A legacy takes root

If the opening on November 5 of Manu Parekh’s New Delhi exhibition of paintings had a star turnout — it was also the artist’s 80th birthday — it said as many things about Manu bhai the person as it did about Manu bhai the painter. A long career in art has seen its fruition over the last two decades, a period in which Parekh has come to epitomise his muse, Banaras, in art. His distinctive style of painting has made him a recognised artist, but Manu bhai is important today for things other than just his practice.

For one, he is one of the last links between a preceding generation of artists who pioneered and represented modernism in the country and those that carried it forward. Parekh’s foregoing generation included F N Souza and M F Husain, both of whom he counted among his friends. But the burden on Parekh’s generation was to carry forward their legacy without copying their style. Parekh’s is certainly a unique language, but what would an acerbic Souza or a competitive Husain have made of it? For the record, both had complimentary things to say to Parekh about his work — and neither believed in paying lip service to a fault. 

Weaver from Kalahandi, 2019 by Manu Parekh

Second, Parekh’s great ability is taking risks and refusing to confine himself to a trope. I know of few artists who are as curious as him, particularly when it comes to theories about Western art and how it plays out in practice. He constantly questions his own work and, for his recent exhibition, took the plunge to explore a new direction that established artists would have been wary of. Did he succeed? Let time be a judge of that.

A third aspect of Parekh’s work is his insistence that Indian artists must look inwards to the matrix of traditional Indian art to find solutions that address concerns about their evolving language. He says constantly, and consistently, that Indian art — traditional, classical, folk, tantra — holds the key for what should be developed and taken ahead by Indian modernists and contemporary artists, instead of merely aping trends in the West. In recent times, he has ascribed fresh meanings to both the sacred and the sexual, tying them up closely — and his paintings on ritual oblations is evidence of that. 

A fourth, interesting aspect of Parekh’s practice is his previous experience of working with Pupul Jayakar and the Weavers Centre. Places he interacted closely with artisans — painters, printers, craftspersons — include Madhubani in Bihar and Bagru in Rajasthan, and his knowledge of their work and the craftspeople there is legendary. It is this ordinariness, the average Joe if you will, that he saw and met at the time that he has painted as portraits, whether of individuals, or for his renditions of iconic Western art including The Last Supper that he made for his retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art last year. 

Parekh’s people-connect — the fifth point I would like to stress here — is a trait (and this is not connected to his art making) that is important to who he is as a person. Parekh’s band of collectors is legion, even though his art is not yet regarded on par with that of his more eminent predecessors and peers, but his circle includes fellow artists, academicians, art critics and historians, writers and a bevy of intellectuals and others from the creative world. Parekh enjoys his conversations, even if increasingly he is the teacher and not the taught in any tête-à-tête. And if he is allowed to hold the floor, it is because his observations are by turns sharp and sensible. Parekh’s legacy is taking root. It will be interesting to see where it leads.

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated