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Beyond the Gallery Walls: A Poet’s Fresh Take on Indian Art History
Excerpts from the interview:
Q: What is ‘The Big Book of Indian Art’ all about?
A:
For me personally, it’s about bringing art out into the public space. So it’s not confined to the art community, which is very insular. I want to lure people into the arts.
Q: What were your parameters of selection?
A:
What I was curious about from the beginning of my growing years as a student was how art came into being, how the very early humans wanted to express themselves and how they did it. And it’s so fascinating that from the earliest times, how art grew and it became a tree of life. So I followed that path and I am hopelessly curious as a person. And this is how I discovered so much. And so this is my sharing of what I discovered through reading and understanding and listening.
Q: Your text is sprinkled with fun facts. One of those which sprang out was Raja Ravi Varma had a crater on Mercury named after him in 2013.
A:
Yeah, because I told you because I’m curious. I just want to know more and more, then I want to share that with the readers.
Q: How did you select the profiles?
A:
I want to confess that maybe I have not included some of the movements that I could have, or maybe I missed out something. But for me, I was just following my intuitions, and it was just a river flowing, and I stopped at several banks and took time off at several shows, but then it just kept moving. And today, after the book is done, I think maybe I should have done this, maybe I should have done that. But then, it’s impossible. It’s absolutely impossible because it’s a huge river.
Q: Did you have a kind of a checklist and the essential details that had to be there in every profile?
A:
So I had requested each artist to send me four or five important images from their work and I selected the one I wanted to share. And that’s how I went through the entire process. But then, there were artists whom I did not dialogue with personally. There are artists in the book whose information I sourced. And it was not possible for me to engage with each and every artist in the book. I asked them questions, they sent me information and I edited and I created the bio the way I wanted it. And that was how it got done.
Q: You received information. Did you also have to fact check it?
A:
I did. A lot of gallerists are my friends, and they helped me with sourcing information. So I just used that information. The fact check was it came through the gallerist’s eye.
Q: Did you learn something new while putting together this volume?
A:
Indeed I did. I’m Learning all the time. I’m 75 now, and I feel like I’m a kindergarten student. I’m so happy to be learning something new. Discovering about certain aspects of different artists was wonderful. How they got their creative instincts and how they employ it in their works. I feel like Alice in Wonderland, going from one tunnel into another and opening a door and discovering the garden and then going beyond.
Q: What happens in this age of information, in the age of AI to the art world? What is the future?
A:
Well, with this coming of AI I’m terrified, to tell you the truth. I never use AI for anything, and I feel it’s like a factory, and it just manufactures information and essays. And I know a lot of people who go to AI to rewrite their essays or even poems, and it’s shocking because I feel that what you write it should come from within you, and that is your true soul. But when it goes to AI it gets manufactured, so I’m very, very troubled by AI.
Q: One thing which was interesting about your book was you mentioned the cutoff date at 1980. Why 1980?
A:
Well, there’s that much one can do. And if I had gone beyond 1980, it wouldn’t have just been ‘The Big Book of Indian Art’, it would have been ‘The Big Fat Book of Indian Art’ and it would have probably taken me another two years to work on, so I had to create a cutoff point for myself.
Q: What is it that you truly hope to achieve by having created this book and sent it out into the world?
A:
Interest in the arts comes very naturally from my student years. But I never studied art professionally. I studied literature and art was my companion right through. So this book, it was a kind of serendipity that they approached me because I had so much information on the arts without being professionally inclined. I used to meet all the older artists, like Husain. I would go to their homes, their studios and hang out with them from a very young age. So I had a lot of information. My old diaries are full of handwritten information. I had thought those years when I was so young that one day I will write a book. But I never did.