The Art Critic and the Politics of Memory

READ Richard Bartholomew’s self-portrait with camera (1960). 78 | CARAVAN STYLE & LIVING PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY THE ESTATE OF RICHARD BARTHOLOMEW, ALL RIGHT RESERVED. | NOVEMBER 2012 READ THE ART CRITIC IS A COMPILATION OF SELECTED WRITINGS FROM RICHARD BARTHOLOMEW’S VAST ARCHIVES AND PROVIDES AN INSIDER’S VIEW OF INDIA’S MODERN ART MOVEMENT. BY ROSELYN D’MELLO ONE EVENING EARLIER THIS YEAR, my friend Pablo Bartholomew suggested a celebratory dinner. It had been four years since my colleagues and I had come on board to help Pablo produce and publish The Art Critic, a seminal selection of his father’s, Richard Bartholomew, art writing. Between Rukminee, the book’s designer, Shweta Wahi, the image researcher, and I, the associate editor, there had been more than a few moments during that time when we’d slammed the phone down on a belligerent Pablo, threatened to never speak to him again or had enjoyable griping sessions in his absence. The reason we never acted on our irritation with Pablo was simply because by now, we had come to know his father intimately through his writing, and passionately felt that the bulk of his archive needed to be accessible to the larger art-reading public. We were all on the same page, and that mattered most. We had each spent about four years on this project, while Pablo had easily spent at least 15 years working with his father’s vast and complex archive of more than 17,000 photographs and art writings that totalled more than 300,000 words. A selection of Richard Bartholomew’s photographs was first shown in India at Delhi’s PHOTOINK Gallery (January–March 2009), giving the viewer a classical taste of not just technically accomplished, sophisticated com- positions, but also a flavour of the country’s art scene from the 1950s to the 1970s: MF Husain is caught engrossed in a telephonic conversation, one hand holding the receiver, THE ART CRITIC AND POLITICS THE OF MEMORY the other twirling a lock of his hair; an agitated FN Souza has been captured mid-sentence (1970–1971) in front of a canvas in his stark apartment in New York; Ram Kumar and Krishen Khanna are deep in conversation with the 1950s prime talent-spotter and gallery owner Virendra Kumar Jain; and there’s Jehangir Sabavala, paying attention to the extroverted Biren De, while SA Krishnan sits detached be- side Sabavala, puffing on a cigarette. A Critic’s Eye: Photographs from the 50s, 60s & 70s, the TOP RIGHT exhibition and the photo-book published by Chatterjee & PT Reddy photographed asleep on a bed is testament Lal, PHOTOINK and Sepia International (2009), gave to the to their camaraderie. Indian art world a sense that even something akin to a fam- NOVEMBER 2012 CARAVAN STYLE & LIVING | 79 READ BELOW The Lalit Kala elections. (PABLO) HAD SPENT 15 YEARS BELOW LEFT Tyeb Mehta chats with Rati Bartholomew at his exhibition at WORKING WITH HIS FATHER’S the Shridharani Gallery. VAST AND COMPLEX ARCHIVE OPPOSITE PAGE MF Husain at the Shridharani Gallery. OF MORE THAN 17,000 PHOTOGRAPHS AND ART WRITINGS THAT TOTALLED MORE THAN 300,000 WORDS. ily album could wholly communicate the ethos of an era of amsee, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta and SH creativity so important that its influence continues to haunt Raza. It had been preceded by, and then overshadowed, us all. India’s first group of modern artists, the revisionist ‘form- One could argue that The Art Critic, the selected art writ- over-function’ Calcutta Group. The PAG’s plinth was the ings of Richard Bartholomew, is an extension of his photo- total rejection of the ideals of ‘the-past-is-the-future’ nation- graphs: intimate, revealing and filled with the insights of alist Bengal Revivalist Movement. an insider; but they are all these and more. He was a poet, In 1950, Bartholomew, who found himself in the same painter and photographer, but, above all else, he was an art milieu as painters Biren De and Ram Kumar, attempted his critic who made a career out of reviewing provocatively ev- first unofficial, and rather gushing, review. Years later, rum- ery significant show from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Bar- maging through his papers, he unearthed it and enclosed it tholomew was close to both the Bombay Progressive Art- in a letter to De. ists’ Group (PAG) and the Delhi Shilpi Chakra. Read in the Dear Biren, historical context of a newly independent nation that was I came across this “review” of your first one-man show beginning to reestablish a scattered identity across a score while running through some old papers. It has some- of disciplines, The Art Critic is the family album you forgot thing of the freshness of the days gone by. Very naïve, existed or were convinced had been lost. To leaf through it but perhaps we can see much of ourselves in it. now, decades later, is to be confronted with the most signifi- Yours sincerely, cant, landmark moments of the childhood and adolescence Richard of modern Indian art. From 1951 to 1958, Bartholomew