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MUMBAI | 16 SEPTEMBER 2012 TIME OUT 11 . < WHAT’S ON > SEEN THIS WEEK >ART A time for firsts: The first solo show of paintings by 74-year-old artist Ajoy Ghose, who practises the wash technique of painting brought to India by the Japanese and developed further by Bengal School masters like Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose. Gallerie Ganesha, E-557 Greater Kailash II, New Delhi On till October 10, 11 am-7 pm For details, call 011-29226043/29217306 Akshara-Crafting Indian Scripts: The exhibition will display artifacts in art, crafts and textiles commissioned and curated by Jaya Jaitly. Covering 13 Indian languages, 58 craftsmen and 21 crafts, the event will also screen a 20-minute film on dance and calligraphy by Kalpana Subramanian. Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi September 16, 6.30 pm Rendezvous with Nature: An exhibition of paintings showcasing the Renaissance era by TG Somasundaran. The exhibition will be inaugurated by fashion designer Paromita Banerjee and RJ Roopa from FM Rainbow. Oxford Bookstore, 17 Park Street, Kolkata September 16, 11 am-9 pm The Rapid Metro rail line skirting Cybercity, Gurgaon. India’s first wholly privately-funded metro project, it is intended to connect the residential, commercial and office areas of DLF Phases 1, 2 and 3. When the 5.1 km first phase opens in March 2013, 1 lakh passengers a day are expected. Trial runs begin on October 2. SANJAY K SHARMA > MUSIC Balivadham: A Kutiyattam performance by Margi Madhu, who comes from a rich lineage of Kutiyattam performers. He is the son of Padmashri Moozhikkulam Kochukuttanchakiar and nephew of Padmabhushan GARGI GUPTA Ammannoor Madhava Chakyar. ne was an eminent They joined the fight Experimental Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point, Mumbai painter who started out September 18, 6 pm For details, call as a journalist and Painter-writer J Swaminathan and writer-artist Richard Bartholomew were two key, and lively, 022-66223737/66588997 remained, through his career, a writer who figures of the Delhi art world of the 20th century. Their sons seek to rescue their legacy On stage: The Bengaluru International Arts Festival 2012 will O penned incisive essays on aesthetic host folk dance performances from Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Assam, and cultural debates in left-wing Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur and Karnataka. journals in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Freedom Park, Seshadri Road, Bangalore The other was the preeminent art critic and newspaper reviewer of September 16, 6.30 pm For full schedule, visit those decades, and an artist who www.biaf.co.in painted (early on) and (later) took beautiful, intuitive photographs of A grand symphony: The National Centre for the Performing his family, his artist friends and life Arts will present the Symphony Orchestra of India’s 13th around him. celebrity season with a Western music concert by conductor As painter-writer and writer- Christoph Poppen. Lena Neudauer will be on the violin. artist, J Swaminathan and Richard Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point, Mumbai Bartholomew, respectively, their careers converged not just in time, September 20, 7 pm For details, call 022-66223737 but also in the concerns that ani- mated their rhetoric. Both were > THEATRE key figures in art circles in Delhi, which was then emerging as an Death and The Maiden: Inspired by Chile and Argentina in important centre for art, with the the 1970s and 1980s, Ariel Dorfman’s play traverses the Delhi Shilpi Chakra group, on the personal and the political, cutting across geographical and one hand, and official institutions cultural divides. Directed by Ashish Sen, the play will have such as the Lalit Kala Akademi and Jagriti founders Arundhati and Jagdish Raja playing All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society, Paulina Salas and Gerardo Escobar. on the other. Together, they were Jagriti Theatre, Varthur Road, Ramagondana Halli, privy to defining moments in Whitefield, Bangalore the history of Indian art since Independence, supped with and September 14-23, 8 pm (Tuesday to Saturday); 3pm and knew well all the principal actors, 6.30 pm on Sunday Tickets (~300) available at and joined in the debates, contro- www.bookmyshow.com. For telebookings, call versies and politics of the era. 080-39895050 Bartholomew died in 1985 and Miss Meena: In the eponymous play, Miss Meena, formerly Swaminathan in 1994. Both are Asha, returns to her native village Pichampuram after two largely forgotten today — or, at any rate, the full range and complexity decades to make her final film. Now an iconic film star, she © THE ESTATE OF RICHARD BARTHOLOMEW finds the village in a state of dire poverty. The play is based of their life’s work