A series of head studies by leading artists, including those of the erstwhile Progressive Artist Group such as Padamsee and Souza, constitute the Talking Heads show at Art Alive in New Delhi. Spanning a long period, the selection highlights the importance of draughtsmanship and expression in painting. Head studies are an integral part of academic and modernist art training, but have fallen sadly by the wayside under the upthrust of new trends of conceptual and post modernist art.
The works on display pre-front a series of expressive, much lined heads whose silence becomes a locus of viewerly communication. The Head, the seat of reason, what Aristotle would call the essential character of man as a zoon-politikon — is also in modern discourse the seat of the non-reason, of creative neurosis of the sufferings of existential angst and nausea, as can be seen in F N Souza’s works. It’s also the symbol of power, the state, coercion and patriarchy all tropes undergoing radical reassessment in post-modern avant-garde art and discourse.
Talking Heads per se was a new wave avant-garde band that remained popular in the 70s and 80s. The band sought to play on the belief in contemporary language philosophy that man does not speak but language does. However, even a votary of the shared language games of society such as Wittgenstein, also believed that what remained unstated or unsaid communicated more than language itself, such as through the visages painted and sketched by Padamsee.
The term remains popular in the media to symbolise opinions, suggestions and dogmas voiced by individuals. This is visually represented in Anjolie Ela Menon’s portraits, such as that of the Brahmin, whose calm and self assured expression carries eons of traditional and textual superiority. While Krishen Khanna’s studies capture an impression of a persona visible through a cross hatching of lines, with only the bandwallah being fleshed out in colour.
— Dr Seema Bawa is an art historian, curator and critic