An interview with
Sara Abraham, a major connoisseur of Modern Indian Art.
In the post-independent scenario of Indian Art, Sara Abraham emerged as a very significant art promoter of national importance from South India. ‘Kalayathra’, a travelling Art gallery, was an altogether new proposition in nineteen sixties. Most of the big names in Indian Art world today have inspired her to run ambitious ventures, also very well enjoyed her support as an entrepreneur of art.
She began her career as an avid art collector and gallerist at a time when economic valuation of Indian art was not as pronounced as it is today. It was a time when she had not many role models to look up to. As noted by A.Ramachandran, an artist-major from her generation, that was a time ‘when Indian Art market was revolving around the likes and dislikes of foreigners’. Sara had newly identified a range of potential art lovers and Indian buyers for Art across the country from various vantage points.
She thrived simply after a deep set passion and conviction for collecting good works of art. When women artists were very less in number a woman connoisseur was even rarer figure in the earliest decades of post-independent India. She sta
rted her venture and proceeded with it against a cool society and family around (except for an insightful husband and cultured parents) that did not bother much about art as a cherishable and tasteful investment. Today interestingly, there are many women in India practising as gallerists like, Shireen Gandhi of Chemould, Gita Mehra of Sakshi, Shalini Sahany of Guild, Usha Mirchandni of Gallery Mirchandani and Mamta Singania of Anand in Delhi. And Indian Art world today is fast dispersing into mainstream international valuations.
In this fleetingly changed world, one chooses to speak to a person with definite insights that are gathered from lively interaction with Art and artists for a lifetime. Obviously, as we proceeded, the talk easily ran beyond the ‘personal’ and became very much ‘historic’ and self explanatory.
So, have a read:
K: You started off as an artist. You got trained under D.P.Roychowdhury and K.C.S.Panikkar. But after passing out from Madras college of art, you took a lesser treaded route for that moment. You moved towards becoming an art collector. Why did you choose to focus on dealing with art as a gallerist and collector rather than being an artist?
Sara: I appreciated art all my life. From the age of seven, i used to love drawing. And as i grew older, i was sent to school of arts in Madras. In my schooling in Darjeeling where i was a boarder, i did Royal academy school exams as an Honours student and i learnt portraits, realistic portraits. When i got married i had nothing to do. I thought to do portraits. I made some money too. But i also started buying art. Quite often i bought much better works, with that amount. All the spare cash i ever had, went into art. Then i understood my mediocrity and i gave up doing art but started buying art. And after buying art for a decade, M.F. Hussain came up with an inspiring idea of a gallery. There were by then some Art galleries in India but he said they were all money-making concerns, and he offered support for a gallery with deeper concerns for Art.
K: Yes, you started ‘Kalayathra’ gallery. What were your motivating factors? What were the challenges involved in it?
Sara: Look, at that time i was very anxious to make people aware of Art. In south India, music and dance had a very good place and Art didn’t. I felt that it is unfair for a medium of expression that is so vibrant and so visual that anyone can see and appreciate. I felt that not seeing is the problem. Then Hussain said to me, look there are gallery owners all over but they all have money making concerns. Why don’t you start a gallery? .........But then, I didn’t want a static gallery. It didn’t excite me. So i sat down and thought. Then I got the idea of a travelling gallery. It was a completely new idea. No one thought of it or did something that way. I thought South must go to the North, North must go to the South. East to the West and West to the East. This can happen only in a travelling gallery. So I just started. Prathap pothan gave the name ‘Kalayatra’. Dharani gave the logo of a woman’s feet. Hussain gave the idea of a gallery. It all happened like that.
K: Then how did you go about it? With a huge number of paintings and their artists you travelled all along the country and even outside....
Sara: I had decided that I would promote art with a singular devotion. People would see Art and not me as central figure. I wanted to show art, give it the importance that everyone could see and appreciate, as Balasarswathi or Rugmini Devi Arundel did for dance. But I didn’t have a role model in art. Here is a proposition that is completely new. I don’t like doing what everyone does. There is no challenge in doing what other people do.
K: Still who were there in other parts of the country who could be looked up to for some similar form of your practice?
