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Lot 65

 

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Subodh Gupta’s body of work draws much of its inspiration from the many socioeconomic upheavals that have changed the face of India over the last two decades, and the multi-directional migrations of goods, services, and people that they have resulted in. In his large format canvases, the artist playfully meditates on both the desirable and adverse dimensions of globalization, and particularly on their dualistic effect on India’s burgeoning... Subodh Gupta’s body of work draws much of its inspiration from the many socioeconomic upheavals that have changed the face of India over the last two decades, and the multi-directional migrations of goods, services, and people that they have resulted in. In his large format canvases, the artist playfully meditates on both the desirable and adverse dimensions of globalization, and particularly on their dualistic effect on India’s burgeoning middle-class. Gupta’s engagement with these dichotomies is partly the result of his own move from semi-rural Bihar to the hyper-urban capital city of Delhi, and his personal experiences experimenting with his newfound social, geographic and economic mobility.

Here, in keeping with Gupta’s preoccupation with Indian cultural tropes, the artist presents his viewers with an Ambassador car, rendered in the dramatic photorealist idiom he is known for. Titled ‘Doot’ or messenger, a play on the meaning of ambassador, the present lot is one of the two canvases that Gupta painted featuring this car as central subject. Apart from its name, this brand of car is significant on several levels. The Ambassador was produced as a car for the masses, easy to acquire, and most importantly, made for India. Additionally, it serves as a symbol of both domination and democracy; modeled on a British car that harks back to India’s colonial past, the Ambassador is also the official car of all officers of the Indian civil service.

Executed in 2003, almost a decade after the liberalization of the Indian economy and the Ambassador’s replacement as an icon of Indian roads by newer brands and models, this canvas represents Gupta’s attempt to capture the monumental changes that swept the country in the preceding years and the complex present they ushered in. In this painting, the Ambassador represents both the homogenizing changes that accompany the processes of globalization, as well as the sentimental tendency of some sections of the Indian population, particularly its leadership, to cling steadfastly to the past. Such inherent oppositions make for a unique developmental-path; one that cannot be read through a standard, decontextualized lens.

“Gupta confronts sentimentality coldly, dispassionately calculating the visual residue of his biographical background for an art audience that is hungry for symbols of authenticity and identity, seemingly stripped of irony while knowing that to be wholly improbable. The artist’s overall project ricochets of the sentimentality in which most Indian contemporary art steeps itself, addressing an international platform...disemboweling a home-grown Orientalism to throw it back into the face of a globalizing culture industry” (Peter Nagy, “Transitory Indecisions and Fluctuating Monuments”, Subodh Gupta, Nature Morte, New Delhi, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2000, p. 9).

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