Art in autumn

Braving the late autumnal winds, thousands of Parisians are flocking to exhibitions of art to view everything from Goya to Hashimoto to bizarre video art and photography. It is not without regret that one recalls the relative emptiness of Indian galleries, says GAYATRI SINHA.

THE clouds scud across the western horizon so quickly that the Air France jet battles them, sounding like a lambretta in full fury.

After five years the pulse of Paris appears to have quickened. There is more chrome and steel on the Champs Elysses, serving as the frontage of showrooms for aggressively marketed consumer durables. At the Hotel Littre, the maitre d' hotel confirms that Milan Kundera has a flat just next door, and that Jodie Foster maintains a home on the 9th arrondisement. But he rushes away: the next batch of Americans has just walked in for a breakfast of fruit, meat cuts and lavish preserves and breads. This winter, Americans are everywhere in France, exhausting the sales counters at Louis Vuitton outlets, buying up chauteaux and city apartments, crowding Nice and St. Tropez on the French Riviera. Suddenly, MacDonald's appears to have its raison d'etre in France.

Yet the French continue to privilege art like no other nation. Braving the late autumnal winds, there are long queues of patient people outside the Musee D'orsay, awaiting entry to a large exhibition of Manet. On the last day of the FIAC, one of Europe's largest exhibitions of art hosted by galleries, thousands of avid spectators pour in to view everything from Goya to Hashimoto presented by entrepreneurs from all over Europe. It is not without a pang that one recalls the relative emptiness of Indian art galleries; that the only comparable crowds in India are seen in temples and mosques.

The spirit of modernism is so well entrenched in France that the French have taken to the post-modern with a generalised scepticism. At the FIAC, Denise Renee, a well known gallerist who has dealt in abstraction since 1945, hardly feels the necessity to show installation. In the early 1940s Renee staked her family earnings to show Mondrian in Paris, and hosted Picasso in 1947. She has since moved now to the austere brilliantly kinetic sculptures of Soto, leading South American artist, following a trajectory that foregrounds pure abstraction.

Similarly, Darthea Speyer, an American in Paris whose upmarket gallery is hosting Viswanadhan, is another strong proponent of abstract painting. Darthea, now in her eighties, wears a silver lame cardigan and black tights with Reeboks; she was the first to show Mark Rothko in Paris, and does not believe in change in the essentials of art.

For the crowds pouring into the FIAC, Frank Stella's new, brilliantly hued metal sculptures that wing their way off the wall or the swollen female bodies of Nikki de saint Phalle are still more acceptably modern than say the paper installations of Hashimoto. A much more reckless quality pervades the exhibition from 50 nations at the exhibition "Out of 2000", under the Pont Alexandre on the banks of the Seine river. Among the two participating Indian artists is Anju Dodiya, perhaps the only real painter, in the exhibition. The rest of the artists from Tunisia to Russia have embraced installation, video art and photography.

The outstanding work in "Out of 2000" was the Japanese entry created by Momoya Torimitsu. Dressed as a nurse, the artist tended to her "patient", a robotic Japanese businessman, dressed in a servile expression and a business suit. As she tightened the screws in his rear, the nurse set the robot in motion; he crawled along the streets of Paris, inviting among commuters and shoppers huge curiosity, the reactions of which were recorded on video. The Russian entry was computer generated photographs by Elena Kovilina and Ania Abazieva, both strongly feminist artists who morphed themselves as nudes having a hugely entertaining time, riding on the barrel of an advancing convoy of Russian tanks. A newly activated space is the small but beautiful museum space at the Luxembourg gardens, which proved to be the venue of one of the most well attended shows of the season. Titled From Botticelli to Bonnard, it is the personal collection of Gustav Rau, who began life as an interpreter, studied tropical medicine and went to work in Africa, building up large hospitals and care centres. Simultaneously he began to collect art works, from the Italian primitives onwards, building up a jewel of a personal collection that he has since donated to UNICEF.

In the Louvre so long are the crowds around La Giaconda that it is with relief that one can escape to the quiet beauty of the Flemish masters on the second floor. The small exquisite works of Dirck Bouts, Memling or Metsys among others as precursors to Rembrandt fascinate with their stunning modernity. The Louvre has representations from all streams of world art - except Indian (which is housed in the Musee Guimet). But hierarchies which are so well entrenched in western museums are now being reexamined. The Louvre has set up a "Gallery of Primary Art", that will in 2004, culminate in the "Musee du Quai Branly", made up of the arts of Africa and the oceanic countries. Its avowed intention is to give "place of homage to non-western societies and of the sharing of cultures still too often misunderstood ... Further it is a witness to the fact that hierarchy no longer exists between the arts no more than it does between people". It is a small beginning, but one that may alter the world view on Graeco-Roman art as being the fount of all aesthetic criteria.

The Musee Guimet's gates will remain closed to the public until early next year. In all of France it is the only substantial repository of Indian art, and the newly refurbished Indian galleries on the ground floor will display the very substantial gifts of Jean and Krishna Ribound. Now however, there is another venue for classical Indian art. Nice, in the south of France has opened the exquisite "Musee des Arts Asiatiques", with a few pieces of Japanese, Chinese and Indian art. Curator Marie-Pierre Foisy-Aufrere has a receptivity to Asian art that is apparent in the current exhibition of every day Japanese objects. Textiles, clothes, tea objects, utensils are thus seen in conjunction with high Buddhist icons, lending a fullness to the interpretation of a culture.

As the chilly mistral blows across the picture perfect south of France, clearing the brilliant blue skies of every vestige of cloud, it is easy to forget the number of small museums that have been built in this part of France. Bridgette Bardot country has a sharp creative edge. The stretch of land from Marseilles to Nice and Antibes via St. Tropez and St. Maxime, has, during the last century, been home at different times to a number of artists.

Picasso's fascination for ceramics, Matisse's love for the clear white light of Nice, which resulted in his long residence at the Promenade d' Anglaise, and Marc Chagall's inspiration by the Old and the New Testament religious paintings all have a deep connection with the south. Some of Picasso's most exuberant work, particularly the series of painted ceramics are on view at the Picasso Museum at Antibes, while the Matisse Museum at Nice collates the master's personal collection of art and antiquities or photographs of him taken by Man Ray and Cartier-Bresson with his drawings, sculptures, paintings and collages. It is a vision of beauty distilled, in which the cares of the rest of the world seem very far away.

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