Sara: Keku Gandhi of Chemould, Dadabhai of Pundhol, Alkasi of Delhi art Heritage..... there weren’t many. But two or three were there. That time not many were buying art. Artists were powerless. So they agreed to anything any gallery did that time. I was scrupulously honest. I will take one third only because a travelling exhibition was expensive. I also started to show Art at five star hotels which was not a venue supposed ever for it. When I started doing that people started coming. The rich won’t come that time to art galleries. They didn’t necessarily visit Lalith Kala Gallery. When they come visiting these hotels and see an art exhibition, they walk in. When I did my first exhibition in Bombay, i sold out. I didn’t have one picture to take back. We even packed by ourselves. We couldn’t afford packers that time.
K: Then how was the first Kalayatra exhibition?
As the first Kalayathra exhibition was over, I had just enough to pay the advance at Taj coromandel Madras, for the next show. I had such faith that I would be able to meet my expenses. I wasn’t bothered about anything more than that. So I booked the Taj Coromandel for the next exhibition. Then with that I went to Kochi. From Kochi I went to Calcutta. I did it from one exhibition to the other, always covering cost. Never out of pocket. I never made much money that time. But people came to know about the travelling exhibition. And people came to buy works.. I had no problem about buyers. They knew that I was giving good stuff. They knew that I was not simply making money. They knew that I was fervently in love with the works I showed.
K: How do you see ‘art’ primarily as? As an investment or a piece to cherish? There is a common concept that a piece of investment is always an impersonal object to be rolled. So investment potential is often portrayed as falling in inverse proportion to ‘personal cherishability’ of a work of art. What do you think?
Sara: I don’t look around and say I am worth crore. I’m not interested...... what happened in my case was I knew what I wanted. I don’t look at art in any other manner. See, when I conduct an exhibition I did not pick up a single piece at the outset. After everyone was given a chance to buy I took the remaining pieces. Even when I was doing static gallery like in Bangalore, by that time I was well known and I was making money, all the money went back into art. I ran a gallery for 40-50 years. Even before that I used to buy Art. Not a single item I sold has come back to me for resale.
K: It’s interesting. You are of course nourished by Art as well as you nourished it to grow. But was there any such moment in life that art really came for your help?
Of course Art is money. I did sell some works when in sudden need of money. I sold my Gaitonde for fifteen lakhs couple of years back. But you know it completely broke my heart. I had only one Gaitonde. There was not more than that i could buy at some earlier points of time. But i don’t still look at Art simply in terms of money.
K: How do you judge a work of art?
Sara: Years of looking! From seven years old to the age of eighty. Who looked at Art when i looked? They looked at saris and diamonds...or music and dance. So what you see around me now in this house is from that time. It is just that God made me with a different taste.
K: ‘Kalayathra’ show in Kochi was perhaps the greatest national exhibition in a gigantic scale conducted with proper planning that was ever witnessed by people in Kerala, your home state. What were the responses you got from various corners like government, lalith kala academi and general public?
Sara: Very poor. From my community, no one came. Except my 2 cousines. For the first exhibition, Mrs. K.M. Mathew from Malayala Manorama came and gave lot of publicity for which i gave her a Bikash Bhattacharji. Second time when i came with a show, it was financed by Mr. M A Baby, now minister for education in the state. It was at durbar hall, Ernakulam. That gallery was opened with my exhibition. Entire collection was financed by baby. Show was for a month. response was very poor for the effort i invested and financial support that baby has put into it, Papers also didn’t write.
.... It was a tremendous exhibition. I personally hung up every picture there. Carried from Hussain to Ramachandran to Subrahmaniam to many others in an order so as to educate anybody coming there. My cousines came and showed their face to me and not to art...... Culture is to be ingrained..... otherwise this is only consumer culture. A relative came one day and asked for a ‘big’ piece of painting for 10000/- i said you will not even get a small line drawing for it. The idea was that she wanted to get a big piece and she wants to get it cheep. If i had done a diamond exhibition every woman would have been there. I had very enlightened parents. My parents discussed art culture food or politics with us children.... today in households; everyone is busy drinking and eating or simply consumer spending. Bigger the TV, better. bigger the car better. We never grew up like that. Perhaps that is my asset.
K: What is lacking?
Sara: Awareness. Kerala is not an unintelligent community. If they read, they will come. I blame the media. Some media houses were against M.A. Baby and the credit being gone to him.
K: what about Infrastructure...
