Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Antiquities Modern Contemporary Fine Arts and Books | April 2017

“...The present interest among contemporary Indian painters in Tantric, syrnbolical and similar meraphysical elements in the art of the past is therefore essentially or even wholly inspired by the visual and pictorial qualities of these old forms of art as well as their ‘novelty’ in tbe present situation where the world of modern art of the West is fast losing its hold on the imagination of the avant-garde spirits in India. Tantric symbols and diagrams as well as the Yantras with their great geometric stability of suggestions of dymamic movement and strange and meaningful colour, have fired the imagination of quite a few Indian painters of today with their potentialities for the creation of a new world of art which can be different from that of the West. My own work of the ‘Words and Symbols’ series, started in 1963 using mathematical symbols, Arabic figures and the Roman script, helped me create an atmosphere of new picture-making which I seemed to need very much. To me the modern art of the West had as early as 1956 ceased to be, a living or vital source of inspiration capable of sustaining me further. l had to begin afresh. The work- sheet of a young studennt of mathematics was my starting point. It opened, I felt, a new world to me. ln the course of time when my symbols changed I found the Malayalam script more congenial. My work has little to do with Tantric art though I am visually aware somewhat of its forms. My pictures are just a contemporary expression. The scripts are not intended to be read. To make them illegible I introduce strange shapes and characters in between the groups of letters. The symbols and diagrams, the tabular columns etc, have no meaning whatsoever other than their visual aspect and the images born out of association of ideas. Till recently it was apparently all right with the Indian artist if he was derivative of the big names of the West and clever. Perhaps there is nothing much to be ashamed of in these early struggles on the road to modernity and self discovery. A country like India, with its recent past and disturbed present had to absorb the lesson of the West or world art to arrive anywhere. Naturally, all our art of today has something of the stamp of the West, either less or more. It is mainly and fundamentally in the idea of the easel picture which is largely a Western concept, and the popular media of art of today. These bring in a certain dependence on the known technique and concepts of theWest which we are now learning to outgrow. But the release from these limitations and the final overthrow of the Western hegemony, can become a reality only when the Indian artist is really and truly tired of the present situation. He must feel intensely the need for something new which will stand for him more fully. And then, he will search for it with his whole being for one never found anything in life truly worthwhile without looking for it. And when he has found it, it will be new in spite of the impact of a wider world on it, and more like him, Indian and world-wide contemporary.” – Reprinted from Lalit Kala Contemporary Journal of Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi 1972, pp. 134-136. Excerpt from K.C.S. Paniker “Contemporary Painters and Metaphysical Elements in the Art of the Past” 128 | Osian’s–Connoisseurs of Art