Nagy commends Gupta for forcing us to take a fresh look at the stereotypes of India. “Subodh locks onto these clichés and examines them from a number of angles: the sacred cow and its dung, medicines and religious rituals; stainless steel kitchen articles and country-made firearms; an over-stuffed kitsch-baroque armchair or a scooter slung with milk pails; the image of the Indian worker in transit encumbered with commodities.”

Atul Dodiya is also an artist rooted in his environs. Demure, usually dressed in khakis and blacks, the 47-year-old refuses to move out of Ghatkopar, where he lived in a chawl for years (he has overhauled his tiny studio instead). He has none of the eccentricities of an artist and could easily pass off as a doctor or an accountant. “When I chose to become a painter, my friends were quite worried about how I was going to make a living. They never saw painting as a career. But my family never opposed it,” recalls Dodiya. “My father, a civil servant, bought me a first-class train pass so I could go and see all the art shows. My sister wanted me to become an architect. But I was weak in mathematics,” says Dodiya with a wry smile. Luckily for Indian art, he flunked math and joined the JJ School of Art in 1982. Today he is the youngest painter in the history of Indian contemporary art to have got over Rs 1 crore for his work at an auction house.

From a predominantly realist approach, Dodiya has gone on to incorporate a rich hybridity in his work — one that arises from a deep engagement with the country’s popular culture, from cinema to calendar art, from comic strips to international masters like Piet Mondrian and Marcel Duchamp. International recognition has not been hard to come by. In 1999, he won the Sotheby’s Prize for Contemporary Art. Another high was when his works were shown at the Tate Museum, London, in 2000, as part of the exhibition ‘Centuries Cities: Art And Culture in Modern Metropolis’.

... contd.