This profile of Atul Dodiya was published in Man's World magazine in July 2003. I wrote another profile of Atul last year, in advance of a show at Chemould Prescott Road gallery. It was published in Time Out, and took the story of his development forward. I've made a few modifications to the draft on my machine, can't recall what, if anything, was changed by the editor before publication.
Atul Dodiya
Atul Dodiya is severely jet lagged when I meet him at his
studio in Ghatkopar. He has slept afternoons and woken nights for a week since
returning from New York, where his solo show at the Bose Pacia gallery was very
well-received, as all of his exhibitions are well received. The first public
presentation of his work in 1981, at the annual Monsoon Show hosted in Bombay
by the Jehangir Art Gallery, received a rave notice from Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni,
art critic of the Times of India: “He devoted a whole column to my paintings,
and wrote, ‘I would put him at the top of the ladder’”, Atul recalls. Two of
his four canvases at that show found buyers, fetching 2000 rupees each. Ever
since, the orange-red bindis that signify the sale of a work have featured
prominently at his exhibitions, as have accolades from the press.
Atul’s career moved into a higher gear after a landmark show
at Gallery Chemould, Bombay, in 1995. In the eight years since then he has
repeatedly demonstrated his mastery over oils, expanded his range to
watercolours, and created impressive three-dimensional works as well. While
inserting a heavy dose of popular culture and humour into his imagery, he has also
sensitively explored personal relationships and, more recently, taken a hard
look at the state of the country in politically oriented works. He has
established himself, arguably, as the premier artist of his generation. Even
those who would contest this assessment would agree that no other contemporary
Indian artist under the age of fifty has achieved a similar combination of
critical acclaim and commercial success.
Since early 2001, Atul’s career graph has shown a distinct
international slant. He didn’t travel abroad until the age of 31 in 1991, when
he was offered a French government grant for a year-long stint in Paris. He
says, about the delay in experiencing world art at first hand: “I never applied
for a scholarship to go abroad after graduation, even though I loved Western
art very much. I felt I needed a strong base here. I had noticed that when a
few friends returned from residencies in Paris or London, their work showed a
lot of confusion. I felt I should know my people, my surroundings, my neighbourhood;
I shouldn’t go as a student.” Eight years after the Paris stay, he spent a few
weeks in Italy on a fellowship. But his first showing abroad had to wait until
2001, when he was selected to create works for the Tate Modern’s Century City
show in London, a giant exhibition that featured a decade from the art of nine
global cities, of which one was Bombay (1992-2001). 2001 also had Atul
presenting one-man exhibitions in Berlin and Tokyo, and participating in group
shows in Yokohoma and Montreal. The following year, his work was showcased at
the prestigious Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, and he participated alongside
other Indian artists in Vancouver, Vienna and Manchester. In 2003, he was
invited to exhibit in Oslo and Chicago, before his solo at Bose Pacia in New
York in May.
Now, he sits before me in the flat where he grew up, a
modest, single-storey chawl in D.K.Wadi which has served as his studio since he,
along with parents and six siblings, moved to a larger flat nearby in 1987. His
family was not wealthy, and he studied in a Gujarati medium school. From an
early age he demonstrated an exceptional talent for drawing, and by the time he
was twelve he had decided to become a painter. He loved film too, a medium
whose images were to become part of his repertoire. He remembers the impact
made on him as a seventh grader by Satyajit Ray’s ‘Nayak’, when it was telecast
on Doordarshan.
Despite a conviction that his future lay in art, Atul was
initially pressured to become an architect. But he was terrible at maths, and
failed the SSC examination twice, putting paid to any ambitions his family
members may have had of nudging him into a technical profession. His father had
indulged his love of painting, even buying him a first class train pass valid for
travel downtown so that he could view exhibitions. Atul was, after all, a son
born after four daughters. When the time came, his father agreed to let him join
the J.J.School of Arts.
