NDTV: My guest today is one of India’s greatest artists. She is been painting for more than fifty years now and her work has been displayed in world’s prominent galleries. The price of her art has sky-rocketed as well although she will be quick to point out that market success is not a measure for artistic success. Anjolie Ela Menon that you so much for joining us today on the Unstoppable Indian. Did you know very early that you wanted to paint, that you wanted to spend your entire life painting. Did that instinct come very early.
Menon: I think pretty early. I was about 12 years old when I decided I wanted to be a painter. My parents expected that I will be a doctor as my father, my mother was very keen that I should write and so she wanted me to go to Oxford. But I ended up painting because I was very inspired by my teacher in school, Sushil Mukherjee, who by the time school in Lovedale, I think I reached that stage when I knew it all. I was therefore very bored at JJ School of Art where I went next because Sushil by then had taught me so much when I was fifteen. He covered the ground that one covers in two years in an art school.
NDTV: Like you said you had a brief stint at JJ School of Art and then French government’s scholarship to study at Buza, of course Amrita Shergill is also an alumni, how was those years like.
Menon: Buza was very heady. Atleast when I first went there I felt very bad. I had a tough few months until a learnt to speak a bit. We had to climb these scaffoldings and it was freezing cold in winter and our professor would not allow the boys help us. We had carry the buckets our self and fingers used to be completely burnt. So it was tough going but then I was lucky because I topped the class at the end of the year. My professor was very pleased having being rough with me in the beginning.
NDTV: When you look at your own art, what do you think is the one influence that binds the earth together?
Menon: I was very influenced by early Christian art, even before that I was influenced by the impressionists. But I have always been considers a bit of a maverick. I always turn in the opposite direction than where I should be. So, in the years I went to France, I should have been more influenced by the impressionist. Picasso was riding high at that time but I turned my back at modernism at that time by plunging back into medieval ages. I thought the colorization and iconic of Christian art was much more like what we have here. There was a sort of connection.
NDTV: To a leh observer and I call my self a leh observer, there is deeply haunting streak in your work. Where does that come from?
Menon: I must be my Bengali melancholy as all Bangalis suffer from that which is deep in our psyche I think. So I put it down to that because on surface, I am very happy if not a very jolly person.
NDTV: You have also chosen to work with many mediums. I have been told that for you, there is nothing more enjoyable than a stole in a bazaar or strolling in a junkyard. Where does that desire to work with so many medium come from.
Menon: Well, let’s go little bit beyond that question. One never knows where the inspiration is going to come from. It may come from some event or from person you have met. But I have always seem to have been inspired by junk. I went first to those junks markets in Mumbai, when we were building a house. Our first house and we were still very poor. I managed to retrieve doors and windows from an old building and built a whole house with those. We are very happy about it now because it turned out to be solid teak which you can’t get today. From that I started finding old windows and using the old windows partly through thrift in the beginning because new framing was expensive. You find an old window and stick a painting behind it. Of course the trouble was as soon as I started painting those windows, everyone wanted to do the same because they found that it was an easy way out. That has happened to all along. Throughout my career I had people jumping on to something I have started.
NDTV: Is that flattering or annoying?
Menon: Well it could be flattering but some of them do these imitations so badly that it is annoying I must say.
NDTV: There are also villages in the drain. You are one of the most vocal when it comes to secularism of art, freedom of expression for an artist. Do you think you are fighting a tough battle when you talk about creative freedom for artist.
Menon: Of course it is a tough battle but I think that we are many of us now who think the same way. And we all are very very wary of this new fundamentalist tactics. I call them tactics because they are very political tactics which has nothing to do with art. We are all been attacked at some point of time and of course I have fought because the greatest gift that our country has given us is the freedom of expression. When I compare ourselves with all our various neighbours whether it is Srilankans, Bangladeshis or Pakistanis, I think we have really benefited whether its in writing, painting or music. Look at the way music flourishes in this country because there has been freedom. And if that freedom is curtailed, then we stand to loose a lot.
NDTV: Hussain has been a friend, a mentor…
Menon: He has been a great mentor. When I was very young, before I went to Paris, he would me come and work around in the studio and taught me many things and one of them was to paint anywhere. He carries his bag of paints, brushes and settles in the floor and begins. That has been wonderful for me because later on when I started to travel madly, I was able to pick up thrill anywhere. My first exhibition he organised in Delhi Garden which ironically now is an office. I was still in college and my final exams were due.
