Atul Dodiya

Atul Dodiya he speaks about his experiments, concerns, style and the Indianness of his paintings.

How Indian is Indian art, in terms of influences, style and evolution? Or like with writing, can one say that one presents certain things differently to suit an international audience?
The identity of Indian art as Indian is arguable. Visual art and the visual experience...

Atul Dodiya he speaks about his experiments, concerns, style and the Indianness of his paintings.

How Indian is Indian art, in terms of influences, style and evolution? Or like with writing, can one say that one presents certain things differently to suit an international audience?
The identity of Indian art as Indian is arguable. Visual art and the visual experience are universal. If you look at early Chinese art, medieval European art or African tribal art, you would enjoy them much more if you were aware of the context. But even if you were unaware of the context, it would not keep you from enjoying the work. Sometimes art is devoid of context, and sometimes it cannot exist without one.
The history of modern Indian art is very short. Contemporary Indian art is only 50 odd years old. We have a tradition of miniature paintings. When one starts working with oil, one would obviously refer to other types of art that has preceded yours. In that sense the canvas of art is much broader. We have painters who are very Indian and some others whose work is based on Indian philosophy but the visual form may not be Indian. If you are a figurative painter like me, the reality is slightly different. I live in Ghatkopar, (a suburb in Bombay) my figures are Indian in the sense that they would be dark skinned and they portray the life in India, a life that includes the poverty, the concerns and the reality.

What is your style like?
I try to do many things. I react to many themes. I cannot be a painter who has found a theme and spends all his life painting it. Maybe after a few years I would like this said for me that not to have a style is my style. I explored a certain subject matter and my techniques have been used according to the subject matter. My oil paintings had a lot of realism, I used superimposition of various images; I have worked with metaphors…inserted quotations. When I worked with watercolours, the work was simpler. There were figures, they were more specific, in keeping with the theme...that was my series on Gandhi and I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. There was another series where I used laminated surfaces and enamel and the whole effect was that of kitsch.
My latest series is about the poverty that we see around us. I do not aim to please the viewer. My aim, instead, is to shake the viewer, to get him involved, to take him away from the day-to-day realities. I want you there with me. So my work is thematically, sociologically, artistically rough. And in that sense it is very Indian too. And I like my work to be aesthetically well rendered.

What about the fact that you place yourself in your paintings... like in one of the paintings in the Gandhi series?
That was because I have always been influenced by the freedom struggle. So I thought in this way I can be a part of it…with Gandhi!

You are known as someone who likes to experiment with your medium a lot…Could you tell us more about it?
Yes, I often like to do that. Recently, I worked with enamel. Earlier I got an assistant who would write the text in the painting. Some of my work was a like a film poster, then I conceptualise it and get assistants to render the work. I also painted on shutters, like I did in a modern, city painting; when you opened the shutter you could see the painting.
Now I am trying to do sculptural objects, like a ladder – a steep iron ladder. I like to experiment in mixed media.

Whom are you trying to communicate with, in your paintings?
I believe a work of art cannot be general. I don’t give importance to the general viewpoint. The thing that may bore one person may be very meaningful to another. It cannot be perfect from all angles. Even if a Western viewer finds it interesting, to an Indian viewer it may seem clichéd.

You used a lot of mythological figures in your paintings earlier. How was that relevant?
Mythology is a part of popular art. I was interested in popular art. I wanted to use it in my own art, creatively. I used Hindu gods and goddesses like the ten incarnations of Vishnu, as to what they mean to me.

How about awards? How do they affect you as an artist, to be appreciated as such?
Artists enjoy acknowledgement. You like to relate to people. You also feel that out of nothing I created this, and feel proud to have done so. I see awards as an acknowledgement. If they were not there, one would be disturbed. But at the end you are involved in a process. The selling, buying and winning awards, is not relevant when you are alone in your studio with a new painting.