He found J.J. bereft of inspiring teachers, apart from the
abstract painter Prabhakar Kolte. The institution had a tradition of placing
technical excellence and painterly values in the forefront unlike, say, the
Department of Art at M.S.University, Baroda, which laid emphasis on political
and historical issues. J.J. also had a good collection of books on art, though
reading them was a problem: “I realised that almost all the books were in
English. If I couldn’t speak that language or read it, I’d be missing a lot.”
Atul devoured the images in these books and doggedly taught himself the
language in which they were written. Throughout his time at art school,
however, he wrote examinations in Marathi rather than English.
At J.J. he met his future wife, Anju Bhatia, one of the
‘south Bombay girls’ who crop up frequently in my conversation with him. Girls
who spoke convent-school English; who were bold in approaching eminent artists
for discussions; who always admired Atul’s ability and helped him improve his
English skills; girls who, for the most part, married and stopped painting,
though some were talented enough to make an impact.
Anju Bhatia was never going to give up painting. As Anju
Dodiya, she has managed to carve out an important niche as an artist, playing a
crucial role in the reinvigoration of the medium of watercolour. Anju lived on
Malabar Hill (“in the same building as Vinod Khanna”), a locality much further
removed from Ghatkopar than the physical distance between the two would
indicate. Her father, a qualified chartered accountant, owned a factory in
Nashik and a travel agency as well. Atul’s gold medal from J.J. didn’t exactly
qualify him as the ideal son-in-law, but he promised to get a job teaching art
which would provide a steady income. He never did accept offers that came his
way, confident that his painterly vocation would come good in due course.
Meanwhile, he made ends meet through a few tuitions, “teaching south Bombay
girls”.
Abstract painting was the dominant tradition at J.J., and
mysticism the dominant attitude. Atul wasn’t keen on either: “Abstract painters
concentrate on aspects of colour, form and texture. But I felt this was also a
limitation, making good looking abstract paintings; it needed to be broken
somewhere. If you spoke to J.J. graduates about their work they would say,
‘It’s visual art, it has to be experienced, what can you say about it? What can
you say about blue? Blue is blue!’ Then many would go into some kind of
spiritual explanation. I was interested in literature, Gujarati as well as
Marathi. Writers and poets speak about people, about their surroundings; I
wanted to do that in painting. We used to listen to P.L.Deshpande and read his
humorous writings, but could one have a sense of humour in visuals?”
For four years after graduation, he searched for a form that
would enable him to address these concerns. The purchase of a camera in 1986
proved a turning point: “I found that the photographs I was taking worked more
like a sketch for my painting rather than interesting images in themselves. If
you take the way the world looks and change it a little bit, you can create an
interesting visual.” He began to make paintings that had affinities to the
realistic style of the British painter David Hockney, and were influenced by
the humour in the paintings of the Baroda-based Bhupen Khakhar.
Two solo shows followed, in 1989 and 1991, and then the year
in Paris, which precipitated a new crisis: “I was totally baffled by the great
paintings I saw in Paris, from the early Renaissance to current work. Seeing
all that had already been created, there was a time when I thought I would stop
painting. When I returned home I was afraid that I’d do something which is just
a repetition of some western master. It took me three years, from 1992 to 1994
to get out of this mode of thinking.”
It gradually dawned on him that he shouldn’t try and define
what he was going to paint, but rather paint what he felt like, and let that
define him. An eclectic series of pictures began emerging: “I could paint
something related to my sister’s illness; or a self-portrait influenced by a
poster for the film ‘Baazigar’. But there was a common thread running through
it. The images were autobiographical, social or involved popular imagery.”
Another consistent feature in his work was art historical reference: “I wanted
to meet the artists whose work I loved, but I couldn’t, so I thought I’d have
an imaginary dialogue with them by including, say, a Picasso reference or
Matisse reference in my painting.”
