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Mail Today, Friday, October 24, 2008Page 30
it’s friday! culture
SHE STANDS naked on a56 x 31 inch canvas; herbangled hand gingerlyholding her right breast,her hair combed care-lessly, a necklace falling
seductively and a maroon clothtied casually around the navel.Her skin, the colour of wheat, isset against a background spla-shed with blue, red, black andbeige. FN Souza painted her in1962 and called her Nude.
The streets are red, a woman in a greensaree is walking by and a man stands atthe black door, his paint brush drippingwith green, the colour seemingly bor-rowed from the woman’s saree. This isVivan Sundaram’s interpretation of Pas-sage. Not too far, countless computer-generated human figures frolic in a play-ground muddy with plaster and acrylic onpaper. This is Nataraj Sharma’s canvas,titled Playground.
At the Frame, Figure, Field, a groupexhibition at Delhi Art Gallery (DAG)these are part of the 22 large-formatworks on display. Not only are the can-vases large, even the names are luminous– MF Husain, Rabin Mondal, SatishGujral, Gogi Saroj Pal, Jaya Ganguly,Shobha Broota, Altaf Mohammedi, Pari-tosh Sen…
Frame, Figure, Field. The lyrically allit-
erative tag piques me. I ask curatorRoobina Karode if it is picked off a son-net. “No,” says Karode, “It is a summingup of the gamut of art and artists on dis-play.” For Karode, the parameters wereset: large canvases. The concept: To dis-play the pictorial vocabulary that hasevolved over the ages. “Souza’s strokesare vehemently anti-academic; SatishGujral’s architectonic sculptural pieceblurs the divide between painting andsculpture while Jaya Ganguly uses whiteon a black canvas intrepidly. Each artistnarrates his own personal script,” addsKarode.
Walk by frames and you can pick theintricacies of this personal script. SovanKumar uses the truck to tell the tale ofthe destruction of rural life, Sohan Qadrilets colour percolate through handmadepaper, Gogi Saroj Pal’s Valley of Flowersoozes dark red and a woman with red
wings hovers in a red sky while P Khem-raj’s Charpai looks mysterious in itsbeige and crimson. Every frame comesfrom collection of Ashish Anand, Direc-tor, Delhi Art Gallery.
For Anand, DAG began as an entrepre-neurial risk, on way he fell in love with art.This exhibition is an “effort to addressthe diverse range of initiatives and con-cerns that make perceptible the elusive-ness of Indian Modernism.”
On the wall in gold is an honest state-ment: The artistic purpose is not to dis-play brilliant renderings and draftingskills. But when you look into the largeeyes of Souza’s Nude, questions aboutskills become redundant. I stand mes-merised near the Nude. And for her tospeak.
Frame. Figure. Field. is on at the DelhiArt Gallery, 11, Hauz Khas Village, till
November 20
Delhi Art Gallery puts up a group show by stalwarts from the art world
(Above) Pull, an oil on canvas by GR Santosh, and Niamagiri (top left), anacrylic on canvas by Sovan Kumar, are part of Delhi Art Gallery’s group show,Frame. Figure. Field. that features big names from the world of art
An untitled oil on canvas by MF Husain
Big canvasfor greatnames
by Preeti Verma Lal
When it comes to showcasingexuberant folk culture, noother state does it better thanRajasthan. The state’s heritageof traditional music and danceis as rich as its colourful fabricsand stories of valour. That’swhat was on display in fullspirit at the recently con-cluded exhibition, A MusicalJourney Through Rajasthan,which showcased the state’sfolklore and music culture.
The exhibition, from the col-lection of the Sangeet NatakAkademi and Rupayan Sanst-han, the Rajasthan Institute ofFolklore, Jodhpur, was dedicat-ed to the memory of KomalKothari, who had founded thisinstitute four decades ago.
Kothari, an eminent ethno-musicolgist and folklorist, willlong be remebered in theannals of Rajasthan as he dedi-cated his life to the preserva-
tion and continuity of folkmusic and tradition in thestate. This encompassed musi-cal instruments, puppets, tex-tiles, ornaments as rural archi-tecture, traditional knowledgeand indigenous, local flora. Hecombined this integratedvision with scholarship and ahumane insider’s view, whichled to a meticulous folk tradi-tion research.
Curated by Kuldeep Kothari,secretary of the RupayanSansthan and Suneera Kasli-wal, senior artist and Professorat the Department of Music,Arts Faculty, Delhi University,the exhibition focussed on themusical traditions of somegroups of the state who havepractised music traditionally.
The Langas and Manganiyars,
for instance, are the tradi-tional caste musicians. Therenowned Nimbuda song pop-ularised by the Bollywood flickHum Dil De Chuke Sanam origi-
nally belongs to the Mangani-yars. There are the Bhopas,narrators of the epics of Pabujiand Dev Narayan. The othergroups include the Teratali,
Kalbelias and the Hindu andMuslim jogis.
The instruments used bythese musicians — the SidhiSarangi, Surnai, Ravanhatta,Surinda and Dhak, were on dis-play. Through folk instruments,painted scrolls, photographs,live and recorded music andfilms, this exhibition narratedthe story of these musicians.
A live performance of Pabujika Pad by Bhopa musicians,narrated by Sugna Ram on theRavanhatta instrument,marked the conclusion of thisunqiue exhibition. The songswere dedicated to their lordPabuji. A lively Ram taught thetricks of making the Ravan-hatta with bamboo, coconut,goat skin and horse’s hair. Theunique instrument with itsmesmerising melody was alsoavailable on sale at the venue.
by Megha Paul
Bhopa musicians performed on the concluding day of the exhibition, showcasing the musical heritage of Rajasthan
Musical heritage from the sand dunes of RajasthanRAHUL IRANI