Not simply in Kerala, anywhere in India, it is a problem....lack of an Art-informed audience is very much there. what do schools teach? We should get knowledgible intellectual artists for the young generation to talk interact and share. We have many artists who are articulate enough. Get them to speak to u...share their works and recognize the challenges in Art practice. But today to get to see an artist is very difficult as to get to see a prime minister.
K: Great is your family portrait done by Bikash Bhattacharji. Seems from a photograph as he always used to do? How do you remember that event?
Sara: He studied each person spending a lot of his time....we all in the family could gather very rarely. Children were always away for studies. Each time each of them came, he came home and sketched... . Then he put it together. Magnificent it came out.....
K: What kind of an involvement you had with the artists of the time when you were actively into art collecting? We love to hear your ruminations over many established artists of today who were at their early careers when you collected them.........
Sara: We all grew together. K.G.Subrahmanian, Lakshma Gawde, Ramkinker, Gaitonde.... I’d known M.F Hussain for more than 60 yrs. Every x-mas he’d come with a picture rolled up in his hand. It all started when i bought my first Hussain many years back. i saw a picture in Chemold. A small one. I wanted it. And i had no money. I said to them that i will pay half. Other half i’ll pay over a period of four months. Since they know me for sometime, they trusted me. Do you know what i did? i was wearing diamond earrings that my mother had presented me. I straight went to Jhaveri bazaar. I sold it. Put the money down at Chemold. Thats how i bought it.
K: M F Hussain is in exile today! A student is put in jail right from his classroom internals for allegedly obscene presentation of Gods. Dr.Shivji Panikkar, the art history teacher who supported him and defended the Indian art history for its rich human expressions, is punished by university authorities.
Sara: Ya, today at this moment Shivaji panikkar is in truble as the news goes....
K: So, freedom of artistic expression is a contested issue even in one of the world’s ‘ largest democracies’. What do you feel about such political state of art affairs today?
Sara: Because extremists are making it political. No other reason is there. What they are doing is putting Victorian petticoats on gods and goddesses. This narrow minded outlook is ridiculous. People who do this they don’t know Hinduism. Tell one Hindu goddess who was clothed till Ravi Varma’s time? Sexuality was not defamed subject in early India. We considered it as honourable as religion. For Indian mind body was not a discredited thing. It is not lust we see in body. It was so open and shown that men didn’t lust after the body. Some must of course have misused it. But by and large, body of men and women are considered as perfection of god. Hinduism framed and glorified body. Islam covered it. As a religion it is more mental. Islam is a very beautiful religion in a different way. But there is nothing in religion to fight about. Gandhi had no fight with Islam or any religion. Narrow minded people of today are doing it.
And see, Hussain has done nothing against Hinduism or against any religion for that matter. He is a very religious person and a very good man, warm hearted, all-giving, generous and thinking person. People just don’t know this when they condemn him.
K: Today our ‘artworld’ seems to be increasingly conscious of the role of art market just as it is conscious of aesthetic judgements and critical practices. Millions are floated into the flux of art market today. Major art funds are forming. Corporate participation in Indian Art market is growing in proportion. So collectors and artists are also very energetic. But it has its own problems -like artists are increasingly said to be ‘under market pressures’ that care for nothing but ‘sufficient productivity of a promised quality as fostered by the market demands’. What do you say about such ‘market pressures on artists’? How do you look at today’s art collector’s attitude?
Sara: sometimes I am rather contemptuous of the way things are going now. Buyers are often blindly pouring money and I think the artist is losing his values. Even a boy out of school of arts whom i wouldn’t even look at, would demand a huge sum for a sketch he makes. It is ridiculous. U must grow gradually if u r to become an artist. U must see. U must travel. Todays artists r making pictures out of colours and black and white to entice the eye.
K: But it is also that a few of younger generation of artists are more focused and articulate in their art today. May be partially because of the new found financial security they are gaining. They are not as powerless as they were before....
Sara: Human eye appreciates kitsch before they appreciate art. So glitter is the catch word. It is very important fact that it takes years for the eye to discard kitsch. We like loud sounds before music. Grotesque poses before dance. One needs to refine one’s taste. That u can do only through incessant watching of good art. But i am sorry that i can’t travel much now and see the youngsters works enough today. I get feedbacks that there r some young artists working in fine arts colleges in kerala now ...
K: you were a multi tasking person as a woman. Why did you suddenly leave the practice and close ‘Kalayathra’?
