VI. My Room Has No Paintings
rekindling love for art
Last week and earlier this week, it stopped raining. It’s one of those rare years you get to burn in sunlight in freaking July.
I bunked college that day for visiting this little handicraft market that was in town for some days. I never know about these things because I rarely go out exploring my own city. But the festooned tents and a sea of clay pottery caught my eye as I drove past that road- this one day I took a different way back home from college. But that's not what I was interested in, every bit of my soul piqued when I saw a yellow banner with 'BOOK FESTIVAL' written on it in large, bold Helvetica. Bright red in colour.
As I parked and headed to this tent, I had a nice chat with the main guy who managed and set up the whole thing and partly recognized me from last year. He recommended a few genres and also explained how they source the whole thing. So basically they have a collection of donated books, bigger packages that are lost in transit and might eventually end up discarded. Although the books they were selling for Rs. 100 or 200 per kilogram were a bit dusty and way older classics like Danielle Steel or Charlotte Bronte or Horowitz, they had a few of those BookTok ones they were selling for a 10-15% discount. And if you're good at bargaining, you can actually pull a 15.1% discount.
These guys didn't have the kind of expertise the sellers in Pune’s ABC road or FC road have with the genre, story or authors. So after a little chat, I surfed the entire tent full of books mostly organised on the basis of their prices. And that's when a guy working there pointed out a few magazines and asked me if I'd be interested in them. As soon as I heard magazines, in my head appeared the pile of issues of 'The Week' in my room which I’ve never read. But too polite to reject his offer, I started digging a carton full of heavy mags. A lot of these were travel photography magazines, the rest were just fashion and beauty ones. But towards the side, what looked like they were almost squeezed in, were a few issues of Sotheby's and Christie's from their New York auctions and viewings. They were also very very pleasing to the eye and to hold in your hands.
At first I just picked a giant issue of the Christie's which was from 2019 on Post-War and Contemporary Art which I had also seen on Instagram. I saw a profile on Lucian Freud by David Dawson and never have I ever made a decision so fast to buy a magazine. I picked the Sotheby's because they had paintings and profiles of South Asian artists where I hoped to find some from India.
I ended up purchasing only the magazines and cancelling other books because… low on cash. Typical. I was lucky enough to escape the rain back home that day (always a notable victory). Locked myself in my room and just looked at all the paintings. I watched them for hours. I felt like a little kid- looking at toys in a store. Way too confused to decide which one will make your vacation worth that year.
I remember this sense of pride I felt that night when I opened the magazines again and found artists from home. Prabhakar Barwe, VS Gaitonde, Khobragade, Shanti Dave, Haldar, Hari Gade, and so many more from the country. Their first payment receipts, profiles, little moments from their life, struggles and most important of all- the art. My head felt bloated with all that reading. And I smiled about the thought of how I imagined my exhaustion as a bloated head.
Feeling literally smitten with magazines and paintings does weary you out. Especially when you like to believe that you’re rekindling your love for art. I’ve been watching some videos on YouTube about these artists’ paintings and works. A painter’s lifestyle fascinates me.
How they create unique works, amazing pieces of art and very beautifully hide an artist’s interpretation of a silly real life scenario that immediately makes you let out a sigh of contentment… of course when you actually find it.
How they find meaning to life in hues and shadows makes me think of real life as a myth..
And counting out the rebel against my dad for not letting me put things up on my bedroom wall. I still don’t get, despite immense admiration for the art form, how paintings can change my thoughts.
How they belong nowhere but in a louvre.
Maybe what could justify my “immense admiration” could be the thought- how paintings deserve to be worshipped and not printed on pieces of million dollar papers from archival links.
The next time we shall continue this discussion, I shall tell you why Prabhakar Barwe’s ‘Brown Hour Glass’ is what I worship in my heart.