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Masterpieces from the Alkazi show
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The Alkazi art collection, which was on display recently, portrayed the scholarly interest in modern trends in the field. In a review, ALKA PANDE says it was also an attempt to initiate a dialogue with the viewer and reveal the depth, range and quality of art work.
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"Police raid", 1996, water colour, Tina Boplah.
"A collection is not a haphazard conglomeration of art objects accumulated over the years, with no clear purpose or larger view in mind. A collection is a revealing reflection of the taste discrimination of the collector and of his aesthetic sensibility. In many ways, a collection implies a distinctive, idiosyncratic view of what constitutes `quality' in art, fortified, hopefully, by a sound knowledge and understanding of art history."Ibrahim Alkazi
IBRAHIM ALKAZI is a living legend — a gallerist, a collector, a patron of the arts, and he literally possesses a treasure trove ... from 19th Century photographs, the so-called "Company School", bazaar paintings, forms of ritualistic and popular art, the Kalighat pats and tribal forms. His collection of art runs the gamut.
He runs "Sepia Inc." in New York and "Art Heritage" in New Delhi, while his wife, Roshen, has run galleries with patent success since the early 1960s. The Alkazi collection, which was on display from December 8 to 20, 2002, was just titled "Masterpieces from the Alkazi Collection" that showcased the work of eight remarkable artists. It included 31 pen and ink drawings by Laxma Goud, 21 paintings by Jaya Ganguly, eight by Ira Roy, six by Rekha Rodwittiya, eight by Tina Bopiah, 11 by Sabrina, four by Adi Davierwala, two sculpture pieces by Nandagopal and one (a sculpture piece again) by Tyeb Mehta.
This collection was not only enormous in terms of the works displayed but also in terms of art, as he put it, as "an intellectual investment which provides lasting pleasure". He added, "The work I collect must be complex and on the edge. I am intrigued by provocative works. In fact I like people on the edge. For me a name doesn't matter. If the work is not disturbing, it does not engage me. What engages me is the serious aspect of the creativity of the artist. I am not interested in fashionable art."
Alkazi was vehement about his own tastes and the role that art has to play.
"The times, so far, have been disturbed, too insulting to the process of creativity. There is too much insecurity. Ever since World War II, countries and people have experienced upheaval. How can we look at art, which is placid or titillating? When one is viewing art, one has to take into account literature and films. For me, the interest is primarily the problems of the country. Disturbance and complexity, an innovative treatment of forms, new kinds of icons and elements of the third dimension are of equal interest. For example, I am interested in Tagore. I do not like Ravi Varma at all. He does not engage me. There are elements of doubt, of terror, an inward struggle, that are constant in Tagore's work."
Etching, Zinc, 1978, Laxma Goud.
Built carefully over the years, the Alkazi collection portrays the scholarly interest in modern trends in Indian art, which is set in the wider context of the growth of art in the country over the last 200 years.
The Alkazis were closely associated with the Progressive movement in Mumbai in the 1940s and 1950s. As Alkazi put it again, there have been a number of artists whom he once engaged but who have now moved away because they have followed a different path. The fashion in which he collects art has been dictated by an emphasis on quality rather than on quantity or bulk ... quality in terms of sheer painterly skill, of the transformation and transfiguration of significant subject matter into an arresting pictorial form, and the emotional and cerebral stimulus that art imparts. "We have been interested in `key' or seminal works — works which contain the seed out of which a significant artist's future works grow, or those which sum up the search of an artist of distinctive originality or of a particular movement. Such seeds are to be found in the works of M.F. Hussain and K.G. Subramanyam among others."
Earlier, two exhibitions provided a brief introduction to the collection. From this series will follow more shows dedicated specifically to the art lover and scholar in an attempt to initiate a dialogue with the audience and illustrate the depth, range and quality of art work. The works on display were superlative illustrations of the "criteria of selection".
Moving on to the exhibition, the viewer was drawn to Laxma Goud's intense and evocative drawings, Adi Davierwala's sculptures (that express the universal loneliness of man, the man at the crossroads struggling to answer the fundamental question of self), Sudhir Patwardhan's equal parts abstract design and autobiography, and Rekha Rodwittiya's extremely remarkable early work that deals with a lot of her personal struggles.
It was clear that she had moved from western iconography to an Indian one. What was particularly interesting was the brief introduction to each artist — from practising artist Anita Dube to Tasneem Zakariah Mehta, and Asish Rajadhayaksha. With Goud's poignant poetic self-expression and Davierwala's and Rodwittiya's introspective statements, the exhibition became an intensely personal experience.
The grouping of the eight artists was interesting, with an undercurrent of power linking them. As Roshen Alkazi said, the work dealt with the angular, and potent, works of art. The juxtaposition was very interesting — Jaya Ganguly's angular, angry work (where the iconic imagery of Kali is very much a part of her work), with Tina Bopiah, who started painting after having paid her dues as it were, by fulfilling her functions as a householder and duty bound Catholic woman, who looked after her husband and children. (Tina found it increasingly difficult to detach herself and reconcile herself to the two worlds that threatened to drag her in both directions simultaneously. After her family was settled, 150 works just poured out of her, like a stream.)
Portrait, Jaya Ganguly.
In startling contrast to them was the young Sabrina, who began with little bits of thought here and there, of her mother, of her grandmother, of her own internal struggles.
The inclusion of the large Sudhir Patwardhan diptych seemed slightly incongruous in spite of Roshen Alkazi's observation that it was a statement of the urban landscape where all activities took place.
While providing a certain third dimensionality to the exhibit, the sculptures did not complement the angst and "disturbance" of the painterly works. The separation and division of the works into three spaces in some ways disturbed the continuity of the curatorial exercise.
Once the viewer moved upstairs from the main Sridharani Gallery, and then down to the basement, his thought process was broken. With artists unconventionally grouped together, with neither "fashion" nor "fame" playing a significant role, the show achieved its objective by serving as an eye-piece to the collector, his tastes and personal aesthetic.
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