The last decade saw contemporary artists scale up the size of their works thanks to prosperity that allowed them access to huge studios — whether Subodh Gupta’s Very Hungry God, or Rashid Rana’s digital collages, or Jitish Kallat’s wall of fibreglass bones forming Mahatma Gandhi’s speech at Charles Saatchi’s gallery in London, or even Surendran Nair with his tongue-tripping names for his canvases. The senior generation of artists had not enjoyed that luxury, with neither the space in which to create voluminous paintings or sculptures, nor the market in which to find appropriate homes for them. It was something artists in the West had capitalised on, and which, as Manu Parekh, ahead of the opening of his show in New Delhi, pointed out, he was acutely conscious of.
And so the Parekhs — Manu and Madhvi — have created, as part of their body of work but currently only for private viewing by appointment, epic paintings in staggering widths of 24 feet and 20 feet respectively, as if an ode to their new studio in the capital. Madhvi’s mural, across five sheets of acrylic, is of her recent interest in Christian iconography, and this rendition of the Last Supper captures the camaraderie as well as intrigue in the thirteen diners, while jewelled colours glow like stained glass windows — a result of her travels to view ecclesiastical art in Russia and Israel.
If Madhvi’s is a stunning triumph in her treatment of the subject and her mastery over colours, Manu’s immense triptych harks back to his ritualised imagery of fecund sensuality. A transcendental light glows in an orb, as though rising from a Shiva lingam, ovoids and embryos lush with vegetal growth bend with the weight of their own fertility in an imagined landscape of fantastical forms. Is this a primordial world, or one towards which the planets are hurtling? Manu’s triumph lies in the perspective he brings to his colossal mural as well as the field of depth that he creates within this imagined universe.
Artists enjoy size because of the freedom it gives them to blow up concepts, but in the absence of infrastructure where it can be exhibited, few in India have taken the trouble to create similarly mammoth works, unless it is specifically commissioned. Sakti Burman pointed out recently that though he lived and worked in Paris, the requirement to paint and sell fast was a reason he worked on mostly small canvases. This is a disadvantage to the extent that museums look for iconic works, and size, to some extent, is a determinant in that. S H Raza’s Saurashtra, for instance, now part of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, is probably the largest work painted by the artist, while another which is up for auction by Sotheby’s and was part of the John D Rockefeller collection, is similarly massive.
Are the Parekhs’ enormous works — even perhaps unconsciously — aimed at institutional buying? As India stands poised on the brink of an art resurgence, it is clear museums and art institutions will mushroom. There has been some indication of this in the last few years, but there’s evidence that it’s only the tip of the iceberg. In catching on to this, it is possible that Madhvi and Manu Parekh are forerunners in a trend that will capitalise their efforts in the value such works generate — Arpita Singh’s massive mural, Wish Dream, for those who might have forgotten it, fetched an amazing Rs 9.6 crore in an auction in December 2010.
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
