Cities and the urban milieu have been the natural habitat of painter Sudhir Patwardhan, whose works in the realist tradition celebrate the jostling contradictions of everyday living. But in his ongoing show, ‘Portraits of an Existential Artist’, the 72-year-old contemporary artist reflects on the frustrating experience of creating art in a pandemic.
In this series of paintings made over the course of the year 2021, the passions of anxiety inextricable from creative impulses in the studio are transformed into fierce acts of vexation, as Patwardhan himself departs from the familiar contours of his dominant realist language for powerful expressionism. He reveals the underbelly of creation and creativity through the trope of the aggressive artist who is not only cut off from public experience and circulation, but is also grappling with perpetual dissatisfaction, as artists have throughout the ages.
Edited excerpts from an interview.
How did the pandemic impact your creative process and shift the trajectory of your practice?
The period was very disturbing and one had to come to terms with a new reality. But I will not credit the pandemic with shifting the trajectory of my practice. The genesis of the current body of work was something I had done earlier. One, however, became preoccupied with some darker aspects of the creative process.
Did you also ponder over how artists have responded to claustrophobia and restrictions in pandemics past?
Yes. Not only in pandemics but in various social and political situations in which our freedoms are constrained.
Is the series also a larger inquiry into producing art under severely constrained circumstances, personal and political?
It is a larger inquiry into art as such. It is about the contradictions within art. The question of beauty on one hand and truth on the other. The artist's position as impartial observer or sympathetic participant or protester against injustice.
Dipping into arts and literature in isolation has proven to be a great source of comfort and personal growth for many who consume it in their leisurely hours. But for an artist tasked with the responsibility to create works which are meaningful and lasting, how did the pandemic exacerbate an identity crisis?
The period of isolation, absence of live interaction with artist friends, no exhibitions happening, all this made one turn inward and look critically at what one was when one claimed to be an artist.
Would you like to highlight any work in the 2021 series which was particularly cathartic to create?
The work that started the series was 'Tear' which actually came from a very old drawing of mine. That work got me thinking of these problems and the final works 'War 1 and 2' ended up going in quite a different direction. So I traversed a range of emotions and thoughts in this body of work. But 'Tear' was the source.
The exhibition is on view at Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi till February 23.
