Unboxed Writers introduces Art Beat, a fortnightly column that takes you to people, places and trends in art, tracks prices that rise and fall, artists who have made it and also the ones to watch out for, events that become the talk of the town and those which don’t live up to the hype.

Have you been waiting for the long summer break to soak in the vibrant art that galleries have on offer? Or have you been postponing the shopping spree needed to do up your newly acquired pad? Perhaps you can’t afford to buy a canvas, but wouldn’t mind spending on an art souvenir? The only question is, where should you begin? Whatever may be your aspiration, we have decided to come to your rescue. We have not allowed the scorching summer to dissuade us from hunting down the choicest of art pieces – not only brilliant paintings but oriental carpets, antique furniture, tribal art and art jewellery – that you will be proud of owning.

 Modern Masters 

The masters never go out of fashion. Not only is their art timeless, their prices are soaring higher and higher. And if you have the moolah, splurge on FN Souza. Souza was one of the most influential painters of the post-independence art movement called the Progressive Artists Group. Though European modernism was the most distinctive influence on the group, its members-artists had dramatically different styles, ranging from the expressionism of Souza to the pure abstraction of Gaitonde, Indian imagery of Tyeb Mehta to figurative splendour of MF Husain.

 We have chosen for you one of Souza’s most acclaimed oils on canvas which is a part of a series called Head. Souza was always looking at duality of human nature – evident from the distortion of his faces and human forms. Simple strokes yet complex treatment makes this work an enduring piece of art.

 Want a master less brooding? Your best bet is a Krishen Khanna oil on canvas, The First Operation, which was commissioned in 1970 for the Glaxo office in Bombay and is now part of a group show in a Delhi gallery. The painting describes the story of Acharya Charaka, widely known as the father of anatomy in India, performing an operation.

 ‘Head’ by F N Souza, Oil on Canvas, 1963, is priced at Rs 45 lakh.

Available at Kumar Gallery, Sunder Nagar, New Delhi

 ‘The Final Operation’ by Krishen Khanna, Oil on Canvas, 1970,

is priced at Rs 75 lakh. Available at Delhi Art Gallery, Hauz Khas

Village, New Delhi

 Mughal Design  

You can’t do up your wall and neglect the floor. And don’t ever think, buying a carpet is pedestrian. An intricately designed carpet is a piece of art, whether it is a hand-woven one from Kashmir, straight from the tribal areas of Afghanistan where these are called kilims, or created by jail inmates during the British period. Using the best of Pashmina, velvet, silk and even jewels, the rarest of these carpets will now be found only in a museum. But here is what we located for you.

Made in hand-knotted silk and Iranian kurk wool and using vegetable dyes, this 130-year-old Agra Jail carpet is all that a paradise on earth would have. The famous Shikargah pattern – where nature and humanity lives in perfect harmony – is the beauty of this timeless piece. With an effect of light and shadow in its knotting that gives the carpet a three-dimensional feel, it’s life is touted to be another 150 years!

Mughal Design Agra Jail Carpet, 24 feet by 8 feet, priced at Rs 29 lakh.

 Available at Carpet Cellar, 1, Anand Lok, New Delhi

Contemporary Art

We are often advised to look at art not as an investment alone but as something we can live with throughout our lives. And here is where you need to find the right balance. Investing in younger artists is a win-win situation. Not only are they being courted by galleries and auction houses like never before, their work has the perfect mix of tradition and modernity, making it suitable for a new collector.

Take your pick from names like Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Sudarshan Shetty, Manjunath Kamath, Bose Krishnamachari, Ranjani Shettar, Chitra Ganesh, Arpana Caur and Surendran Nair. What we choose, however, is Baiju Parthan’s resplendent acrylic on paper titled Darwin’s Metronome. We were drawn to the primitive appeal of his work, the compelling mythic imagery in black, with some blues and greens. The background is parchment brown, creating thereby an illusion of a medieval manuscript of some secretive magical cult. A work heightened with the artist’s penchant for technology and tantric mysticism.

Darwin‘s Metronome by Baiju Parthan, Acrylic

on Paper, 2010 is priced at Rs 14 lakh

Available at Latitude 28, Lado Sarai, New Delhi.

