Last evening, at Urban Housing Minister Kumari Selja’s residence, the Dayawati Modi Stree Shakti Samman was claimed by artist Seema Kohli, a decade after it was won by fellow artist Anjolie Ela Menon. In the intervening years, the award had been given to women from different fields, but the distance from Menon to Kohli maps the latter’s importance — and popularity — at a time when the art economy is in a near-crippled state. Kohli’s market, though, has remained strong.
In a similar coincidence, the Dayawati Modi Award, announced the previous week, also went to another popular artist, Paresh Maity — previous claimants from the art field being Anish Kapoor and Tyeb Mehta, both celebrated giants. Is the award, therefore, a recognition of Maity and Kohli’s increasing mass appeal, or does it place them on a par with their previous recipients?
While the jury is out on why — and how — artists are nominated, and chosen, for various awards, how much does it really matter, especially when the reference is to privately-instituted honours and not the National Awards given out by the Lalit Kala Akademi. In recent years, we have seen the establishment of the Skoda Prize for Indian contemporary art that comes with the attendant razzmatazz of big prize money and the attention of the world art fraternity in attendance at the India Art Fair, with which it coincides. The Raza Foundation, too, instituted an annual award for artists starting in 2001, but recent winners have been hard to put a name to, while earlier recipients made more news and were showered with attention.
How much do these awards benefit artists? Measuring such gains can prove difficult because they depend to a large extent on the artist in question. In the case of the Raza Foundation, and particularly when Raza sa’ab was resident in Paris, it provided an international platform for the artists, whom he also mentored. Among those who stand out are Atul Dodiya, who hardly needed the validation, Sujata Bajaj, who has built on that association and created a name for herself, and Manish Pushkale, who similarly shared the spotlight with his mentor, saw his fortunes rise, but whose meteoric rise could not be sustained by the market. Similarly, the Skoda Prize proved beneficial for Mithu Sen, who was in the news with her work and managed to leverage the buzz, while the current winner Navin Thomas remains little heard and mostly still unknown. To contextualise further, the Lalit Kala and the government’s Padma awards have almost no bearing on an artist’s market, but are important when it comes to participation in, particularly, international museum programmes, and for long-term recognition and validity.
How much should an artist worry about these awards? Acknowledgement is an important facet of an artist’s work, and prizes, therefore, indicative of that achievement. That Krishen Khanna was awarded a Padma Bhushan only as recently as 2011 is hardly indicative of his market standing, and certainly had little bearing on his prices, though the recognition, however late in coming, is welcome. That his contemporary, F N Souza, received no laurels from the government, though, hardly deterred either his international reputation or, later, his market.
Kohli and Maity receiving the Dayawati Modi awards, therefore, seen from that prism, provide a moment of reflection — and satisfaction — a vote of encouragement for their work, a time for them to savour the publicity and bask in the adulation. Tomorrow, when they return to the loneliness of their studios, the applause will keep them going for longer than mere financial rewards might.
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
