India inspired

art corner

Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin (who reportedly knew he was going to be a painter when he was 6) made the first of many trips to India in 1964. In the following five decades, he not only frequented the country but also allowed it to be an enduring influence on his work.

A prodigious collector of Indian miniatures, Hodgkin’s passion for Indian culture, history and geography has come through in many forms and richly-hued paintings. “I can’t paint without a subject,” he once told an interviewer. “Coming to India gave me many subjects.”

Today, Hodgkin (born 1932) is arguably Britain’s greatest living painter. Critics have hailed him as a master colourist, an enduring intimist, and a daring philosopher in paint. His opulent, intriguing and abstract paintings have featured in several retrospectives and museum shows across the world.

Hodgkin represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1984 and won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1985. Many more awards and accolades followed him, including the Shakespeare Prize (1997). Knighted in 1992, he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as a Companion of Honour in 2003.

As art critic and columnist Michael Kimmelman observed in The New York Times (Feb 16, 2007), “Hodgkin’s images are tricky to describe, alternately acidic, juiced-up, hushed, velvety, precious like a jewel box. Texture varies markedly, it being the content and structure of Mr Hodgkin’s abstractions. Views, like window frames or blinds or proscenium arches, are devised through which to glimpse scenes that are evocative but tantalisingly illegible... His paintings are full of more or less buried allusions.”

Kimmelman goes on to describe how in exploring the nature of painting both as cultured language and sheer expression, “Hodgkin disregards the classical polarities of abstraction and representation, past and present, canvas and frame.”

The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum of Western India), in Mumbai, recently hosted an exhibition of paintings of the doyen of British abstract art. On display was a set of small format paintings (oil on wood) which bore all the signature ingredients of the vintage master — splendid colours, vigorous brush strokes, dramatic movements, assertive gestures and shimmering moods.

Hodgkin’s well-known fascination for including frames as part of the painting surface was also in evidence. Most of the paintings sported antique wooden frames on which the artist had extended his drags and swirls of paint. The series — cumulatively called Made in Mumbai 2016 — showed the 84-year-old artist’s deep connect with the burgeoning metropolis, its people, landscape and vibrant life.

It was, however, a pity that this splendid exhibit was on view only for a few days (Feb 20-24), and did not travel to other Indian cities. There were hardly any other visitors for almost an hour this writer spent at the gallery, which also pointed to inadequate promotion and publicity for the event.