Abstract art has evolved over the centuries, as have the debates and discussions around its practice and interpretations. For Plato, abstraction was associated with mathematics; for Immanuel Kant, it was perceived as raw sensory data; for Wassily Kandinsky, it represented a spiritual and emotional language; for Clement Greenberg, it meant the autonomous existence of colours and forms; for Meyer Schapiro, it was derived from naturalistic art; and for Rosalind Krauss, it was a by-product of socio-political and scientific developments. Abstraction has frequently encountered questions regarding conceptual and aesthetic standards in relation to the figurative and representational arts. Often seen as a field of pure aesthetic and optical experiences, it tends to negate the role of recognizable elements.
Artistic abstraction in the Indian context found its roots in post-independence experiments by the Progressive Artists Group and the Madras Art Movement, later becoming the hallmark of modernism. While Indian modernism was influenced by avant-garde trends from the West, along with the incorporation of individualism and universal forms, many artists also veered towards exploring indigenous art, spirituality, tantric traditions, folklore and nature.
Initially, most art schools, museums and galleries contested the merit and legitimacy of these abstract works. Part of this hesitation stemmed from the fact that these institutions wanted to present themselves as cultivators of taste, intellectual discourses and collective cultural memory, which contrasted with Greenbergian notions of abstract art as an autonomous genre, based on formal elements and pure materiality, without cultural context and historical references. But gradually, abstract art received more attention and reach both internationally and closer home, at spaces like the TATE, London, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi, as these institutions along with newer ones embraced modernist philosophies.
An ongoing exhibition at the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bengaluru, titled Painting with Fire, returns to this period and places it in conversation with more contemporary forms of abstraction, as it brings together works by Jeram Patel (1930-2016) and Tarik Currimbhoy (b. 1954), especially through their common love but different approaches to firing through wood to create new structures.
The Gujarat-born Patel trained at the J.J. School of Arts, Bombay, and specialized in typography and publicity design at the Central School of Arts and Craft, London. He was one of the founder members of Group 1890. As a pedagogue, he instilled innovative ideas about art and creativity among his students at the Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Baroda, and at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad. He also showcased his works in esteemed centres like the NGMA, the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Bhopal.
Patel established himself as an artist during the peak period of abstraction in the 1960s and 1970s, working with two- and three-dimensional mediums of representation. His drawings are quite surreal in nature, while his sculptures take on an archaeological veneer of digging deep into the earth’s crust. His works draw from nature, incorporating organic shapes and forms, like coils, uneven curves, loops, voids and thick patches. He often used a blowtorch, inspired by the Japanese Shau Sugi Ban, a unique method of burning wood, to create a variety of reliefs, incised textures and surfaces.
Patel’s methods and works masterfully bring together the different categories of drawing, painting and sculpting on the same surface. While retaining the materiality of the object, the final product introduces a range of details that evoke sensations, through punches, holes, scuffs, cracks and dents. The blowtorch process also blends the ideas of creation and destruction. Here, destruction is associated with erasure: it resonates with the artist’s personal pathos, and also serves as a means of forgetting.
Alongside Patel, the exhibition introduces, Tarik Currimbhoy, an architect and designer based out of Mumbai and New York. Studying first at the Pratt Institute, New York, and later doing a Master in Arts from Cornell University, Tarik went on to teach drawing and design at these institutions. His works, which have travelled to major art fairs like Art Basel, Art Miami and Art Palm Beach, oscillate between sculptural and architectural design, playing off a sense of interior and exterior spaces. They are predominantly kinetic and tactile, encouraging active participation from viewers. Tarik is particularly interested in exploring pendulum movements and finding rhythms inspired by childhood toys and mechanisms.
His sculptures are typically simple, organic forms made in wood, stone or metal, and maybe categorized within the realm of minimalistic abstraction. Challenging the idea of sculpture as static, solid form, they push the ideas of structure and gravity, while creating a subjective sensation of space and movement.
Patel and Currimbhoy’s art, when seen in tandem, presents abstraction at different levels: one as residue of modernism, and the other as a postmodern sensibility of spatial experiences. As the title suggests, MAP’s Painting with Fire highlights both artists’ use of the blowtorch to optically negotiate interior space. There is attention given to spatial balance, harmony, wall treatment and lighting. The earthy shades, burnt wood pieces and serpentine forms attempt to bring in a feel of nature within the white cube setting. Juxtaposing the works of the two artists seems like an experiment with two different temperaments: Patel’s works act as an unburdening of one’s innermost feelings, while Currimbhoy’s pieces are born from his interaction with public spaces and response to art and architecture in a social context.
It is also interesting to notice how Patel’s works evoke a sense of an ever-evolving entity, where forms shift from one frame to another. For example, in “Untitled” (2009), the carved shapes appear to move horizontally, transitioning from a blue background, to green and then yellow in two works captioned “Untitled” (2011). This fluidity contrasts with Currimbhoy’s art, which appear to possess a definitive, almost resolved completeness. In “Black Cobra” (2024), for instance, the snake seems to dive vertically through the mirror below, suggesting a motion within contained space.
In addition to their purity of form and monochromatic tendencies, the works of these artists also share qualities like immediacy and spectacle. Their abstraction denies reality, or rather announces a reality of its own. The exhibits evoke something familiar yet mysterious, which can be felt but not quite defined and located. While Currimbhoy’sworksrevealastructuredpractice, Patel’s harp on spontaneity.Nevertheless, the sole intention of both seems to be meditation over mediation, abstraction being the strongest correspondence with a state of mind. The exhibition presents their works as self-contained entities, offering ‘pure’ sensory experiences and moments of inner contemplation, untouched by external contextualization.
MAP has been dedicated to bringing together diverse areas of art, functioning simultaneously as a museum, gallery and educational space. The staging of an exhibition on de-contextualized abstraction in a space that wishes to engage with collective cultural memory may seem ironic. But while abstraction may seem to refute any kind of socio-cultural references, the truth is that its art forms are legitimized through their inclusion in institutions that prioritize this interaction with the world around.
One might also ask: can works of abstraction, in their autonomy, remain mere motifs? Or with time, do they transform into emblems of socio-cultural significance? In present times, as more political, cultural and gender sensibilities are discoursed through art, are abstract art forms that prioritize aesthetics and mood also shifting from negation to negotiation? Are they moving from collectible cachets to cultivating critical dialogues? Abstraction also finds its extended versions in the works of many contemporary artists, frequently contextualized through postmodern frameworks. This also highlights the ambiguities of whether all artworks, at their core, convey some form of abstraction, not necessarily in appearance but in emotional or spiritual essence, and gain further significance through critical discourse and museumzation, where moral narratives and interpretations are embedded? However, in addition to raising general questions of contextualization, the show also subtly invites the viewer to reflect on their own spatial experience, making them conscious of their subjective positioning within real, tangible surroundings. It prompts a deeper consideration of whether the focus is on the viewer contemplating the content of the artworks, or on how the artworks make the viewer aware of their own positionality in relation to these displays.
Saraswathy K. Bhattathiri is an art historian, art writer and pedagogue from Bengaluru.
The exhibition, Painting with Fire: Jeram Patel and Tarik Currimbhoy is on from August 31 to November 17, 2024, at MAP, Bengaluru.