S.Kalidas' Archive

Amrita Sher-Gil  The Passion Child Of Indian Art This defiant biography of Amrita Sher-Gil brings out the  complexities behind the flamboyance By S. Kalidas Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life Yashodhara Dalmia Penguin/ Viking  Price: Rs 695 Pages: 230

Sixty-five years after her sudden and shocking death at the age of 29, Amrita Sher-Gil, the passion child of modern Indian art, is back to haunt the art world. Only two weeks ago, a painting (Village Scene, 1938) she probably could not sell for a paltry Rs 250 during her lifetime was snapped up at OSIAN's auction in Delhi for a whopping Rs 7 crore. Barely a week later, comes Yashodhara Dalmia's quietly defiant book Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life on the short, colourful and turbulent passage of the promising painter. This is an important book; not only for its obviously resplendent subject, but also because coming as it does without the sanction of the subject's close family, which is actively involved in the present-day art scene, it is an act of courage and research that needs to be applauded. Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941), part Indian Sikh, part Austro-Hungarian Catholic, is easily the most celebrated of early Indian modernists, as much for her vivacious persona and her long list of sexual conquests (cutting across genders) as for her passionately painted post-impressionist canvases that are yet to be seriously evaluated sans the smokescreen of her elite ancestry and colourful lifestyle. Dalmia does grapple with this problem in her last chapter titled "Painting from the Kernel"; though her writing tends to be more descriptive than deconstructionist. When we keep hailing Sher-Gil to be the first to bring European modernism to India, we have to also examine why her version of "modernism" was over 30 years behind what was considered avant-garde in Paris during 1930s. In the international context Sher-Gil's art was certainly backward, a point that artist Roop Krishna made even at that time. Although Dalmia does make a reference to Roop Krishna's critique of Sher-Gil's work, she does not delve into the matter with any seriousness. It is amazing that at a time when Picasso was setting the Left Bank on fire with his loves and his art, Gertrude Stein was writing The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) and Hemingway was partaking of A Moveable Feast at Shakespeare and Company (the bookshop still stands across the Seine from Notre Dame), all Sher-Gil had to show was the acceptance of her rather academic works at the long passé Salons of Paris. Apart from the pictorial backwardness of her style, even her associations in Paris were, to use a French phrase of the period, tres comme il faut (as they should be). The biggest trouble with biographies of celebrities, especially in this part of the world, is that it is difficult to get dispassionate and credible accounts of their lives when they are still alive. So having the space of over half a century between Sher-Gil's untimely death and Dalmia's account of her life and times was certainly helpful. People tend to be more forthcoming with frank personal appraisals and anecdotes in hindsight than they would have been closer to her tempestuous times. Where Dalmia excels is in the straightforward narrative of her protagonist's life shorn of even the slightest hint of stylistics or sensationalism. Drawing from a range of primary and secondary sources, including a lot of personal correspondence, Dalmia has managed to construct for the reader the many-sided and complex life story of this flamboyant painter who died so young, yet left such an impact. Perhaps, given the highly sensational life of her subject, the subdued style serves the author well. Otherwise, it could easily have become libellous and read like a racy pot-boiler. At the same time, there is little that is questioning in Dalmia's inquiry. She tends to state facts without searching for motives or biases, looking at an extraordinary life with a somewhat laboured gaze.

INDIA TODAY MARCH 27, 2009