Sunil Mehra: Modern Indian Art— value, impact, creativity these are significant words, how would you rate modern Indian art of the 40’s under these three heads.

Renu Modi: A group of artists emerged in the 1940s who gave modern Indian art a new direction, infusing it with distinctive styles and initiating the modernist movement in India. FN Souza, MF Husain, SH Raza, SK Bakre and HA Gade formed a common front and named it the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). The PAG was formed denouncing the national movement of the Bengal School with a thrust towards modernism. Even after 4-5 decades, the historical impact still reverberates to the extent of them being studied by international researchers. The historical and commercial value of these artists thus cannot be overlooked.

SM: I would like to take you back to the remark you once made to me in terms of the current economic depression while advising a young investor. And I quote “for me modern stalwarts like Husain, Raza, Swaminathan, Khakhar and Ram Kumar are like Blue Chip Stocks while the young contemporaries of today are like equity” Elaborate?

RM: Here I would like to draw out something I had read in a journal some years back about defining the word ‘Contemporary’. It is commonly defined as existing, happening or living during the same period of time. In other words it resonates as ‘now’. But the truth is that ‘now’ on its own cannot do much. Its dependent on ‘soon’ and ‘before’, on a future moment in which another ‘now’ will come or on a time in the past which ‘now’ was ‘then’. We comprehend ‘now’ as the result of what already took place and as the introduction to what’s going to happen. This is a perfect justification in terms of 20th century modern Indian art whose sheer scale and variety of art and artists is impossible and provides a stepping ground for the ‘now’ i.e. the young contemporaries. Some immediate recollections are Tejal Shah and N Pushpamala’s take on Ravi Varma or Vivan Sundaram’s Amrita revisited.

This brings us to them being blue chip stocks where when we look back in history; these artists developed their own stylistic language and their traditional and conventional practices are influencing two-three generations down and their value continues to hold true both in the context of Indian art history and the market.

SM: Renu, let me bring you back to Husain Sahib who is still not dated as he keeps reinventing himself and yet despite his value and undeniable impact, the modern art theorists and critics tend to be reductive of his work despite his popularity in the market.

RM: No, I don’t think Husain’s work is reductive at all. He is an Indian icon in the truest sense. Even at the age of 92, he has the mindset and energy of a youth, reinventing his work practice from time to time. Not many have explored Indian art the way he has – at our rural cultures, tradition, icons, mythology, scale and even for that matter varied mediums ranging from painting, sculpture, installations and films.

SM: Would you say Husain has stayed relevant artistically in comparison to artists like Gaitonde, Souza, Bakre, Raza and Ara. As a gallerist/observer, what is your assessment?

RM: Husain as I said is an Indian icon, a household name. A graph of Husain’s career will show a consistent escalation rising with each decade. Besides this reason of course, in comparison to the other artists you mentioned there is a timeline attached to Husain. In that sense he is of course more relevant. To quote Yashodara Dalmia who wrote in Metaphor of Modernity pg 1-7 “From the Husain of those early days and the Husain who is now India’s leading artist, exists the unbelievable rags-to-riches story, the very stuff of dreams, Yet there is an unmistakable skill and also a passin, zeal, and hard work that has gone into the making of Husain.” Having said that, it does not mean that I am belittling the impact of Raza, Souza, Tyeb and Gaitonde. All these artists have their own approach and language and are still very strong influences in India.

SM: But would you agree Renu that these people gave these young practitioners the reference point, the point of departure.

RM: Of course they have!

SM: So has their relevance, impact, creative value remained constant or are we re-looking and reassessing these artists?

RM: As I mentioned to you earlier, the moderns are blue chip and perennial artists. Yes, there have been fluctuations in their prices in the last few years, not because of their quality but more due to the very strong global market forces and fashionable trends of the contemporary art taking over. In these recession times, the historical as well as the commercial values are being reassessed.

SM: So in that sense are they dated, tried and are they deemed as less worthy of our artistic attention today?

RM: These moderns have their place in their context of time and place. So they can’t be called dated and nothing can be taken away from their impact, creative value or significance to any collections. Many major collections such as that of Rajiv and Roohi Savara, Mahinder Tak, Rajiv Choudhary are focused towards these very moderns. In fact there is going to be a major exh. on the progressives, which is being conceptualized and organized by a private collector to travel across museums in USA.

