Art industry badly hit: Akkitham Narayanan
PALAKKAD: Artist Akkitham Narayanan has said that the global economic slowdown has affected the art industry in a significant manner.
The Paris-based artist was talking to this website’s newspaper at his ancestral house in Aanakkara, Thrithala near here. Narayanan said that since art was a luxury item the liquidity crunch has affected its market prospects.
The art exhibition he had planned in Mumbai this month had been postponed to March-April next year, he said.
In Kerala there were many contemporary artists but they don’t take up art as a full-time profession. They dabble in art as a pastime, he said.
The exhibition of paintings conducted in the art galleries at Kochi or Thiruvananthapuram does not evoke much response.
On the other hand, in countries like France there are art schools where students enroll themselves at a young age.
The Escolole Des Beauxerts (School of Fine arts) in Paris is one such school.
He said that art should be taken up as a `sadhana.’ For the past four to five years, art from India has been in good demand in the auctions held at New York and London.
Narayanan, who is on a month-long visit to his ancestral house, has been working on paintings for his Indian clients.
Narayanan is based in Paris for the last four decades.
His paintings are abstract in character, reflecting a deeper understanding of the environment and its diverse variations.
Born in 1939, Narayanan took a diploma from the Madras College of Art and Craft. There, he was influenced by his mentor and noted painter K C S Panicker.
By the late sixties, Narayanan went to Paris to study art. It enabled him to learn the art forms of Europe.
Narayanan refers to his paintings as “geometric abstractions” or “Neo-tantric paintings”. They are geometric configurations of abstract forms.
Narayanan’s family includes his Japanese wife Sachiko and son Agnisharman.
Narayanan is the half-brother of poet Akkitham Achuthan Namboodiri(Akkitham).