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Lot 39

 

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Arpita Singh's paintings are informed by and address the multiple histories she has witnessed and narratives she has played a part in developing, ranging from the personal to the national. Additionally, Singh's body of figurative work frequently draws on the private and public lives of women like herself, and by the external events that act on them. Like these lives, her dense, multilayered canvases defy any single interpretation.

... Arpita Singh's paintings are informed by and address the multiple histories she has witnessed and narratives she has played a part in developing, ranging from the personal to the national. Additionally, Singh's body of figurative work frequently draws on the private and public lives of women like herself, and by the external events that act on them. Like these lives, her dense, multilayered canvases defy any single interpretation.

Reviewing the New York show in which the present lot was first exhibited, critic Holland Cotter observes that "The psychological and the political merge in paintings by New Delhi artist Arpita Singh. So do everyday life and allegory, expressionism and ornament, historical sources from Bengal folk painting to Marc Chagall, and a formal approach that is at once unassuming and hard-worked, gauche and poised" (The New York Times, October 3, 2003).

In this large triptych, titled Tarot Card Reading, Singh uses her vivid palette to comment, from the perspective of her aging female protagonists, on the vagaries of time as well as the uncertainty of the future. The multiple depictions of Singh's subject, with her bent over form and exposed spine and intestines, speak of a lifetime of fulfilling internally and externally assigned roles, from mother to wife and goddess to lover. As airplanes carry people into and out of her life and memories, fluffy pillows and rows of teacups speak of her private and domestic affairs. Images of clothed lovers and pink flowers add a romantic thread to the tapestry, while a muddled clock-face and fragments of text, like the women's sagging flesh, hint at the violence of the passage of time and their fading recollections.

Locating the present lot in Arpita's oeuvre, Ella Datta notes that "As Arpita grew both as an artist and as a person, the reality of the larger world, its history and geography, began invading the play world of her picture space. Her dream-time had to make space for real time which then elided into imagined times of the past and the future. Similarly, the public sphere jostled into her private realm. The contrary pulls gave rise to some iconic paintings…Beginning with the year 2000, as Arpita stepped into a mythic space, the scale of her paintings also changed. She began to do very large works. Arpita also began exploring the dramatic possibilities of the picture space with an increasingly complex cast of characters. She handled colours in her oils with a dazzling virtuosity, juxtaposing pinks, yellows and blues with a startling assurance" ("Of Loss & Recovery", Cobweb: Arpita Singh, Vadehra Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2010, p. 6).

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