Sara: Ya, one can of course do house work, do job or function with an art gallery. I have done it. But you can not have a major calamity in life and do justice to art promotion. That is why i stopped running ‘Kalayatra’ as i had to look after my daughter who was ill. I could somehow afford to go out and sit like this. Good that i came out of the field before it gets into the form as it is now with decaying artistic values. For me it was very easy leaving except that it broke my heart to leave Art. Artists and buyers trusted me and they got something from my gallery. To leave such position was difficult. When I was doing gallery, no other gallery in Bangalore did this. Moment i left, many sprouted. See, I had a complete calling for art. Even now I assist people to buy good works. But i don’t take a commission since I am not running a gallery. Now I am rather happy with life. Somewhere on the way i had to draw a line. I am secure enough to know that I have enough lived. I have a beautiful roof over my head and ample Art that live well with me in each an every spot of this house.
K: But you never drew a line in the beginning....
Sara: I never did so because I was actually beginning something new. I borrowed money from my sister and ran exhibition for the first time.
K: yes, you had to build up the very platform on which to stand, a sort of positive space where the nation at large was envisaged in terms of Art. Your collection is a true slice of such a modernist taste...
Sara: My entire collection is getting documented now. A catalogue is shortly to be published. I am very glad to tell you that Gallery Sumukha in Chennai is going to make a huge show of this complete collection on my eightieth birthday. The show will start on February 9th, 2008.
K: A much awaited show indeed...thank you very much.
Throughout the talk, Sara Abraham was revealed as a person of crisp convictions.
Her house welcomes anybody with an A Ramachandran work of lotus pond. M.F.Hussain adorns her wall with strong fraternal charm that she explains and defends with dignity. Lakshma Gawd’s letters to her are framed beautifully. They seemed like testimonials of immense sharing possible through Art between sensitive artists and tasteful connoisseurs.
Human relationships, as expressed through such refined creative filters easily overcome personal fancies and touch the deeper veins of history. It happens only when Art works are nourished as deliberate choices with discretion. Then Art enters the well-informed human sphere of interaction. Sara Abraham knew it very well.
She envisaged an Indian Art in all its modern forms. Her collection generally shows an affinity for figurative language. Some interesting abstractions are also there in her collection, like Ghaitonde and Viswanathan. But anything done with carelessness made her contemptuous. The whole gamut of decorative distortions from regional art centres and the kitschy academicism do not figure in her collection. She had the skill to identify masters at their very mastery. So she now treasures skilfully rendered crows by K.G.Subrahmaniam or thoroughly sinuous expressiveness of tropical flora and fauna by A Ramachandran.
F.N.Souza, Ganesh Haloi, Gogi Saroj Pal, Ramanujam, Bikash Bhattacharji, Tyeb Mehta, Vivan Sundaram, Ganesh Pyne, Jogen Chawdhury and Janaky Ram are some of those displayed in this house with propriety.
Sara may cross her fingers to the complexities in pos- modern fragmentation of tastes. She might not be totally comfortable with the way a fast expanding Art world functions today. But she had created a set of new frameworks to practice Modern Art in India, a sort of space where human dignity could be constantly negotiated.
Any discourse will have a certain impasse after a flooding of brainstorming openings. The time comes when ‘quality standards’ are to be reformulated. Sara Abraham and her much convincing collection of modern Indian Art will be a historic pointer at this stage.
Sara Abraham, a major connoisseur of Modern Indian Art.
In the post-independent scenario of Indian Art, Sara Abraham emerged as a very significant art promoter of national importance from South India. ‘Kalayathra’, a travelling Art gallery, was an altogether new proposition in nineteen sixties. Most of the big names in Indian Art world today have inspired her to run ambitious ventures, also very well enjoyed her support as an entrepreneur of art.
She began her career as an avid art collector and gallerist at a time when economic valuation of Indian art was not as pronounced as it is today. It was a time when she had not many role models to look up to. As noted by A.Ramachandran, an artist-major from her generation, that was a time ‘when Indian Art market was revolving around the likes and dislikes of foreigners’. Sara had newly identified a range of potential art lovers and Indian buyers for Art across the country from various vantage points.
