A visionary artist

Apurva Desai's works reflect a realistic vision of India, and they are among the most advanced examples of contemporary Indian art.

APURVA DESAI, who was born in Vadodara (Baroda) in 1962, took his diploma in painting from C.M. College, Ahmedabad, and M.A. in painting from M.S. University, Baroda, in 1989. He represents a Gujarat that is very different from that of Narendra Modi or Shankarsinh Vaghela or of caste-heroes such as Bhatiji. He paints and communicates the industrial reality that is Gujarat and the rest of India today.

He has, over the past 15 years, done a series of paintings on the dying industrial scene of Ahmedabad, on the mines of Madhya Pradesh, on Calcutta (Kolkata), the city of rickshaw-pullers, trade unions and the red flag; and now, the ship-breaking yards of Alang. In fact, he has lived for extended periods of time on these sites. He works in the open like the impressionists. His reason for concentrating on the industrial environment is succinct. He says: "I always feel life is much larger that art. The revolutionary ideas of creation always rage from my inner depths. These ideas form the basis of the transformation into living canvases."

If one looks for a visual presentation of this view, it is in his canvas, `A Boat - A Blast of Fantasy'. In this work, the artist blends the inner and external reality in a way that the two are synthesised in the same visual image. The blast is exactly what happens to an empty ship that is being dismembered, but the guitars, telephones, wine glasses, pianos, tea-pots, fans, bedside lamps, books, binoculars, bottles of wine and television sets are not there in reality. They are stripped away before the hulk is dismembered. But in the canvas the artist reflects the remarkable harmony that exists between his inner and outer perceptions.

This harmony is obviously related to his outlook: "Art to me is not an escape from reality, but is an integral expression of life in all its range and splendour. My art is of life, for life." The essential feature and link here is between a portrayal `of life' for a perception that is relevant `for life'. Stylistically, it carries him all the way from a near-classical presentation of the Alang landscape, as in his `Shipyard Symphony' to a surreal presentation of the destruction of ships for profit, with a ship served up on a plate, in `Food for Voyage', to an almost constructivist abstract creation in `A Boat - A Blast of Flood', where forms of workers, scrap metal and objects used in a voyage become part of the construction of a new reality.

The reality, however, is neither in pure form nor a juxtaposition of different colours. It is more than that. It envisages the gigantic presence of the creator of such vast structures, as is evident from his `scrap portraits' of workmen, which he has evolved into monumental celebrations of labour, as in works like `My Burden is My Life' and `Sleeping Man - The Moon in Hand'. What strikes one is his enormous grasp of the work process, its creative and invigorating character that allows the worker literally to grasp the moon and its negative aspect under capitalism, where work becomes a target for the exploiter. What is fascinating, and futuristic, in Apurva's art is his stress on work as the real fulfilment of the worker's inborn impulse. Exploitation is its misuse by a distorted society, which no longer deserves to survive in its present form.

What gives him this vision? As with most things, his answer is life. "I have endeavoured to turn the rumbling sounds at the backdrop of the yard, the noises of the workers, the blazing ship sirens, the ear-piercing sounds of cranes, the muddy and murky surroundings, the scrap lying around, which are echoing in my ears, into visual shape," he explains. "The `Shipyard Symphony' series is the outcome of this." And the artist himself is not immune to this, or an outsider. The proof Of this is his own `scrap portrait'. He takes sides with the workers explicitly and visibly in this work.

He is explicit about this when he states, in relation to an earlier series: "My life in the collieries has shown me many facets of the exploitation of humanity. My in-depth study of the coal miners, the black and dark side of life, of their lives' reality, inspired me to transform it all onto the living canvas." Indeed, it is his transparent commitment to the creators of the benefits we enjoy and his close understanding of them as the son of a trade unionist that place him far ahead of artists who still repeat the myths of nature or produce endless images of idyllic rural landscapes; he is definitely a cut above similar young artists who, while having made the country's industrial scenario the main language of their art, do not have the same sensitivity to workers as Desai has.

Desai's art, both in its execution and in its content, is among the most advanced examples of contemporary Indian art. It straddles the abstract and the figurative, the symbolic and the formal, the modernist and the post-modernist, in a powerful sweep of the brush. That he draws inspiration from the works of Van Gogh is evident, but he goes beyond it in his more structural paintings. He represents the only cultural expression that can unify Gujarat - an expression that emanates from the workers of the State, whose grandeur is the fruit of their labour and whose defence lies in their powerful hands, as one can see from his painting `Desperate Destroyer', which portrays a giant worker lifting a huge sledge-hammer to destroy a ship flying a United States flag. His art is neither circumspect nor tongue-in-cheek. It seeks inspiration in the capacity of creative activity to unite different tendencies and confront the forces of disintegration and reduce them to atoms of scrap. In this respect, the ship-breaking yards of Alang are an opposite and powerful metaphor.

It is fortunate for him that after a very successful exhibition of his works at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, the Art Alive gallery, which sponsored his exhibition in Delhi, has decided to exhibit his works in Bangalore and Kochi. Such works should get an all-India exposure as the artist exhibits his works only once in five or six years. Even his present show of 40 paintings and 45 drawings took two years to complete. His painting has a global market and he has sold works to collectors in Sweden, the U.S., Italy, Canada and Germany, as well as to leading collections in India. In Gujarat, his works are with Navdeep Prathishan, Gruh Finance Ltd, Hasmukh Bhai Patel, Light Publications Ltd, and Gujarat Chemicals. A photograph of his work is displayed in the new Gujarat High Court. In Mumbai, his work is in the corporate collection of Procter and Gamble. In Delhi, Eicher Goodearth Ltd, Business India, Sanskriti (OP Jain), film-maker Meera Nayar, artist Arpita Singh, Socialite Bina Ramani, and collector Dr. Mahesh Chandra are among his buyers. After his recent exhibition, his clientele has expanded considerably.

It is evident that art lovers respond positively to art that highlights a future for India in industry and employment in technologically advanced units and not one that just serves as the indentured labour of global agri-businesses or swells the numbers of the urban jobless slum-dwellers. Apurva Desai is an artist with a genuine vision for a future that could be a reality for the mass of Indians. He places that reality before the viewer in all its complexity, with its positive and negative features, but gives the hope that the future belongs to the positive aspect of development with the negative aspects being eliminated by concerted human action and the advance in consciousness related to it. His art is based on the hope that develops out of a first-hand experience of reality. This gives his art a special flavour, and he knows that his "spot paintings reflect the existing reality". "To me each and every spot is different and typical, and has its own identity and a story to tell.'' This gives his global sweep a rootedness that singles him out among many contemporary Indian artists revelling in gimmickry or just limiting themselves to saleable formulae. And this will ensure his success in the future as well.