NDTV: So you were quite clear what you wanted …
Menon: He did everything, design the exhibition, put up the stand, design the card.
NDTV: When you see some of the intolerance displayed against MF Hussain, it must hurt?
Menon: It hurts very much but I have to say, and I am very happy about that I have recently been in Dubai and seen him, as long as he can paint, he does not really care. We are also upset but he has no sense of paranoid and does not think that he has been targeted. He has taken in his stride.
NDTV: You have a distinctive style and yet it is vulnerable to piracy. Do you feel down about it?
Menon: Yes I am vulnerable. I have been faked but I am the one who has fought. Everyone has been faked, Hussain has been faked, Raza has been faked.When this whole fake question arised, I was the one who took it up, few of them were jailed for three months, but they came out to fake a huge Hussain painting.
NDTV: Do you spend time worrying about that?
Menon: I spend time worrying about how much time is left to paint.
NDTV: How much time is left for Anjolie Ela Menon to paint?
Menon: One really does not know. One can drop tomorrow but it is not about dropping dead. It is about having strength to paint. Not many people realize that we are a blue collar worker and I work my hands. You got to be physically fit to do big paintings. I has been a long time since I have done a large painting. I don’t want my work to disappear into homes of the very rich. I would much rather paint large paintings for public places.
NDTV: And as you do that you place you work in the hands of the government and as a patron that you are, you know very well from your Calcutta experience that as patron that can be very disappointing. How do you balance that out?
Menon: One has to be a little detached from his work once he has done it. All kind of things can happen to it. It is distressing. I gifted one to the people of Calcutta and not to some bureaucrat to hang in his office, but it was a disaster as it was there all along but they pasted some other paintings on top. So that’s a museum, it is quite funny.
NDTV: At the outset I said that you firmly believe that market success is not the measure of artistic success. Yet art prices today make many view art as an investment. I don’t know many of those investors see art as art.
Menon: Now there is a real big divide. There has been a boom in the Indian art which has been quite unprecedented. They say that Chinese art is selling for more because all this has happened in the last five years. This has happened because there are collectors and collectors who love art and who would like to hang it on the walls and look at it. And there are investors who don’t even unwrap the painting. They have sent the markets rocketing because all those investors want that first hundred names. Many galleries have them promoted. Few say that these paintings are not available so lets promote a new batch.
NDTV: I want to ask you that at what value your first painting was sold at?
Menon: My first painting was sold Dr Zakir Hussain and he paid me Rs 100 which was a huge amount in those days. But even at the first big exhibition that I talked about, which Hussain sort of arranged for me, the higest painting was around Rs 350.
NDTV: And do you get amazed by the amount your paintings get now?
Menon: Absolutely, I think that they are windfall and has nothing to do with the painting that I have made. I was very lucky that when I started there were not more than 200 painters in the country and a very small market. Today there are 2 lakh of them in the country and they are all looking for a space in the sun. It is much tougher for them in a way. But it is also true that unlike many painters when I was young, the new lot is very professional.
NDTV: You are great supporter. You buy art of young painters. It is very rare for an artist to do that …
Menon: I have 90 paintings of upcoming artists.
NDTV: And you have full faith in their artistic value.
Menon: I think that they need pat on the back as well, I was lucky that I had patronage at right place. Now, when I had them, why not to give them a leg-up.
NDTV: What advice would you give them because these are strange.
Menon: I would certainly advice them to find themselves first. Finding one self is the core of an artist. Finding your own direction because afterall, which artists are known today, they are not the imitators, it is not famous like Picasso or Hussain. Rather it is them who have suddenly found new path. That takes time, when you talk about artists struggle, it is establish your signature and making them recognizable. Finding your own path is very difficult.
NDTV: When did you find your own path. You have been painting for fifty years now. Were you able to find your path early.
Menon: After time and again, there is a hiatus. There was a time when there was a painters block. I had very bad one for a few years when I lived in Germany. I would sit infront of the canvas and nothing was happening. I just asked my husband to buy me a ticket to go home. I came back to Delhi and I was more sentimental and I started painting. I completed almost 20 paintings in a month. They just poured out. As a I said that you never know what is going to move you to work. I am not entirely a patriotic but I am used to paint here. Nad it seems to be true more and more.