markets tend to produce better art as there is less pressure on artists to produce and fewer temptations to sell out. Plus they are dealing only with collectors and galleries
willing to ride out the hard times. Looking at that theory, there is no better example than that of the master of the metaphor Tyeb Mehta. "I learnt to paint with very little money when I started in the
1950s," Tyeb Mehta points out in an exclusive interview to The Asian Age. "It totally makes you struggle, but it can be done. But the art that is born out of a struggle is different. Yes, it is an artist's
dream to capture a market like Picasso, but I did not create art for a market, it was for myself," he said.

"My Trussed Bull series was born out of the haunting echoes of the slaughterhouse next to my house. It made me turn vegetarian and it also gave me my imagery. The 'Santiniketan' series of Celebration was again the outcome of a different experience. Even now, after Mahishasura was sold for Rs 1.5 crore, and with so many galleries at my doorstep, I am not producing, I cannot churn out works. I am not prolific. I create at my own pace. Thought goes into my works," says the famous artist. Mehta says that even his ‘My Falling Bird’ series doesn't have many works. "The best art comes out at the worst times because suffering gives you an impetus which nothing else does. It is like the contradiction and confluence of opposites that Italo Calvino talks about. It is true a bad market can give good art," he said.

If we go back in time to the year 1995 one could easily pick up top works by Indian artists anywhere between Rs 40,000 and Rs 1.5 lakhs. Interestingly, at the Sotheby's sale on November 12, 1995, the
estimate of Tyeb's work was a mere $8,000 to $12,000, while M.F. Husain's work was estimated at $20,000 to $30,000. For instance, the hammer price of a Tyeb Mehta painting sold in an auction in 1996 was Rs 4,82,160. An untitled painting by the artist sold for Rs 5,91,100 at a Christie's auction in London in 1997. A similar painting (keeping certain constants in mind, such as the time of creation, medium, similar subject and more or less same dimensions) sold for Rs 12,14,720 in 2001. Mehta's price remained steady till 1999, averaging at Rs 5,54,665 since 1996.

His auction highs began in 2002 when his Celebration, a triptych of "Santiniketan", touched an all-time high. Last year in October, his Mahishasura also set another milestone. Only three years after the
historic sale at Christie's in which Tyeb Mehta's ‘Celebration’ surpassed the $100,000 mark, realising the record price of $3,17,500, Mahishasura effortlessly exceeded the $1000,000 threshold. The
striking red, black and white painting known for its cosmic aura, a case of karmic reflection that swung between being and nothingness, went for $1,584,000 (Rs 69,458,400), a new world auction record for any contemporary Indian painting.

Another great example is the Zen master Gaitonde whose collection of abstracts is perhaps the most vital ingredient of the foundation of modern abstraction in India. The Zen master Gaitonde had retrieved into his shell a few years before his death in 2000.It seemed as if Gaitonde had retired inwards into his shell away from anyone and everyone, so much like Mark Rothko.

The works of Gaitonde(1992) are like milestones in the abacus of creativity, they form the crucibles of connectivity to the brilliance of his abstraction to the truth that he was an artist who was indeed ahead of time. For him the landscape swung open into the abyss of the void that would formulate the dichotomies of the mood of silent symbolism. In fact Gaitonde had withdrawn from the world, alienated himself completely when he did this turmeric toned ‘Splendour’ which is perhaps the finest in his entire career of silent symbolism.

The work personifies Basant (season of Spring) , at its ephemeral sense of awakening it looks as if the mustard fields have been sprinkled with sindoor, just a feathery touch of whispery whimsy which stays
back for that fragment of time wherein it becomes a timeless entity. At its irresistible zest of tranquil quietude and in the poetics of poignancy it brings back the words of a poetess Sarita Sharma who
unknowingly penned a few words in praise to the sandhya (sunset), something which is such an intrinsic part of all of us who respond to nature.

’suraj sandhya se hua kshan bhar mil kar door jaathe jaathe de gaya chutki bhar sindoor (In a split second move away from the sunset, the sun left behind a pinch of sindoor). Gaitonde Untitled 1992 . The translation does no justice to the lyricism of intent, but the doha (couplet) of poetess Sarita Sharma exemplifies the distinctive lyricism of the metaphor of the sunset and the eternal infinitude of the sindoor in Gaitonde's second work.

For friends who knew him, Gaitonde was evidently in his orbit as it were, to friends in conversations with him, he said: "I was indifferent to it". He was talking about life, abstraction and other things in the
landscape. Indifferent, as he was never with the collective, but an individual, this being the central characteristic of his artistic personality. His non-conformist nature was accompanied by a firm
belief in his identity as a painter, and because of his firmness, Gaitonde isolated himself very early in his career from everything in his environment which he considered irrelevant to his identity as a
painter, his growth over the years is marked by an increasing inwardness and a meticulous and watchful consolidation of this identity.

The next example is M.F.Husain.Husain's finest works have been created in the 50's and 60's when he did an incredible series of Horses, Lady and the Lamp and his famed Europa series which were an amalgam of the horse at full gallop and the woman on top of it. `The magic of that era is gone,' said Husain in an interview,` the pulse of that age was different, It had a sense of history and an appreciation for the moments of languor and a quiet gentility. Of course I remember being given a salary of Rs 100 from the Kumar Gallery in those days. They were tough times, which we had to struggle and live by.'

In the days of the art bubble, suddenly some artists have shows every year!!!! Can an artist truly create a series of works every year and boast `Oh It is my 50th solo exhibition? Then this art is isn’t creation, it’s production and the quality of their works suffer, in fact it is this excess that leads to a downfall in the demand for the artist's works.