Graphic artists and admen are bringing their own ideas of art to canvases and installationsIn the 1940s,a 17-year-old MF Husain was paid at a paltry rate of four or six annas per square foot for a cinema billboard he would painta fact he has penned in his memoirs,Where Art Thou.It was the untrained artists sole stepping stone into the world of art.Seventy years later,young artists from the fields of graphic design and advertising continue to trod a path similar to Husainsthe only difference being that their work is not paid in annas,but lakhs. Narendra Yadav,44,for instance,is an adman with the Lintas,who has now also turned artist. He has made installations that are priced between Rs 1.75 and 7 lakh. They were on display at his first solo show,Pavlovs God,held this February at Abhay Maskaras gallery,The Warehouse in Mumbai. I have to dumb things down in advertising. My philosophical musings could only be realised in fine arts, he says. His installations drew compliments from collectors who said that for a first-time artist,his works moved beyond expectations though critics thought his ideas werent lucid enough. One installation of his has fiberglass men covered with sheets,lying next to a radiothus alluding to the pervasiveness of media rhetoric. Another work shows five foetusesin different stages of growthwithin a shining orb. It comments on human mortality and the cosmic universe that indirectly controls it. His entire show is a comment on technology,religion and spiritualitysubjects which Yadav says he cant explore in advertising. Then,theres 35-year-old Aditya Pande who brings his sensibilities as an applied arts student to the canvas. Pande believes his tangled web of synthetic work could only gain full maturity in the realm of fine art. He contrasts glossy enamel paint against a powdery finish of ink-jet print and throws in collage elements too. His workswhich are a collusion of painting,print-making,graphic design and draftsmanshiphover around the Rs 9.5 lakh tag.With a solo at the Chatterjee & Lal Gallery in Mumbai,he has confirmed his presence on the art scene. Pande is now in London where his solo is on at the Alexia Goethe Gallery there. Mortimer Chatterjee of Chatterjee & Lal Gallery thinks the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabadwhere Pande has studiedis bettering traditional art institutes. I think youre going to see a whole generation of NID artists taking over the sensibilities and tastes of art galleries and collectors. The NID gives its students exposure to different kinds of art such as cinema and their courses are more professional than the curriculum at Barodas Maharaja Sayajirao University or Santiniketan in Kolkata, he says. Chatterjees words find resonance with 33-year-old Jiten Thukral from Jalandhar and Sumit Tagra,30,from Delhiboth of whom operate under the brand name Thukral & Tagra. Their tongue-in-cheek artworkthat are punned on advertising imageryare priced between Rs 60 and 80 lakh. Tagra did his post-graduation from NID after studying at the Delhi Collage of Art (DCA) in New Delhithe same place where Thukral did his Masters. Their works draw as much from fashion and advertising as from the history of painting. Thukral and Tagra create complex puzzles of symbols and styles,paintings that are both science-fiction and journalistic reportage, says Peter Nagy of Delhis Nature Morte gallery. That graphic artists and admen are taking the plunge into fine arts has established itself as a trend. Besides seasoned names like Thukral & Tagra,Yadav or Prashant Miranda,there is a new wave of young and upcoming artistsUdisha Kumar whose May solo at Zenzi in Mumbai saw a good response and Gynelle Alves who took a leaf out of Mario Mirandas book and decided to hold a solo of her comic strip characters that were once featured in a popular tabloid in Mumbai.
