Last week, I was at a charming restaurant in the suburbs, which has been designed and landscaped to take one closer to the elements. Fairy lights and delicate tea lights in glass holders strung on the low branches twinkled from trees, from which wafted the sweet smell of lavender. Smooth and rotund pebbles played their own little dance beneath our feet. Adding to the magic were cleverly-lit abstract works of senior artists Sridhar Iyer, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Manisha Gawade perched on easels that glowed like jewels in the moonlight.
“The idea is to take the art into spaces that are unconventional, and see it both literally and metaphorically in a different light. I believe that there is a large audience out there that doesn’t necessarily feel drawn to visit an art gallery, but is drawn to art, and this is a perfect way to take these works to them,” says Mahesh Bansal the director of Gallery Stupa 18, who was hosting the show at Fio was clear that art shouldn’t be restricted to the gallery alone.
Designer-gallerist Nidhi Jain showcased her summer collection in equally magical environs of the Sevilla at the Claridges in the heart of Lutyen’s Delhi. Dotted around the part open-air restaurant were paintings of relatively younger artists, as the models cavorted around the audience and the art in an interesting connect with finer sensibilities.
Moreover, the high-end Audi car showroom hosted a show with expensive art all around a few cars! The inference was obvious: Art is in league with fine things like couture, fine dining, fine jewellery and even high-end automobiles. It is no surprise then that both want to piggyback ride each other to complement and contextualise the other. Art not only adds the much-needed softness and together they take the total experience to a different level. I have nothing against this elitist treatment of art for a lot of it is like classical performing art: Meant for the initiated rasika or connoisseur.
It is my belief that the business of art must get out of the Delhi-Mumbai circuit and explore other cities and towns that are cash rich like Ludhiana, Hyderabad, and Calicut among others. For it is in these towns and cities, that such artists live and work, but like the proverbial ghar ki murgi, they can’t even find a halfway decent gallery to exhibit their works for a few exist.
It is ironical and rather sad that these artists have to get recognition in big towns before their own towns extend any support to them. It is only when they make it big in the big towns that their townspeople look at them. However, actually audiences can hardly be blamed. For in the absence of any proper watermarks, who is to decide the quality of art?
It is my belief that once art and artists get support and patronage at the regional level, we will be standing at the brink of an international level revolution in the Arts. India is the only country in the world that has fully developed regional variations for everything. Instead of celebrating and revelling in these, we are too busy becoming clones of each other, killing the original. The gen-next has to sit up and take note. Who knows, who among them will be the next M.F. Husain?
Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator
and artist