Tagore’s paintings are up for auction in London, but a debate on his merit as an artist of would serve the master better jingoistic nationalism
Dartington Hall needn’t have waited for the Nobel laureate’s sesquicentennial birth anniversary before putting up for auction 12 of Rabindranath Tagore’s paintings in London next month. But that the two do coincide has already begun to raise shrill rhetoric around the commercialisation of what the government has declared a “National Treasure” — meaning that works by Tagore cannot be exported. Nothing, however, prevents the sale of Tagore’s works within the country, and nothing, of course, prevents the sale of those works that are already outside the country either. Indeed, what should gladden the hearts of those who have begun their feverish pitch against the auction should be the price estimate — a shabby Rs 1.6 crore for 12 paintings. Surely a National Treasure should be worth much more?
If nothing else, the debate raises some interesting questions. For instance, how might Rabindranath Tagore have painted if his work had been governed by commercial considerations? Would he have modified his brooding imagery to more closely follow the sentimental lines and wash techniques of the maligned Bengal School? Would he have pandered to the whims of the market, or stayed true to the intelligentsia with its greater knowledge of Munch and Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso, all of whom had in greater or smaller measure influenced Tagore? Alongside Amrita Sher-Gil, Tagore is now counted to among the earliest modernists, but would he have fit into that role if he had not had the unfettered freedom to draw, doodle or paint as he chose?
Tagore started painting late in his life, when in his sixties. It was an effort that must be viewed as an endeavour that reflected his artistic ideas at a time when academic realism, on the one hand, and a nationalist agenda, on the other, was stymieing the organic evolution of Indian art. Viewed from that prism, one cannot help but see Tagore’s first exhibition in Paris, in 1930, followed by others across Europe, USSR and the US in the same year (his first exhibition in India was in December 1931, in Kolkata), with some degree of scepticism. Was the West genuinely ecstatic about his talent or merely celebrating an Asian educationist and philosopher that it thought it had wooed to its own way of thinking?
Of the 2,000-3,000 works credited to Tagore, a majority are to be found in the university he founded in Santiniketan. Since Tagore was not what is considered a salon artist, many of these works were created wherever he had access to paper (there are drawings on the stationery he used at Viswa Bharati University, as well as on that made available to passengers in the cabins of the P&O liners in which he travelled) and the mood took him. Seventy such works, from its collection of a hundred, are currently up at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, and are representative of Tagore’s subjects — melancholic heads, silhouetted landscapes, still-life, graphic drawings, fantastic figures and a hint of Cubism in some of his more derivative works. It is as extensive a tour-de-force of Tagore’s works as you’re likely to get outside the pages of a book on his art.
Tagore did not date most works, though he often signed them in Bengali or English. Many of these were slipped into books, folded into letters or forgotten in bundles, and so found their way into the baris of Bengal, with every bhadralok family claiming acquaintance with him and ownership of his paintings. Unsurprisingly, this has led not just to a market in fakes but contributed to keeping Tagore’s prices in check. His choice of medium and size — coloured inks, crayons and water colours were favourites, with the paper sometimes smaller but rarely larger than the standard A4 sheet size — have played a role in managing his value.
Unfortunately, for too long Rabindranath Tagore’s iconic status has prevented a no-holds barred debate on his contribution to modern art and his own position in its pecking order. Tagore would readily have submitted that any merit in his art should be put under the scrutiny by succeeding generations without tying the discussion to his guru-like status. Nor must such obfuscation detract from the argument that if the nationalists want to bring back Tagore’s works, all they need to do is bid at the Sotheby’s auction on June 15.
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If they succeed, they will probably help establish a better price for the master which, if an earlier Christie’s auction of 1999 is any indication, could take prices up by as much as five times (from a lower estimate of Rs 4.6 lakh to a realised price of Rs 23 lakh) and three times more than his nephew, artist Abanindranath Tagore, at the same auction. A subsequent auction, by Sotheby’s, in May 2008, had fetched a value of Rs 95 lakh for what it described as a death scene. Now to see whether Portrait of a Woman and Lady with a Fan at Sotheby’s, alongside 10 other works, will better that record.
These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which the writer is associated.