She thrived simply after a deep set passion and conviction for collecting good works of art. When women artists were very less in number a woman connoisseur was even rarer figure in the earliest decades of post-independent India. She sta
rted her venture and proceeded with it against a cool society and family around (except for an insightful husband and cultured parents) that did not bother much about art as a cherishable and tasteful investment. Today interestingly, there are many women in India practising as gallerists like, Shireen Gandhi of Chemould, Gita Mehra of Sakshi, Shalini Sahany of Guild, Usha Mirchandni of Gallery Mirchandani and Mamta Singania of Anand in Delhi. And Indian Art world today is fast dispersing into mainstream international valuations.In this fleetingly changed world, one chooses to speak to a person with definite insights that are gathered from lively interaction with Art and artists for a lifetime. Obviously, as we proceeded, the talk easily ran beyond the ‘personal’ and became very much ‘historic’ and self explanatory.
So, have a read:
K: You started off as an artist. You got trained under D.P.Roychowdhury and K.C.S.Panikkar. But after passing out from Madras college of art, you took a lesser treaded route for that moment. You moved towards becoming an art collector. Why did you choose to focus on dealing with art as a gallerist and collector rather than being an artist?
Sara: I appreciated art all my life. From the age of seven, i used to love drawing. And as i grew older, i was sent to school of arts in Madras. In my schooling in Darjeeling where i was a boarder, i did Royal academy school exams as an Honours student and i learnt portraits, realistic portraits. When i got married i had nothing to do. I thought to do portraits. I made some money too. But i also started buying art. Quite often i bought much better works, with that amount. All the spare cash i ever had, went into art. Then i understood my mediocrity and i gave up doing art but started buying art. And after buying art for a decade, M.F. Hussain came up with an inspiring idea of a gallery. There were by then some Art galleries in India but he said they were all money-making concerns, and he offered support for a gallery with deeper concerns for Art.
K: Yes, you started ‘Kalayathra’ gallery. What were your motivating factors? What were the challenges involved in it?
Sara: Look, at that time i was very anxious to make people aware of Art. In south India, music and dance had a very good place and Art didn’t. I felt that it is unfair for a medium of expression that is so vibrant and so visual that anyone can see and appreciate. I felt that not seeing is the problem. Then Hussain said to me, look there are gallery owners all over but they all have money making concerns. Why don’t you start a gallery? .........But then, I didn’t want a static gallery. It didn’t excite me. So i sat down and thought. Then I got the idea of a travelling gallery. It was a completely new idea. No one thought of it or did something that way. I thought South must go to the North, North must go to the South. East to the West and West to the East. This can happen only in a travelling gallery. So I just started. Prathap pothan gave the name ‘Kalayatra’. Dharani gave the logo of a woman’s feet. Hussain gave the idea of a gallery. It all happened like that.
K: Then how did you go about it? With a huge number of paintings and their artists you travelled all along the country and even outside....
Sara: I had decided that I would promote art with a singular devotion. People would see Art and not me as central figure. I wanted to show art, give it the importance that everyone could see and appreciate, as Balasarswathi or Rugmini Devi Arundel did for dance. But I didn’t have a role model in art. Here is a proposition that is completely new. I don’t like doing what everyone does. There is no challenge in doing what other people do.
K: Still who were there in other parts of the country who could be looked up to for some similar form of your practice?
Sara: Keku Gandhi of Chemould, Dadabhai of Pundhol, Alkasi of Delhi art Heritage..... there weren’t many. But two or three were there. That time not many were buying art. Artists were powerless. So they agreed to anything any gallery did that time. I was scrupulously honest. I will take one third only because a travelling exhibition was expensive. I also started to show Art at five star hotels which was not a venue supposed ever for it. When I started doing that people started coming. The rich won’t come that time to art galleries. They didn’t necessarily visit Lalith Kala Gallery. When they come visiting these hotels and see an art exhibition, they walk in. When I did my first exhibition in Bombay, i sold out. I didn’t have one picture to take back. We even packed by ourselves. We couldn’t afford packers that time.
K: Then how was the first Kalayatra exhibition?
As the first Kalayathra exhibition was over, I had just enough to pay the advance at Taj coromandel Madras, for the next show. I had such faith that I would be able to meet my expenses. I wasn’t bothered about anything more than that. So I booked the Taj Coromandel for the next exhibition. Then with that I went to Kochi. From Kochi I went to Calcutta. I did it from one exhibition to the other, always covering cost. Never out of pocket. I never made much money that time. But people came to know about the travelling exhibition. And people came to buy works.. I had no problem about buyers. They knew that I was giving good stuff. They knew that I was not simply making money. They knew that I was fervently in love with the works I showed.
