########################################################################## # Don't just read the news...discuss it. Learn more about Goa via Goanet # # Goanet was setup in 1994 and has spent the last decade building a # # lasting Goan non-profit, volunteer-driven network in cyberspace. # # Visit the archives http://www.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet/ # # To join, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and ask to join Goanet. # ########################################################################## Goan Art, going global
By V. M. de Malar [EMAIL PROTECTED] The action took place in New York last week; it was a record-breaking, trend-setting, couple of hectic days. First Sotheby's, and then Christie's the next day, two gala auctions of Indian art to test depth and staying power in the Indian art boom that has seen prices soar many hundredfold in just over a decade. If you read the Indian national press, you already know what happened. Tyeb Mehta's 'Mahishasura' became the first contemporary Indian painting to sell for the equivalent of a million dollars, it finally went under the hammer for a whopping seven crores. But the news of real relevance to Goa came riding the crest just behind the million-dollar Mehta painting; the two auctions established record new prices for at least five other great Indian contemporary artists, among them two great pioneering Goans, Francis Newton Souza and Vasudeo S. Gaitonde. These sons of our soil were friends, contemporaries, and students of Mumbai's prestigious J. J. School of Art. They were integral members of the groundbreaking Progressive Artists Group that jumpstarted the modern movement that has eventually led to last week's million-dollar sale. And now paintings by both men have crossed the one crore level for the first time, they're acknowledged treasures of India's cultural heritage. Sadly, the news of commercial success in the biggest art market in the world came too late to gladden the heart of either man. Gaitonde died in New Delhi in 2001, Souza in Mumbai less than a year later. Both had suffered isolation and a kind of neglect in the years when no one understood or appreciated their efforts to create a new art for a newly independent country, both had to head overseas for long periods. Souza even wrote that it would have been better had he not survived a traumatic childhood episode of smallpox. Death, he said, "would have saved me a lot of trouble. I would not have had to bear an artist's tormented soul, create art in a country that despises her artists and is ignorant of her heritage." But it was never really about the money for either of these mavericks. Both were deeply committed, and resisted commercialism in order to pursue individual impulses. Gaitonde virtually single-handedly created the abstract stream of modern Indian art; even as the marketplace shifted he maintained absolute fidelity to his own distinctive style. His works are now acknowledged as the most important and original abstract paintings to come from the subcontinent. And, no one has been more important to modern Indian art than F. N. Souza. He led the way for his peers in everything; first to reject the excessive formalism of the Brit-influenced J.J. School, first to become politically aware and nationalist, first to conceive of a new Indian art, founder of the Progressive Artist's Group, discoverer of M. F. Husain and a whole slew of others. Souza also headed West very early in his career and then became the first Indian artist to make a name for himself abroad; by the 1960's he already was an established celebrity in London, with high profile exhibitions and serious critical acclaim. He experimented with a kind of Pop Art at least a decade before the idea was even named, his iconography expanded to embrace personalities and politics of the larger world, he became India's first real world artist even if no one understood what was happening. Goa is in the paintings of Souza and Gaitonde, overtly and riotously in the case of the former and obliquely in the latter's. But where are the paintings of Souza and Gaitonde in Goa? They're easily seen in museums in London and New York, and even New Delhi and Mumbai. But here in Goa, where most people have barely heard of either painter, we have nothing; no museums, no education for our students about these great Goans, no roads named, no recognition. We have yet to acknowledge that these two great Goans created works that are crucial to our culture, which are irreplaceable modern artifacts of our evolving heritage. No civilized people treats its great artists like this. We Indians have the unfortunate habit of only appreciating what we have after someone else praises it. Well, we've reached the point where Souza's and Gaitonde's paintings are being sold for a crore each in New York. Isn't it time we started to honour their legacies properly here, in their homeland?