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METROSCAPE
Colours Of Convention
Some of them are
probably the equivalent of India's torchbearing Progressives (Husain,
Raza and Co), only a bit more progressive. The contemporary art section
of the German Festival in India, now showing in its last leg at the NGMA,
Delhi, has 30 artists' token works. Some of those worth a look:
Joseph Beuys (1921-1986): The man who
made the artist inseparable from the artwork ... sometimes even more fashionable.
The man who said that anything could be called art ... if one perceived
it to be so. Beuys is represented at the show by a few brisk drawings,
an assortment of energy-spawning objects sequestered in a glass case,
a basalt log with a hare impression and a series of painted-over photographs.
Visually staid, you'd think, but his works compel you to look beyond the
apparent.
 Georg
Baselitz (B 1938): The man who basically said that if you saw an upside-down
image, it didn't mean you were hallucinating. A slayer of conventions,
but who ironically remained committed to the greatest convention of all-figurative
painting. The exhibition unfortunately doesn't carry his more powerful
pre-topsy-turvy works, but his inverted Eagle and Head as a Pot are a
fair representation of his style.
Sigmar Polke (B 1941): The man who took
a sarcastic look at the push-bottom culture of capitalist consumerism
to create his own version of Pop Art. Take Turning, a work done in 1979-its
got upholstery of the period as well as Warholish stencils of advertisement
drawings.
Jorg Immendorf (B 1945): The man who
discovered that he was a better painter than a performance artist (after
he split with his mentor Beuys). Immendorf brush strokes range from impulsive
to studious but the strong political content of his paintings (also the
influence of Beuys) remains constant.
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GERMAN PALETTE:
(Clockwise from top) Beuys' The Other Direction of Energy,
1966-1984; Polke's Turning; Kippenberger's We Don't Have Problems
with Depressions, 1986; Immendorf's Stravinsky-influenced The
Rake and friend, 1994
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Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997): The man
who was the quintessential bohemian ... and one of the founders of Berlin's
punk cult of the early 1970s. Kippenberger's works are funny but try and
uncover their grim irony before you laugh too much.
Anselm Keifer (B 1945): The man is arguably
Germany's most famous living artist, revelling in myths and relief paintings.
Pity there's only one work by him ... that too a photograph.
-Anshul Avijit
 PLAY
ON: Natyavasant, the 20th anniversary of Ekjute,
was celebrated at the Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, with a fortnight of room-packed
play readings, zesty workshops, seminars and plays including the Yahudi
ki Ladki and Dayashankar ki Diary. Spearheaded by Nadira Babbar (above),
Ekjute has defied the popular perception of a dying Hindi-theatre audience
to present house-full boards at every performance (and they've had more
than 20). "The trick is to produce good work without a break,"
says Babbar. The trick is working.
-Himanshi Dhawan
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