On a holiday to Sri Lanka, I decided to focus my attention on the architecture of the world-renowned architect Geoffrey Bawa. He was brilliant, a master of space and great at bringing the outdoors inside. He created structures based on the site that gave his architecture truly special dimensionality.
I walked into his beautiful country home in Lunuganga and I saw this dramatic artwork as I entered and my heart skipped a beat. I immediately recognised it!
It was a large drawing on paper by K Ramanujam (1950-73), the South Indian artist, known and collected by real connoisseurs. Ramanujam is someone who the international art world recognises today from the movement of L’Art Brut or Outsider Art. As soon as I saw the serpent drawing in Ramanujam’s distinctive style, I remembered that Bawa had done a wing of the Connemara Hotel in Chennai and he had bought many Ramanujams for the hotel.
The artist was hardly known, but it was Bawa who saw potential in him and put it into his project. Ramanujam even made it the centrepiece in his most important personal abode. When ‘The Connemara’ was renovated in the 80s, new decorators glossed over the art and junked them all.
They also chopped and changed the master architect’s wing to something different. It was sad and exciting—sad because of the condition and exciting because the Indian artist’s work was in such an important place. There are important masterpieces all over the country that few recognise and value.
The current caretakers know little about their origins and perhaps also have a different set of aesthetics. I hear many collectors give reasons that set aside valuable artworks that grow in value unknown to the owners and current inheritors. Recently, there was so much attention on the original Chandigarh furniture made by the French designer Pierre Jeanneret, who was involved with “The making of Chandigarh project” with Corbusier. Recently, the government offices had replaced all the furniture with commercial pieces and dumped original Jeanneret items away!
They had no clue about their importance, till they started appearing in auctions in France and were making astounding sales. My point here is, there are treasures and treasures, not all antique but yet priceless and irreplaceable. Artworks, textiles, intangible practices, traditions etc here around us. Our country has much more than any country, in terms of living art and craft practices in addition to an enormously wealthy cultural heritage. Documentation is the need of the hour.
In India, we have the tradition of storytelling, from the Baul singers to the Tholu Bommalata performers among others and we have not taken a page out of their books and used their practice from their narratives to give value to what we have. The world is changing rapidly, and in the absence of patronage, these art forms and intangible practices will be gone. It is time we took stock and looked around us to recognise the rich and dynamic world of art before it is too late.
Sharan Apparao
sharan@apparaoart.com
Gallerist and curator involved in the contemporary art world