At IGNCA, drawing is the big draw

NEW DELHI: Walk into any contemporary art gallery and you’d be hard pressed to find evidence of one of art’s oldest and most unsung practices—drawing. In this digital age, art has become about performance and technology than a 2b/4b pencil. British graffiti artist Banksy said it best: “All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?”
A new exhibition at Delhi’s IGNCA not only puts the spotlight back on drawing, it also expands its definition.So, if there are Jatin Das’s muscular male nudes and Somnath Hore’s emaciated famine victims, there are also Rakhi Peswani’s drawings made from embroidery and Chitra Ganesh’s vibrant canvases that meld together drawing and found objects.
Drawing is witnessing an amazing revival, feels Annapurna Garimella who has co-curated the show along with Sindhura Jois DM of Jackfruit Research and Design and Prayag Shukla. “What the hand can do has become so central to reconceiving art in the age of multimedia.”
Drawing used to be considered the vital life matter of art-making and not a support for paint. But then it went out of fashion, and this show spanning seven decades of Indian drawing and 100 artists aims to put it back on centre stage. “It was the legendary MF Husain who introduced me to the finer nuances of drawings and the intimate, small format nature of this genre has remained a personal favourite ever since,” says Renu Modi, director, Gallery Espace, which is marking its 25th anniversary with this show.
Garimella says the exhibition was an attempt to say that drawing is not one thing. “It’s both positive and negative space and also pressure on a surface.”
The art historian in her makes an effort not to ignore the vibrant tradition of Gond art. Viewers who admire Bhajju Shyam’s menagerie of snakes and peacocks might find it hard to imagine that these paintings have been authored by a man who was once a night watchman in Bhopal.
Talking about incredulity, where else will you see is also M F Husain’s drawing of a commode. It’s part of Renu Modi’s collection of architectural drawings which the famous modernist made in 1986 while designing her Friends Colony house.
Whether it’s a master or a young contemporary artist, what the show does communicate is the immediacy of drawing.
Drawing 2014 is on at IGNCA till November 28.