Videos, sculpture, installations

When a Delhi gallery had hosted an entire festival of video art a few years ago, few knew that this genre would become a hot selling trend. Experimental art has come of age and owning an art video is the ‘in-thing’ these days. If videos are slowly inching their way up, sculptures and installations have found their niche buyers too. What else can explain that the new stars of the recent art summit were mostly three dimensional artworks?

The art video we have selected for you is called Cutter, by Vishal Dar, whose powerful visual imagery uses a 500 rupee note set to animation. Mahatma Gandhi is the protagonist here who takes it upon himself to call off the bluff of the Republic of India.

If you want to buy an installation, don’t look any further than Rajesh Ram’s sculpture made of discarded books. 33-year-old Rajesh Ram is already one the most sought after young artists today who has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Atul Dodiya, Subodh Gupta and Jitish Kallat at the iconic Saatchi Gallery’s The Empire Strikes Back show of India art. He combines his rural background with that of his experiences of living in a city though ubiquitous material such as sacks, pencils, bidis and books!

Cutter: Video by Vishal K Dar (Single-channel video animation,

2009; 1 min 17 seconds), Rs 2.5 lakh. Available at Gallery Espace,

16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony, New Delhi

 Rajesh Ram’s Untitled sculpture in wood, fibre glass, deco paint

and original books, Rs 3.5 lakh. Available at Latitude 28, F-208, Lado

Sarai, New Delhi

 

Art Jewellery

Don’t choke on the prices yet. Thanks to some artists, art is no longer the privilege of the millionaire club. Bags, coffee mugs, scarves, shawls, T-shirts, crockery sets – adorned with some of India’s leading artists’ signature styles – are now available at reasonable prices at art galleries and even museums.

What caught our eye, however, was the jewellery line that artist Seema Kohli has recently launched in the city. Made in semi-precious stones and studded with small sized artworks that Kohli has created especially for the stunning hand-painted neckpieces, each piece is a work of art!

Renowned for her female protagonists – often depicted as Shakti or the female energy that symbolises procreation and cosmic evolution – on her canvas, Kohli’s jewellery line is more than just an interesting diversion. It’s what we applaud as art for everyone’s sake.

Seema Kohli’s art jewellery is available at Latitude 28, Lado Sarai, New Delhi, priced at Rs 90,000 upwards.

Antique Furniture

Yes, we believe even the ubiquitous furniture can be part of a tastefully done art décor. And, the retro look will never lose its appeal. The stuff that attracts us most when on a holiday is usually found in a flea market – a crooked Venetian chandelier, a turntable older than great-granny, a shapeless Chinese flower vase, a rusted Swiss cuckoo clock.

So if you want to go dandy in an old-fashioned way, opt for a Tibetan wooden cabinet and a star-shaped teakwood dining table that are antique pieces which can be contemporised as well with a glass facade. Add to this, a minimalistic British-period English door and the ornate Ramgarh window from Rajasthan which are each 80- year-old and you have a charming reminder of what a melting pot of culture India is!

Tibetan Cabinet @ Rs 22,000; 6 seater star-shaped Dining Table @ Rs 34,000; Ramgarh Window @ Rs 14,500; Antique English door @ Rs 23,500

 Available at Orient Art & Craft, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi

 Tribal And Folk Art 

Did you know that tribal and folk art has existed in our country for more than over a 100 years? We do, and we salute the artists who remain on the fringes, away from market glare, to creare art that is about our roots. We selected two such rare pieces – one a Bengal scroll painting and the other a Santhal tribal paperwork.

Bengal scrolls are about our epics – Ramayana in particular – and weave stories of religion, wisdom and ancient knowledge through colourful icons on paper or cloth. Created originally as part of a visual-oral tradition, where a singer would narrate a story as the patua (painter) would recreate it on cloth, Bengal scrolls can light up any home.

The Santhal painting, also called the Chakshudaan Pat, has a unique story too. When a Santhal tribal artist would draw the portrait of a deceased, he would leave the eyes undrawn as a reference to the afterlife they believed in. Minimal, mysterious and truly Indian – that is tribal art!

 Bengal Scroll Painting, 80 x22 inch, Rs 15,000;

Santhal Chakshudaan Pat, 10×10 inch, Rs 1,00,000

Available at Arts of the Earth, Lado Sarai, New Delhi

Poonam Goel is a freelance journalist and has covered the arts for over 15 years. She contributes on visual arts for various newspapers, magazines and online media. More about her on Story Wallahs. Write to her @ poonamgoel2410@gmail.com