To Claim the space…
Vanita Gupta’s works always have a newer invitation, an intrigue that deserves to be taken along. It was some years back that she abandoned paint at once, and entered the territory of building her works with paper, glue and some fine cloth pieces. From there, she comes back to ‘Acrylic on Canvas’ works, recently (September- November 2006) shown in Singapore, New Delhi and Mumbai. The recent work has retained Vanita’s intense experiences in charting her own territories.
True, the recent work resembled Zen calligraphy at the first, rather hasty sight. One could even have a second, more deliberate look at the works as pieces of abstract calligraphy, done with a ‘Zen mind’: a mind that ‘gains nothing other than the realization that there is nothing to gain, and is thus more than ever in the world’[i].
So, what happens next? A debate, perhaps, between painting and calligraphy? Or, further, a complacent deception that inhabits our so-called ‘appreciation’? I would like to take a brief tour to the areas of my discontent with such complacency.
If one equates Vanita’s work to the pains and pleasures of Calligraphy, it will necessarily draw oneself to observe the black ‘stroke’ on Vanita’s milky white canvas, its solitary existence and its balanced positioning. Lauding Vanita’s effort as Zen, one can firmly point at the purity of experience, the essence of ‘the stroke’ that her paintings transcend.
Or, without overt references to Zen or Calligraphy, one might choose to look at these works as paintings, would expect the joys and highs of seeing a good painting and, most often, be fulfilled with the joys! From this position, one would are the pains and pleasures of Composition in Vanita’s work. The series of artistic decisions that she must have experience while making the work would haunt us while we, as viewers, are destined to cherish the ‘moment’ in her work. The entrapment of the moment through a series of moments would draw us to laud her works in words like ‘abstract in its most severe form’[ii].
Is there a third way? Can a viewer take some other ways of seeing, to match with Vanita’s effort to deal away with ‘habit, convenience and security’[iii] ? How far would the complacency with ‘Zen/Calligraphy’ set of our observations or ‘Composition/painting/ abstract’ schema be able to breathe with a Vanita Gupta work? If a viewer is sure, s/he gets some ‘echantment’ from the work? Can s/he spell enchantment?
I would suggest recourse to Vanita Gupta’s work as an art-historical critique. History of abstraction would give us references to Adolf Gottlieb’s brushwork or Robert Motherwell’s action painting in the 1960s, as formally relevant to her work. While Vanita, through her work, takes a position that goes far ahead of these reactions to the canonical western art history. Her work does not celebrate the existence of ‘painting’, as so-called ‘post-painterly abstractionists’ or ‘abstract expressionists’ seem to have done. Instead, her works strongly advocate an indulgence in acts like peeling or erasing the paint off canvas, not to mention the intended blankness of the canvas. These decisions make posit her work with a critique of what others did or do.
For sure, Vanita has not stopped charting territories of her own. The territories are opening up! One remembers her work in the late 1990s when she used folded paper, and left much for the viewer’s intrigue about what the inside of those folds would be like. In early 2000s, she continued her approach without resorting to folds. Her work now shows a strategy for claiming the space without actually using it! The nothingness and the wholeness, the Shunya and the Poorna seem to be revered in all her approaches, while her relation to these values has grown over time.
-- Abhijeet Tamhane.
[i] Fung Yu Lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Princeton1952 , quoted in http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/lieberman/zen.html.
[ii] Deeksha Nath, Exhibition Catalogue for Vanita Gupta, Gallery Threshold, 2006. The observation further goes: ‘ By not beginning with a form ofreference or allowing the viewer to hinge the painting on the visual and material world, through her paintings Vanita goes to the heart of aesthetic experience, pure intuitive reaction’.
[iii] Vanita Gupta, an excerpt from her forthcoming Hindi novel ‘Anshi’, quoted in Exhibition Catalogue for Vanita Gupta, Pundole Art Gallery, 2006.
True, the recent work resembled Zen calligraphy at the first, rather hasty sight. One could even have a second, more deliberate look at the works as pieces of abstract calligraphy, done with a ‘Zen mind’: a mind that ‘gains nothing other than the realization that there is nothing to gain, and is thus more than ever in the world’[i].
So, what happens next? A debate, perhaps, between painting and calligraphy? Or, further, a complacent deception that inhabits our so-called ‘appreciation’? I would like to take a brief tour to the areas of my discontent with such complacency.
If one equates Vanita’s work to the pains and pleasures of Calligraphy, it will necessarily draw oneself to observe the black ‘stroke’ on Vanita’s milky white canvas, its solitary existence and its balanced positioning. Lauding Vanita’s effort as Zen, one can firmly point at the purity of experience, the essence of ‘the stroke’ that her paintings transcend.
Or, without overt references to Zen or Calligraphy, one might choose to look at these works as paintings, would expect the joys and highs of seeing a good painting and, most often, be fulfilled with the joys! From this position, one would are the pains and pleasures of Composition in Vanita’s work. The series of artistic decisions that she must have experience while making the work would haunt us while we, as viewers, are destined to cherish the ‘moment’ in her work. The entrapment of the moment through a series of moments would draw us to laud her works in words like ‘abstract in its most severe form’[ii].
Is there a third way? Can a viewer take some other ways of seeing, to match with Vanita’s effort to deal away with ‘habit, convenience and security’[iii] ? How far would the complacency with ‘Zen/Calligraphy’ set of our observations or ‘Composition/painting/ abstract’ schema be able to breathe with a Vanita Gupta work? If a viewer is sure, s/he gets some ‘echantment’ from the work? Can s/he spell enchantment?
I would suggest recourse to Vanita Gupta’s work as an art-historical critique. History of abstraction would give us references to Adolf Gottlieb’s brushwork or Robert Motherwell’s action painting in the 1960s, as formally relevant to her work. While Vanita, through her work, takes a position that goes far ahead of these reactions to the canonical western art history. Her work does not celebrate the existence of ‘painting’, as so-called ‘post-painterly abstractionists’ or ‘abstract expressionists’ seem to have done. Instead, her works strongly advocate an indulgence in acts like peeling or erasing the paint off canvas, not to mention the intended blankness of the canvas. These decisions make posit her work with a critique of what others did or do.
For sure, Vanita has not stopped charting territories of her own. The territories are opening up! One remembers her work in the late 1990s when she used folded paper, and left much for the viewer’s intrigue about what the inside of those folds would be like. In early 2000s, she continued her approach without resorting to folds. Her work now shows a strategy for claiming the space without actually using it! The nothingness and the wholeness, the Shunya and the Poorna seem to be revered in all her approaches, while her relation to these values has grown over time.
-- Abhijeet Tamhane.
[i] Fung Yu Lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Princeton1952 , quoted in http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/lieberman/zen.html.
[ii] Deeksha Nath, Exhibition Catalogue for Vanita Gupta, Gallery Threshold, 2006. The observation further goes: ‘ By not beginning with a form ofreference or allowing the viewer to hinge the painting on the visual and material world, through her paintings Vanita goes to the heart of aesthetic experience, pure intuitive reaction’.
[iii] Vanita Gupta, an excerpt from her forthcoming Hindi novel ‘Anshi’, quoted in Exhibition Catalogue for Vanita Gupta, Pundole Art Gallery, 2006.
posted by abhi at 12:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home