Nitin Bhayana: Rediscovering old masters

BUSINESS CLASS/ Art galleries must showcase pre-Progressives

A fair number of suitcase art dealers might be out of business very soon. With last week's arrest of Suraj Sharma, the infamous framer, who was finally nailed in the Anjolie Ela Menon episode, it seems that the art world is finally cleaning up its mess.

Apart from Menon, whose market is sure to come under pressure, rampant faking has taken its toll on a variety of artists. This especially includes those belonging to the pre-Independence Bengal School, which has now become an area no collector wishes to consider.

Without doubt what is required, apart from the arrests made by the economic offences wing, is documentation and authentication of Herculean proportion, by dealers and historians. Delhi Art Gallery has made a start with its show "Manifestations II: Indian Art in the 20th Century" which opens in Mumbai this weekend.

As the name suggests, Manifestations II consists of 100 works from the gallery's own collection and hopes to shed light on the various movements in contemporary art in the last century.

Ashish Anand, the director of Delhi Art Gallery, has taken a rather contrarian view by showing art that very few dealers would show. In a short span of just about a decade, his ever expanding gallery in south Delhi's Hauz Khas village has become known for art that's anything but fashionable.

Anand firmly believes that while the hype given to many of the senior, more well-known artists may be justified, the contribution of scores of highly competent and extremely important artists should not be forgotten. For, these artists are of great value in the historical context, to the development of Indian art in the last century.

Although the show, and its luscious coffee table book, do not claim to adhere to any formal curatorial standpoint, what's extremely interesting is the juxtaposition of many of the long-forgotten but important artists which most galleries do not show.

The catalogue begins with early Bengal oils, belonging to the Tagore brothers, Ram Kinkar Baij and Jamini Roy, the true masters of the Bengal School. The catalogue moves on to the pre-Progressives with the works of S L Haldankar and M V Dhurandhar. Some non-mainstream works of the Progressives complete the transition into post-Independence.

On the more contemporary side, wonderful works of Prabhakar Banre, Himmat Shah, J Swaminathan, K G Subramanium and Amitava Das make an interesting, if somewhat eclectic mix of artists that is sure to interest a more mainstream audience.

For diehard collectors, there is no doubt, that most are and will continue to swear by the Progressives or the Baroda School and, perhaps, rightly so.

However, shows and books like Manifestations II should give viewers a chance to rethink their ideologies and perhaps discover a long forgotten masters like K Ramanujan, Devyani Krishna and Meera Mukherjee.

If more galleries continued to document both their shows and other works sold and worked harder in providing provenance for their exhibits, who knows, may be in a decade, the faking racket will come under considerable control.