What paper means to modern Indian artists
Umesh and Sunanda Gaur hold one of the most significant personal collections of modern Indian art anywhere in the world, with approximately 500 works that include works by old masters M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, Ara, and F. N. Souza (the core of the Progressive Artists Group), first and second-generation modernists Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, Tyeb Mehta, as well as more recent artists Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, and Subodh Gupta, and many more. The Gaurs’ collection started with the acquisition of a Husain, probably the most well-known, prolific, and controversial figure in contemporary Indian art. As their collection grew, Umesh and Sunanda Gaur realized the tremendous potential for engaging and educating the public in the US on the historical and aesthetic merits of modern South Asian art. I need to underscore here that Sunanda Gaur was very intentional in that the collection includes many female artists. As a result, we see works from Anupam Sud, Zarina, Madhvi Parekh, Bharti Kher, Nalini Malani, Arpita Singh, Gogi Saroj Pal, and Reema Kallat among others.
This interest and intent led to a collaboration between the Gaurs and students and faculty at Rutgers University to facilitate a graduate seminar in art history exploring curatorial practices with a practicum at the Gaur gallery. A publication of a catalog accompanied the exhibition – Paper Trails: Modern Indian Works on Paper from the Gaur Collection, with essays by Prof. Tamara Sears who taught the seminar, along with contributions from other professors, artists, and students.
The catalog includes 90 works including watercolors, drawings, etchings, sketches, and lithographs by contemporary Indian artists born primarily before the 1950s. It documents the evolution of their journeys from colonial to post-colonial India (after Indian independence in 1947), a period of experimentation and exploration in searching for a new national identity influenced by the socio-political milieu of the 1950s and 1960s.
The catalog is divided into six chapters exploring themes of “complex geographies” in the aftermath of the partition of 1947, where artists were interrogating the ideology of a national identity post-independence and post-colonialism. The mid-60s to mid-80s saw an increasing urbanization in India resulting in the mobility of migrations and the blurring of geographical and metaphoric borders. What followed was the emergence of diasporic artists like Krishna Reddy (USA), Anish Kapoor (UK), S.H. Raza (France), and F.N. Souza (USA). Other themes explored are artists’ interventions in politics and social change, engagements with traditional myths and religion juxtaposed with present realities, modernity, and historical traditions of storytelling. The chapters on Portraits and Personas, and Abstraction complement each other in that they highlight how some artists like to experiment with the human form and (realistic) representation, while others eschew figuration and are interested in the fragmentation of form and the idea of representation. The Plates section is well organized with high-quality images of an artist’s work along with a well-researched write-up about the artist and the work showcased. The format effectively situates the artist’s ideologies, practices, beliefs, and interventions into a meaningful context.
The reader might be interested in understanding the reason behind the collection’s focus on paper as a predominant medium for most of its acquisitions. An insightful essay in the catalog, “The Intimacy of Paper” by Tamara Sears explains the potential of a medium that offers the artists a “way to cultivate transnational modernist expression while continuing to explore a medium that has deep roots in the traditional art practices and processes of the sub-continent.” Paper served as the foundation for the illustrated manuscripts of the Jaina and Pala schools (8th -12th centuries) and the exquisite miniatures of the Mughal, Rajput, and Pahari (16th -19th centuries) schools of traditional Indian painting. When the British established art schools in India in the late 1800s, and early 1900s, Indian artists were “tutored” in working with oil on canvas, through a purely Anglophone, Eurocentric lens. This trend saw the decline of paper as a medium favored by Indian artists, effectively erasing centuries of a rich heritage and tradition.
In the essay, Sears critiques what paper means to contemporary Indian artists, for the possibilities it opened for endless experimentation. For Zarina, it is “almost like human skin”, tactile, organic, lending incredible flexibility to execute. Akbar Padamsee explores the complexities of human emotions; Ram Kumar plays with abstraction and representation. For M.F. Husain, paper is a nod to his early training as a billboard painter. Working with paper also allowed for speed in facilitating his prolific artistic output.
This emphasis on paper “encourages the viewer to engage the intimacy of the works themselves, to think of the role of paper in the processes of artmaking, and to contemplate the ways in which paper has served as a site for the exploration of modernism’s many forms.”
Paper Trails: Modern Indian Works on Paper from the Gaur Collection is a wonderful addition to an art lover’s library, especially for those interested in South Asian Indian art.
Paper Trails: Modern Indian Works on Paper from the Gaur Collection is published by Grinnell College Museum of Art in association with Mapin Publishing.
