Art for all – Urmi Chanda-Vaz ,THE HINDU

A little over four years ago, Mumbaikars travelling in and out of their way from Bandra were met with a big, bright and beautiful sight. Cruising along the circuitous flyover over at Reclamation, a humongous yellow mural painted on one side of the MTNL building was visible. This was artist Ranjit Dahiya’s 120×150-foot tribute to India’s cinematic giant, Dadasaheb Phalke. Created for the public art festival organised by St+Art India Foundation, the art work is one of many striking, large-scale murals that have mushroomed around Mumbai and other cities in the last few years. And each time one such comes up, it garners plenty of media attention, but most importantly, a discourse around public art. At a time when most public discourse is centered around toxic politics and gender disparity, and entertainment is almost entirely derived from digital mediums, conversations on art are a necessary parallel.

History in the city

Throwing in some much-needed historical flavour to the mix is the Piramal Museum of Art’s Public Art Programme. The first phase was launched last year at the Palladium Mall at Lower Parel in July 2018. The second phase is currently being executed at Phoenix Marketcity, Kurla. It aims to familiarise audiences with Indian historic artistic traditions. The pop-up museum is bang in the middle of a bustling mall comprising five cases featuring art from the 18th century onwards right up to present day.

Curated by Brijeshwari Gohil and Sayali Mundye, the showcase starts with late medieval miniature and Tanjore paintings, moves on to the definitive Madras Art Movement of the late 1900s, and culminating in modern art. “Indian art is exceedingly vast, but we’ve tried to make a fair representation in this limited space,” elaborates Gohil.

Modern artists include K.M. Adimoolam, R. Varadarajan, Jayapal Panicker, K. Srinivasulu, K. Ramanujam from the Madras School. Contemporary artists featured are Meenakshi D.M., Harikrishna Katragadda, Parag Tandel, G. Gurunathan, Jitish Kallat and Sitaram Swain. The exhibition also features some shringara objects from the 18th and 19th centuries, under the ‘Art of Beauty’ section.

“Art becomes very accessible in a public place like a mall. The footfalls have been encouraging in the first phase,” adds Mundye, “and we had almost 1,500 people visiting the museum.”

Art and education

Public art has been present in India, in small ubiquitous ways for decades. Many such instances can be seen in the work of street photographer, Gopal M.S. who has been assiduously documenting Mumbai’s public art (and other aspects) under his blog-turned-book project titled Aam Artist Gallery. This kind of ‘art’ can be classified largely as graffiti or as inventive, low-cost advertising for local goods and services rather than artistic initiatives.

But in the last few years, Indian artists have risen to the concept, trend and need for more sophisticated public art. The recent transformation of Sassoon Docks; the prestigious bi-annual Kochi-Muziris Biennale; the beautification of bus stops and train stations with traditional art forms; and city art walks are all examples of recent intersections of public art and art education.

Beyond the realm of galleries and museums — which most people are vary of — such art engages public sentiment on a larger scale. It can take a vast variety of forms such as murals, sculptures, photographs, installations, street performances, and pop-up exhibitions. In Mumbai, the Kala Ghoda festival has been a wonderful point of such convergence for many years, but it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the thrust of this entire public art movement has been contemporary in nature. The current art programme aims to bring this discourse to the forefront.