‘The art community is presently focussed on revisiting arts whose hories have been overlooked’: Galler Mortimer Chatterjee

Think of Indian art and a few names pop up effortlessly. VS Gaitonde or FN Souza, giants of the Indian art market; Amrita Sher-Gil, often compared to the libertine Frida Kahlo; or MF Husain, whose works became more controversial than they should have. That these are among the first names we recall, says a lot about how canons function.
A canon can be as restrictive as a white cube — enshrining its arts, creating commercial value, and establishing itself as a locus of power. It’s what happens with ls such as “top 50 arts” or “100 best works”. Is there another way to create art categories?

An attempt has been made in Moving Focus, India: New perspectives on modern and contemporary art, edited Mumbai-based gallery-owner Mortimer Chatterjee. In this survey, Chatterjee invites 54 curators, horians, and writers to each select five works made since the 1900s. The book nudges the limits of an art survey boldly taking into account a criterion that is often approached with hesitancy — personal taste. The 54 invitees chose their favourite works, which reflect their areas of interest but also their politics, intended to offer diverse entry points to appreciate Indian art.
Medeamaterial Nalini Malani and Alaknanda Samarth, 1993, performative installation, wall paintings, reverse painting on Mylar, neon sculpture, theatre, video, slide projection. (Image © Nalini Malani. Photo: Prakash Rao.)
With short essays, a round table discussion and artwork, Moving Focus, India is a two-volume book and the first in a series that uses this multi-author format to look at other aspects of the art and culture ecosystem. Published The Shoestring Publisher, the book costs Rs7,500 for the slipcase edition, and Rs 25,000 for a limited edition (with hardcover and limited edition prints arts Vivan Sundaram and Nilima Sheikh). It’s currently available at store.chatterjeeandlal.com and will be formally launched on April 29 at the India Art Fair.
Chatterjee spoke about the making of Moving Focus, India and the decision to go beyond the canon of modern and contemporary Indian art. Edited excerpts:

What got you started on Moving Focus, India?
The book emerged out of late-night conversations with friends, when we would debate our l of favourite artwork. The question emerged as to how best to represent this in book form. We decided to elicit ls from arts, curators, critics and academics. We also thought that we would not include collectors or those overtly connected with the art market.
We started to send out invitations in the second half of 2020 and received the last set of nominations around Spring 2021. It was important that we provided context for the ls and so commissioned essays from a wide range of respected writers. We also arranged a round table conversation to talk through some of the thornier issues a project like this was likely to expose.
With short essays, a round table discussion and artwork, Moving Focus, India is a two-volume book and the first in a series that uses this multi-author format to look at other aspects of the art and culture ecosystem.
What’s striking about Moving Focus, India is how it underplays the greats of modern Indian art. Even the Jamini Roy in the book is not in the style most identified with him. Many usual suspects are missing here. How does it impact the survey?
The relative absence of names and works ordinarily associated with an enterprise of this kind came as a surprise to us, too. When we started to look more closely at the nominations, other kinds of commonalities amongst the selections did start to emerge, however. For instance, there is a marked interest in the work of women arts active in the 1980s and 1990s: in particular, Rummana Hussain, Nalini Malani, Nasreen Mohamedi, Nilima Sheikh and Zarina. There are also a lot of examples of objects in media other than painting: for example photography, film, installation and performance. My guess is that the collective memory of the Indian art community is presently focussed on revisiting arts and media whose hories have been overlooked earlier accounts.

I have written an essay in the book on the idea of ‘memory sites’. A memory site can be a concrete thing or an amorphous idea but, either way, communities of people come to it at different times to derive meanings specific to their own temporal context. Monuments like Babri Masjid are a great example. The same applies to arts and artwork. Different generations will necessarily form very different opinions towards one artwork or one art. Just look at the way Raja Ravi Varma’s practice has been variously praised and vilified over the last one hundred and twenty years since his death.
Detritus Amol K Patil, 2012, kinetic sculpture: spool of Walkman and found hair. (Courtesy: CAMP)
One of the purposes of this book is to expand and res a canonical approach to categorising or appreciating Indian art from 1900 onwards. There are various reasons in the book on why this is important, but what’s your take on it?
We made it clear to our nominators that we were not looking for what they considered to be the five ‘best’ artwork of the last 120 years. We do not ex in a world where value judgments of that kind hold any more, and frankly it would not have produced a book of much interest. We were hoping for more personal responses; responses that could risk the position of being obscure, for example.
Surveys are as much about what’s excluded. How important was representation in the course of this survey?
I spoke earlier about ‘memory sites’: objects or ideas around which collective memory bears witness. Of course, sometimes memory sites can be purposefully withdrawn from view or tampered those with access to power. I would say that one good way to prevent this from happening is providing for as many different viewpoints as possible, something embedded in the DNA of Moving Focus, India. At the same time, I acknowledge that I came to the selection of nominators with my own blindspots, both conscious and subconscious, and however many other people I leaned on to suggest possible nominators, residual traces of these blindspots must ex in the book.
Weeping Woman Gieve Patel, 1992, oil on canvas. © Gieve Patel. Courtesy: Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke
Given the specialisations of each nominator, how did you ensure that your curation would guarantee a complex, nuanced survey?
We assured our nominators from the worlds of academia, criticism and curating that our marketing of the book would be such that no-one would be holding them to account for their ls in five years’ time or even one year’s time. I think this enabled each of them to really free themselves up and produced such a wide variety of responses.
In your opinion, does Moving Focus, India include any controversial art, in terms of their subject, the style or their life?
The sheer number of nominated objects that function outside the confines of traditional definitions of fine art was astonishing to me: photo books, films, jewellery boxes, chairs, shawls, saris, designs for palace interiors, and designs for magazine covers.
At the risk of falling into clichés, the enigmatic and troubled life of K G Ramanujam has always been of fascination to me and I was happy to see a work of his selected for the book.
KG Subramanyan’s black and white wall murals in the Kala Bhavan Campus, Santiniketan, 1990-2009, lamp black with polymer on dempered walls. (Courtesy: Nilima Sheikh)
The book’s title is a homage to a collection of essays KG Subramanyan. Why Subramanyan and why this particular collection?
KG Subramanyan believed strongly that art must be relatable to everyone in society (here he was influenced the writings of Ernst Gombrich), and in his own practice worked across a dizzying array of mediums connected with both art and design. Moving Focus is a collection of essays Subramanyan published in the late 70s that dills much of his thought on art and culture into a group of highly readable, short texts. As we were working on our book, we began realising that the nominations were building a picture of art production that resonated strongly with Subramanyan’s vision: a vision that is inclusive, non-canonical, and not afraid to embrace the everyday, the farcical, the downright silly.
📣 For more lifestyle news, follow us on Instagram | Twitter | Facebook and don’t miss out on the latest updates!