His next jump was to paint a series on Mahatma Gandhi. The
first major Gandhi painting was triggered by an invitation to participate in a
show commemorating fifty years of Indian independence. After this he considered
creating a suite of works on the Mahatma, whose life and thought had been a
major influence since his school days. But the idea of a Gandhi series was
onerous: “I knew that painting Gandhi, whether you like it or not, has a lot of
political connotations. Then I came across a quote from Gandhi where he said,
‘I am an artist of non-violence’, not a philosopher of non-violence. That led
me to see that in all his acts, his wearing of khadi, the Dandi march to make
salt, the structure of his ashram, he was like a conceptual and performance
artist, a little like Joseph Beuys.” Atul also changed his favoured medium for
the Gandhi series, a courageous decision vindicated by the results: “I was
always doing oils, while I’d watched Anju doing interesting watercolours. I
felt the kind of attentiveness you require working with watercolours, the
precision and spontaneity, was appropriate to the subject; also the fact that
water is pure and transparent. Even your posture while you paint changes, and
so does your whole way of looking at art and life.”
He continued working with the medium in a series of
large-format watercolours titled ‘Tearscape’. These pictures, subdued in tone,
and often bitter in spirit, were dominated by a hideous, skeletal old crone
looming over a map of India. The hag of ‘Tearscape’ was a major departure from
Atul’s familiar photo-based realistic figuration. The paintings created around
this time proved, if proof were necessary, that the artist made no compromises
for the market, although he was happy when his works sold. Many of the
paintings revolved around defecation, decay and death, hardly the
stocks-in-trade of saleable art. And yet even these works found willing buyers,
usually serious collectors interested in art as exploration rather than decoration.
At around the same time, he was engaged in creating the
first of his ‘shutters’ for the Century City show in London. Inspired by the
experience of a curfew in which all shops downed their shutters, Atul crafted a
series of two-layer paintings: the first image would be on the corrugated metal
of the shutter and the second behind it. The shutter could be rolled up to
reveal the painting underneath, or brought down to hide that view. A major source
of the shutter paintings, as well as the Gandhi and ‘Tearscape’ series, lay in
the sectarian violence which tore Bombay apart following the demolition of the
Babri mosque in Ayodhya, and in the inter-communal tension which has become
central to India’s contemporary politics. The mosque demolition and the Bombay
riots had been followed by a serial bombing of important Bombay locations, in
which three boys from Atul’s neighbourhood died.
Death pervades Atul’s recent creations, notably a sculptural
assemblage called ‘Broken Branches’ which consists of nine display cabinets
with bones, prosthetic limbs, simple tools and photographs arranged carefully
within them. Some of the photographs are of Atul’s father, whom he often
painted and sketched since his days at art school. The photographs used in
‘Broken Branches’ were taken during a terminal illness which claimed his father
earlier this year.
As Atul speaks of his father, an image crystallises of a
charismatic man with an impressive moustache who was always ready with an
anecdote, in some ways a throwback, or a link with a vanished past. His
expression in these final photographs, which display and sometimes zoom in on
his horribly distended belly, combines dignity and helplessness in equal
measure. ‘Broken Branches’ also continues to address Atul’s preoccupation with
Gandhi and communal violence, managing a remarkably seamless combination of the
personal and political.
Looking back on his development, Atul reflects: “Sometimes I
feel doubts about my lack of consistency. After painting a serious picture
related to Apur Sansar, I went on to a lemon yellow work with Gabbar Singh on
it. I wonder how I can have such a range. It’s as if I like everything, and can
handle everything… but is it a kind of showing off? When I finish a work,
though, I find it is satisfactory, for instance I am very happy with the
cabinets.” All this is said with a transparent earnestness which characterises
all his speech. As I leave I ask him about the burgeoning ‘school of Atul’: The
paintings of Prashant Salvi, who won the Bose Pacia Emerging Artist award a
couple of years ago, and Ratnadeep Adivrekar, who bagged the Harmony Emerging
Artist award earlier this year, show unmistakable echoes of the Dodiya style.
And there are many more like them. “Let them use aspects of my work if they
want, I’ll have changed by the time they imitate something,” he says, making a
dodging manoeuvre with his hands.