taught English at Delhi’s Richard Lawrence Bartholomew, born in the south- prestigious Modern School. Art critic Geeta Kapur was eastern Burmese city of Dawei, escaped just ahead of the among his students, and printmaker Kanwal Krishna was a Japanese occupation of Burma (1942–1945). He arrived in close friend and fellow teacher. Krishna’s classroom became Delhi around 1943, finished his schooling at Cambridge a magnet for artists, an adda of sorts where artists of the School and earned a Master’s in English Literature from St day interacted with one another and hotly debated pressing Stephen’s College in 1948. This is where he met Rati Batra, aesthetic issues. After the end of his stint at Modern School, a refugee from Pakistan, who he would eventually marry in Bartholomew became a full-time art critic and assistant 1953. editor of Thought magazine. Henceforth, the initials RLB When he got into the art scene, the Bombay PAG had at the bottom of his weekly reviews became his signation, already been standing convention on its head since 1947. a critique institution. The Modernist movement in Indian Among its stalwarts were FN Souza, and it included among art had begun to blossom with the presence of institutions its ‘Modernist’ activists artists such as Husain, Akbar Pad- like the Delhi Polytechnic, the All India Fine Arts & Crafts 80 | CARAVAN STYLE & LIVING NOVEMBER 2012 Society, the Delhi Shilpi Chakra and the Shridharani Gal- such as Kanwal Krishna, Devayani Krishna, Krishna Reddy, lery. As artists like Souza, Husain, Khanna, De, Ram Kumar Jagmohan Chopra and Jyoti Bhatt; and those photogra- and Satish Gujral began making inroads into the Indian art phers of rare renown, Raghu Rai and TS Satyan. world, critics like Richard Bartholomew and Keshav Malik Private galleries are flourishing, and they host, every oth- in Delhi, and the Shantiniketan-based, Hungary-born In- er week, shows by both older and emerging artists. Curators dologist Charles Louis Fabri, came into their best. For the outnumber critics, and the Modernist moment has given artists of the day and the emerging generation, they func- way to the Contemporary. Indian art has established itself, tioned not only as witnesses to these new churnings but and after 64 years of independence, can be seen as a con- also as influencers and mentors who communicated directly tinuum, with the past, the present, and the possible future with the artists, questioned their choices and often brought no longer a matter of mystique. Given this scenario, The Art them down to earth. Critic is a resoundingly significant artefact, and remains a At the centre of the art scene was the government-run— dependable repository of information and analysis. What but ostensibly autonomous—Lalit Kala Akademi (LKA), set were initially written as reviews, published painstakingly up in 1954, which established the National Exhibition of the day after a show opened, have assumed the relevance of Art a year later and the Triennale-India in 1968. Given the historical documents. absence then of private galleries, the Akademi was pos- While we were working on The Art Critic, more than a few sibly the only road to recognition for artists. But the LKA stories of abiding interest floated to the surface. There’s one was government-run and bent to suit the power structure, that hints to the undocumented fact about how, at a point in and its practices, and its misguided ideals left much to be time, Delhi’s Nizamuddin and Jangpura areas were artists’ desired. For years, Richard Bartholomew took upon himself hubs. Rents were cheap. Artists like Husain moved from the responsibility to expose the Akademi’s malpractices Mumbai into these neighbourhoods, often occupying barsa- and questionable standards concerning art. tis (a small or one-room apartment on a terrace), and moved Today, Indian contemporary art has come into its own. between each other’s houses unannounced. Bartholomew, Despite the post-art boom economy, the artists whose first who also lived in Jangpura with his theatre-activist wife and subsequent one-man shows Bartholomew keenly re- Rati, used to feed many of these artists. Some stayed over, viewed have become bestsellers whose works continue to some sought shelter, though Bartholomew, like them, was break auction records: FN Souza, Tyeb Mehta, Biren De, never a man of means. But this camaraderie explains how Ram Kumar, Akbar Padamsee, SH Raza, Krishen Khanna, he was able to photograph the Andhra-born artist Pakhal Sailoz Mookherjea, Bhupen Khakhar and Satish Gujral; Tirumal (PT) Reddy (1915–1996)—who had organised the sculptors like Ramkinkar Baij, Dhanraj Bhagat, Chintamoni Amrita Sher-Gil-influenced ‘Bombay Contemporary India Kar, Somnath Hore and Sankho Chaudhuri; graphic artists Artists,’ or ‘Young Turks’, in 1941, six years before the PAG— NOVEMBER 2012 CARAVAN STYLE & LIVING | 81 READ asleep on a bed; or of Biren De at ease outside his studio interview superficially content but somewhat dissatisfied.

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