is little known — Kishore Parekh’s portrait of Swaminathan (left); Richard Bartholomew (above) on a story by Rashmi Ruth Devadasan, which in turn is and their writings lie buried in painting at his summer studio in Almora, 1957 inspired by the classic play The Visit. archives, dusted off only by scholars of art history. But their sons are now COURTESY S KALIDAS/GALLERY ESPACE Ranga Shankara, 36/2 8th Cross, Phase II, J P Nagar, endeavouring to change that, dig- [Swaminathan’s] life when he to modern Indian art. Swami- side that of feted urban masters. is quite incredible since none of the Bangalore ging through their archives and pre- makes the transition from being a nathan adopted elements and sym- “Essentially an art-historical works is on sale,” says Kalidas. He is September 20-21, 7.30 pm; September 22-23, 3.30 pm and senting selections from them in a leftwing political activist to a jour- bols from folk and tribal art in his display” all the works at the show working next on digitising his 7.30 pm Tickets available at www.indianstage.in bid to re-claim their fathers’ lega- nalist-critic-artist and then to a full- paintings, devising a mode of have been loaned from family, father’s writings which include cies and relevance for the present. time artist”, writes Kalidas in his “indigenous modernism” to count- friends and long-time collectors Contra 66, a journal Swaminathan No Smoking & Chairs: Directed by Gourav Ghosh, the silent On September 26, Pablo detailed catalogue. Thus, the er the West-inspired modernist such as Mukund Lath. “It was Renu started in 1965, and which had play deals with human desires, such as a man’s wish to Bartholomew will launch Richard exhibition limits its scope to just idiom of artists like Raza, Souza and Modi’s [Gallery Espace’s director] everyone from Octavio Paz (then in enjoy his last smoke. Bartholomew — The Art Critic, a before Swaminathan embarked Husain. But more importantly, as idea. My father had his last exhibi- Delhi as Mexican ambassador) to Gyan Manch, 11 Pretoria Street, Park Street, Kolkata volume that presents a large on his Bird-Tree-Mountain phase founder of Roopanker museum in tion with her and she was keen to M F Husain and Andre Breton con- chunk of his father’s writings. It has, of paintings, which he is best Bhopal’s Bharat Bhavan, he was have this, which tributing to it. Some of Swami- September 16, 7 pm For details, call says Pablo, been 15 years in the known for today, and his engage- instrumental in bringing tribal nathan’s more contentious pieces 033-22823515/22823516 making, with the initial selection ment with tribal art, which many artists into the museum-gallery were published in Contra 66 made by his mother, theatre-activist consider his seminal contribution fold, exhibiting their works along- and for these, Kalidas writes, Rati Bartholomew, and Carmen “he conveniently gave me (all > COMEDY Kagal, a former managing editor of of ten years of age at that time) SPAN magazine. the byline”! In a moving afterword, Pablo The careers of Swamina- Bartholomew writes of overcoming than and Bartholomew may several dead ends — a family asso- have overlapped, but they ciate who was in the gallery busi- disagreed more often than ness and a publisher who took all they agreed, their polemics his works and held on to them; dictated by their politics. While another who thought he would Bartholomew was largely apo- wrangle a few works by his father’s litical, a poet and a humanist friend, a hugely saleable artist, in who believed in art’s redemp- exchange for doing a small book — tive function in the life of man to finally get around to financing and nation, Swaminathan was a the book’s publication himself, CPI apparatchik as a young man, putting, he says, “money where our and though he left the party in mouths are”. The book is, for Pablo, the 1950s, remained a feisty polemi- a well-known photographer him- cist who claimed to have “brought History of India VIRitten: Produced by Ashvin Gidwani and self, part of a sustained engagement some of the revolutionary’s ruth- directed by comedian Vir Das, the stand-up act is a satirical with his father’s oeuvre, which © THE ESTATE OF RICHARD BARTHOLOMEW lessness into art”. There were, writes look at Indian history. Das chronicles India’s trajectory from resulted in 2009 in the exhibition of art historian Geeta Kapur (intro- the Harappan civilisation to the Vedas and the advent of the his photographs in New York, ductory essay in Richard Bartho- Mughal era; from the East India Company to the freedom Mumbai and Delhi and a book lomew), “spirited battles — high- struggle, till India opened up to the world in the 1990s. (the sale of these, and some of voltage repartees, a show of guts Sophia Bhabha Hall, Bhulabhai Desai Road, Cumballa Hill, Pablo’s own work, have helped to PHOTOS COURTESY S KALIDAS/GALLERY ESPACE and even a bit of gore.