Brushstrokes in Turkey

Popular Prakashan plans coffee-table books on art

It organised a week-long artists' camp in Turkey to document the attending artists' work in a book form. It will be Popular Prakashan's first in the series of art books it plans to bring out on South Asian art.

"Our intention is to create awareness about art among the youth. And Istanbul, which is a confluence of western and eastern culture, provided a stimulating ground for an exchange of views," says Harsha Bhatkal, publisher, Popular Prakashan.

The company publishes 100 titles a year, including bestsellers such as Sanjeev Kapoor's Khazana series and Jassi's (of Jaisi jaisi koi nahin...) Seven Steps to Success. In 2003, Popular published the award-winning Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema.

Bhatkal says the idea behind the book is to take art to the masses. "The book will be written from a layman's point of view. It is important to enjoy art and not get influenced by labels," observes Bhatkal.

The camp in Istanbul was attended by 25 artists, including Ganesh Haloi, Sunil Das and Chittrovanu Mazumdar.

Apart from staying at a five-star hotel, the artists were taken on sight-seeing tours to "soak" in the experiences. "We got a chance to interact with the artists and there was no pressure to work if you didn't want to," says sculptor K S Radhakrishnan, who attended the camp.

But the catch is, that like most artists' camps organised by gallerists and hotels, painters have to provide one of their works to the organisers free of cost. Considering that art prices have sky-rocketed and it's getting difficult to source works as artists get busier, the arrangement works well both ways.

The camp organisers get to keep one work of each artist, and the artists in turn, get to interact with one another and see new places. "You may think that you'd go to, say, Khajuraho and paint there for a month. But it never happens," says a Delhi-based painter.

With the boom in the nascent Rs 270-crore Indian art market, artist camps are becoming popular. Apart from those organised by art collector Harsh Goenka in Mud Island, near Mumbai, artists today are taken to exotic locales such as Cambodia, Egypt and Burma. Bhatkal, for instance, plans to take a batch 25 artists to Greece next. "We want to hold three to four more camps with 20 major artists in each such exercise to complete the spectrum," he says.

Tunty Chauhan, owner of Gallery Threshold, who organised seven artists camp in the past, including one in Bagan in Burma, this month, dismisses the idea that camps are being organised just to acquire works. "It's also a rapport-building exercise and getting to know the artists better."