SM: Lets move on to the next wave of the artists – the interim generation as I like to call them, people like Bhupen Khakkar, J. Swaminathan, Biren De, G R Santosh, Gulam Sheikh, Nilima Sheikh, Laxma Goud, Nalini Malani, Bikash Bhattacharya Jogen Chowdhury, Ganesh Pyne Zarina Hashmi and Manjit Bawa. How would you define their very diverse art practices? How do you rate their contribution both artistically and in terms of the market today?

RM: A very interesting question, which has been addressed extensively with many books being written on the topic. In short, the artists that you mention belong to the all-important generation of the 60s and 70s. They came from different parts of India and worked completely independent of each other. They gave precedents to their own experience of reality developing modern metaphors in their own painterly expression. They could be conceived as two decades of growth and maturity in a heterogeneous country like India.

SM: Would you add Arpita Singh in the same category?

RM: Women artists have played a very important role in the context of Indian art. Artists like Arpita Singh and Nilima Sheikh are definitely one of the foremost women artists in our country. In fact I hosted a significant women artists exhibition at the NGMA Delhi as early as 1997.

SM: Renu, lets leap from here to the contemporary Art Circuit. Lets talk about the young turks as I like to call them and I am talking here about people like Atul Dodiya Anju Dodiya, Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, video installation artist like Sonia Khurana, Manjunath Kamath, Chintan Upadhyay. Comment?

RM: Every generation reinvents their own vocabulary depending upon their respective social, economic, political and cultural backgrounds. This generation has been able to impact the international scene with artists like Subodh Gupta being the Indian ambassador of the arts. Recent exhibitions like the one held at the Serpentine Gallery in London or the Mori Art Museum in Japan are fine examples of this keen interest in Indian art internationally and it is growing by leaps and bounds.

SM: Would you call this a current movement?

RM: I don’t think the works of these artists are of any particular movement. They are very individualistic and highly creative.

SM: I am getting the impression that this art has innovation. It reeks of originality, innovation and creativity. While it does have impact, my only persistent doubt is in terms of value. Does it go beyond historical value? Will it have an enduring, if I may be vulgar, commercial value?

RM: The artists mentioned all are historically important and one cannot deny their commercial value. It will go on increasing because of an international interest in their works.

SM: Straying from the question of impact, creativity and value I am very interested in the new art practices, photography first which has been elevated to high art in recent times. In addition I would also like to dwell on the question of Sculpture in which your gallery has been a leading showcase for contemporary Indian sculpting talent.

RM: When you start talking about these new mediums of sculpture and photography, they are very important art disciplines, which have not been recognized in India as much as they should have been. My first sculpture show was held as early as 1995. People really did not know what sculptures were then, which drove me to conceptualize the show. The artists whom we showed then, are now big names such as Ravinder Reddy, Sudarshan Shetty, Pushpamala and Rimzon. They were then starting their practice and now are well known names. Similarly Indian photography can be dated as early as the works of Raja Deen Dayal. In the current scenario, we see many shows concentrated on the medium including also a very well acclaimed show Public Places Private Spaces curated for the Newark Museum in 2007 by Gayatri Sinha.

SM: So are these mediums rated high in terms of creative value and collectible value?

RM: For me they are highly collectible and creative. They have their own standing. In contemporary times, the boundaries between different mediums have blurred and most artists are making optimum use of the different mediums for their artistic expressions. Within these changing times, while we see artists creating multidisciplinary works; we also see the bright young collectors who are responding to such works.

SM: Who do you think are the significant Indian art practitioners who do not live in India but remain quintessentially Indian?

RM: I would rate diasporic artists like Rina Banerjee, Chitra Ganesh and Sutapa Biswas extremely high. The Indian market as regards to their commercial value are acknowledging them and becoming more and more aware of their works as they are now being shown by the Indian galleries; that’s why they have all come up and will again be of historic value and the impact is going to be very great as they are using very new media practices.

SM: As a seasoned gallerist and curator what is your advice to a young collector who is just starting out. Should he trust instinct? Should he have reference points in terms of art critics or go by market intelligence? What should he go by in terms of starting his collection?

RM: I think starting his collection, a young collector, if he has no confidence in his own instinct, first of all a basic instinct is very important for a young collector as to what he wants to buy. If he does not have that then he should take advice from anybody; it may be a gallerist; it may be a collector friend; take the advice and then go by one’s instinct. I advice every young collector who starts on this journey of collecting to first buy what his heart says and I don’t think we should now follow as market reports can really mislead young collectors.