Harvest 2020

celebrates art Show

The year 2020 has seen a remarkable response to a pandemic that has struck most countries of the world. Thousands of doctors, nurses, scientists, lab assistants, and people wearing masks go about their daily lives. Others like artists and writers are holding exhibitions, webinars and meetings not only involving their countries but those on a global level that have made distances meaningless. But this is only a part of the picture. This is because of the fact that many of these interactions are in the limited sphere of virtual reality which lacks both
the depth of appreciating experienced reality and the variety of expression it brings to light.
Both of these is what we seek in a work of art. In the time of distancing among groups of people it is these that provide the sense of relating to a multi-faceted aesthetic satisfaction that our limited day to day life fails to provide us. So the present is also a perfect time to appreciate this years’ Harvest from this perspective. The works we are presenting this year are not only those from our artistic tradition with its deep roots in our tribal paintings, our miniature art and our sculpture, both classical and modern; but also including artists from Bali
and Japan, Europe and the USA. The intriguing thing is that we find both stylistic and expressive connections between these different traditions on the basis of our present day life in a global village. These connections have not been lost on us in this year’s Harvest that
communicates with us in many languages, traditions and geographical backgrounds.However, the Centre of attraction is the Bombay group of Artists where we see the evolution of modernism in India but within the history of our own artistic development
which eventually gave our art of the post-independence period its special flavor. This year we have the works of MF Husain, SH Raza, FN Souza and HA Gade representing the core group of this movement with close friends like Ram Kumar and Krishen Khanna representing its
wider outreach. Here we have an important work of Husain with his most sought after images of horses. This work also has an element of spirituality with horses representing the elements of courage, speed, endurance and prosperity in many global art traditions. A broader trend is visible in our art harking back to the Bengal school and wash painting. Among these artists the most important are Nandalal Bose and AR Chugtai. Its evolution into the Shanti Niketan modernists with their links both to the art of China and Japan, as well as our own folk and tribal art, is represented by KG Subramanyan, Bhupen Khakhar, Sakti Burman and Paresh Maity. Beyond Shanti Niketan we have KS Kulkarni, Satish Gujral and T.Vaikuntam, among others. Indian Non-figurative art is very different from that of the West. It retains its concrete origins in the environment and in its final expression. Among these artists, we have SH Raza, Ramkumar, Shobha Broota, Pandit Khairnar, Paris based Rajendra Dhawan, Yayoi Kusama of Japan and a work of Satish Gupta.The Ganesha image of Satish Gujral too can enter
this sphere of composite images that can stand for a nonfigurative aspect of our modern art based on our folk and tribal artistic tradition. It is interesting that such composite images are there in the works of Chhotu lal and other miniature artists as well, but expressed in a
very different context. Of the tribal and folk artists, we not only have the work of Jangarh Singh Shyam and members of his particular school of gond art, Amit Dombhare from the Warli school, Baua Devi from Madhubani art and Kalam Patua from Bengal pot, each with their particular penchant for composite human and animal figures and narrative works
as well as miniatures of Yugal and Lalit Sharma, among others. The recognition of this art brings us to our eclectic artists with their tongue in cheek satirical art like Roy Thomas and Farhad Hussain. Then we have various artists taking to producing different forms of popular art based on modern artistic training. Among these we have Sanjay Bhattacharya, Bratin Khan, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Suchit Sahni, Marty Thornton from Britain,Takashi Murakami from
Japan, Lindsey Nobel, Laurie Raskin and Mr. Brainwash from the USA, providing us a window to an appealing art for anyone in our present day world. Finally we have sculptures of a number of our leading artists like Krishen Khanna, Sheela Chamaria, Navjot Altaf,
Venkat Bothsa, Rajesh Ram and Shashi K Paul, as well as the Italian sculptor Daniele F. Perhaps we have a far closer tradition of expression in sculpture when we look at the sculptors of the human figure, composite human and animal compositions and their juxtapositions that have the same impact in an age more steeped in classical
realism than symbolism. This outreach art has a firm root in the reality of concrete objects, the experience of working with raw materials and the artist’s choice among them to transform them into aesthetics of colour, form and texture. These concrete experiences of the human mind and their realization as art objects through their interaction with them in different environments, at different times and with different aspirations helps us in bringing diverse works of art together far more successfully than virtual reality ever can. It is this depth in art of the inner truth of being and its meaning is what we hope to communicate to the viewer to highlight the joy they experience in relating to art at all times, good or bad.