This show of your graphic prints from the late 1950s to the present is marked by remarkable shifts in technique. What are the basic ideas and concerns that link them?
Each print has its own story. They also relate to the context and the period in which they were created. The events of the last 60 to 70 years have shaped them. In 1970, a printmaking workshop was organised by the Smithsonian Institution in Delhi, where 100 artists were invited to make prints; it was a watershed moment. I learnt the art of aquatint at that workshop, and it was interesting to interact with artists who came from all over India.
Vivan Sundaram organised a workshop in Baroda in 1973, with 30 artists from different parts of India. The purpose was to make printmaking affordable. Printmaking is comparatively cheaper than making other kinds of artwork. This event travelled to various places like Delhi, Chandigarh and made printmaking popular.
Then, we established a printmaking workshop called Chhaap in Baroda. Kavita Shah, who was a student of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, ran it for 22 years, organising a series of workshops and exhibitions all over India and abroad.
The decade of the 1970s was the time when I wanted to make something called unmoolan, which means “uprooting”: I made three prints. For Vivan Sundaram, I made a print related to violence, particularly communal violence, titled Riot, which is exhibited here. Then, for Chhaap, I made a series of prints at different points of time. One is called Snakes and Ladders; it is a game, but here we are using the idea of the game to tell another story, turning it upside down. A print I titled Dictator was made for a workshop called Mimesis in Baroda; it is the figure of one who rises far above others, and thus rising, is bound to fall. Another, titled Apni apni Aag (Each one has his own fire), is a take-off from a line in a Kabir doha [a form of poetry]. He says: “I saw the whole world burning, each one with their own fire.”
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Running alongside your printmaking journey is the history of the nation or the idea of India.
Yes, that concerns all artists, all thinking artists who bring into their works some response to what is going on in the country; it is rebuilding the nation through art and culture. I too went through these periods. My printmaking activity is also connected to my painting, sculpture making, digital works, etc.
Numens, oil on canvas, by Gulammohammed Sheikh. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
You are not only a visual artist but also a writer, a poet. How do these different forms of artistic expression come together in your life? Are there themes that can be conveyed only through specific media? Print, for instance.
Prints, in a sense, tell stories in black and white. So, they are sharp, stark, and clear: for instance, that image on Assam violence, with a man who kills, or the image of the tree as the tree of life, harbouring all of humanity. The tree can be a symbol, a metaphor, or just a tree.
Sometimes I use animal figures like the Mayamriga, a double-headed animal with faces looking towards both sides. There are other animals that are wild and violent. It keeps changing…
The terrible times of the 1990s triggered Days of the Dagger. So, all the prints are, in a certain way, a response to the times. Simultaneously, poetry has remained alive in different forms. I also write prose—a series titled “Going Home”, which I started writing 50 years ago about events that took place around me. It is a memoir that begins in 1966-67 and coincides with the making of the print of the embryonic form in a cot, with the figures of my father and mother on either side.
The images and narratives that you refer to in your prints come from different sources, traditions, and histories. Can you comment on this complex layering of history and mythology in your work?
Yes, I like to use mythical images and references to break the realistic mould and enter into other realities. Kabir is often helpful in this regard, because he wrote in the ulatbansi style, where the world is turned upside down. The print where you see the lion guarding the cow is along those lines. It is like the devil quoting the scriptures.
I think it helps create links with different temporalities— mythological, historical, or traditional—as a way of responding to contemporary issues.
I like premodern practices. I have always responded to things I found worthwhile in our art history, like Mughal miniatures, Rajasthani or pahadi paintings, or paintings from Renaissance or pre-Renaissance traditions. I like quoting from them, to give them contemporary relevance. I want to recreate them so that they assume a new and contemporary meaning. Narratives are the means by which you tell stories of various kinds. But they need not be linear: different kinds can mix, move back and forth, and so on.
What is your opinion of the contemporary art scene in India?
I think our art scene today is very vibrant. Artists from different generations are still active. Krishen Khanna, now in his 90s, is active; artists from different generations also interact with one another. All of them respond to contemporary realities in their own way: artists like Atul Dodiya, Sudarshan Shetty, Bose Krishnamachari, stand out. We also have many women artists, many of them feminists, which is remarkable. So, a wide range of topics is dealt with.
We also have something like the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which we never thought could have happened in India, and that too in a small town like Kochi. So, on the whole, I would say that our art scene has remained vibrant.
““Computers allow you to have hundreds of colours, hundreds of brushes, and tells you that you can create art with it all. But art often doesn’t need so many colours or brushes at all.””
The coming of digital technology has affected the physical process of art-making. You no longer use canvases or touch them, you do not use brushes, or smell the paint. How do you think this shift has impacted artists, art-making processes, and the art scene?
I have worked with digital prints, and I feel that digital art, which involves creating images on the computer, is a very seductive medium. It literally swallows you. But it doesn’t allow your imagination to flow. Digital often limits you and leads you down narrow alleys. The so-called information revolution is doing nothing for the idea of knowledge. Information is fine but is of no use if it doesn’t relate to knowledge or the pursuit of knowledge.
Computers allow you to have hundreds of colours, hundreds of brushes and it tells you that you can create art with it all. But art often doesn’t need so many colours or brushes at all. The digital medium is not only seductive, it also tends to kill the imagination. One has to be very careful with it. I do use the computer, but I use it as a medium like any other. I don’t want to be seduced by it, I want to use it to push the limits.
For me, graphic print is like any other printmaking form. Unfortunately, many people are seduced by the attractive options it offers, and that is something one should guard oneself against.
Man, oil on canvas, by Gulammohammed Sheikh. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement
Can it have an impact on art education?
It can definitely help the cause of art education as it can reach out to more people easily, especially children. But we do not use it to that purpose. Our school education system still doesn’t include art history though digital technology should have made it possible.
Many students think that the digital makes art-making easy. They are fascinated by it so much so that the software is often confused with art.
It should be emphasised, or rather hammered down, that the digital is a means, a medium in your hand, not an end in itself. One should be able to use it for a larger, bigger purpose, something humane. Not just for making decorative items.
As I said, instead of information, we should emphasise the pursuit of knowledge. We should pursue creativity through the digital medium. Most minds are consumed with its deceptive charms. I am not saying it is a monster. It is a means by which you can achieve many things. But it is not an end in itself.
Has the digital environment diluted the meditative frame of mind that artists, students, and art-lovers need to appreciate art?
Yes. For instance, my paintings go through various phases. I draw and sketch on paper, transfer it on canvas, use colours and brushes to create the image. The process involves time, which allows you to absorb and contemplate so that your image goes deeper than the superficial. In the digital space, everything happens within seconds. You can’t create art like that.
It is like instant poetry. People say artificial intelligence will create poetry. But poetry is related to the human mind, human life, and imagination; it cannot happen without them.
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Do you think contemporary artists have truthfully and courageously responded to the times we live in?
I can only quote Bertolt Brecht here, who wrote: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / There will also be singing / Of the dark times.”
C.S. Venkiteswaran is a film critic and documentary filmmaker based in Kochi.
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