K: How do you see ‘art’ primarily as? As an investment or a piece to cherish? There is a common concept that a piece of investment is always an impersonal object to be rolled. So investment potential is often portrayed as falling in inverse proportion to ‘personal cherishability’ of a work of art. What do you think?
Sara: I don’t look around and say I am worth crore. I’m not interested...... what happened in my case was I knew what I wanted. I don’t look at art in any other manner. See, when I conduct an exhibition I did not pick up a single piece at the outset. After everyone was given a chance to buy I took the remaining pieces. Even when I was doing static gallery like in Bangalore, by that time I was well known and I was making money, all the money went back into art. I ran a gallery for 40-50 years. Even before that I used to buy Art. Not a single item I sold has come back to me for resale.
K: It’s interesting. You are of course nourished by Art as well as you nourished it to grow. But was there any such moment in life that art really came for your help?
Of course Art is money. I did sell some works when in sudden need of money. I sold my Gaitonde for fifteen lakhs couple of years back. But you know it completely broke my heart. I had only one Gaitonde. There was not more than that i could buy at some earlier points of time. But i don’t still look at Art simply in terms of money.
K: How do you judge a work of art?
Sara: Years of looking! From seven years old to the age of eighty. Who looked at Art when i looked? They looked at saris and diamonds...or music and dance. So what you see around me now in this house is from that time. It is just that God made me with a different taste.
K: ‘Kalayathra’ show in Kochi was perhaps the greatest national exhibition in a gigantic scale conducted with proper planning that was ever witnessed by people in Kerala, your home state. What were the responses you got from various corners like government, lalith kala academi and general public?
Sara: Very poor. From my community, no one came. Except my 2 cousines. For the first exhibition, Mrs. K.M. Mathew from Malayala Manorama came and gave lot of publicity for which i gave her a Bikash Bhattacharji. Second time when i came with a show, it was financed by Mr. M A Baby, now minister for education in the state. It was at durbar hall, Ernakulam. That gallery was opened with my exhibition. Entire collection was financed by baby. Show was for a month. response was very poor for the effort i invested and financial support that baby has put into it, Papers also didn’t write.
.... It was a tremendous exhibition. I personally hung up every picture there. Carried from Hussain to Ramachandran to Subrahmaniam to many others in an order so as to educate anybody coming there. My cousines came and showed their face to me and not to art...... Culture is to be ingrained..... otherwise this is only consumer culture. A relative came one day and asked for a ‘big’ piece of painting for 10000/- i said you will not even get a small line drawing for it. The idea was that she wanted to get a big piece and she wants to get it cheep. If i had done a diamond exhibition every woman would have been there. I had very enlightened parents. My parents discussed art culture food or politics with us children.... today in households; everyone is busy drinking and eating or simply consumer spending. Bigger the TV, better. bigger the car better. We never grew up like that. Perhaps that is my asset.
K: What is lacking?
Sara: Awareness. Kerala is not an unintelligent community. If they read, they will come. I blame the media. Some media houses were against M.A. Baby and the credit being gone to him.
K: what about Infrastructure...
Not simply in Kerala, anywhere in India, it is a problem....lack of an Art-informed audience is very much there. what do schools teach? We should get knowledgible intellectual artists for the young generation to talk interact and share. We have many artists who are articulate enough. Get them to speak to u...share their works and recognize the challenges in Art practice. But today to get to see an artist is very difficult as to get to see a prime minister.
K: Great is your family portrait done by Bikash Bhattacharji. Seems from a photograph as he always used to do? How do you remember that event?
Sara: He studied each person spending a lot of his time....we all in the family could gather very rarely. Children were always away for studies. Each time each of them came, he came home and sketched... . Then he put it together. Magnificent it came out.....
K: What kind of an involvement you had with the artists of the time when you were actively into art collecting? We love to hear your ruminations over many established artists of today who were at their early careers when you collected them.........
Sara: We all grew together. K.G.Subrahmanian, Lakshma Gawde, Ramkinker, Gaitonde.... I’d known M.F Hussain for more than 60 yrs. Every x-mas he’d come with a picture rolled up in his hand. It all started when i bought my first Hussain many years back. i saw a picture in Chemold. A small one. I wanted it. And i had no money. I said to them that i will pay half. Other half i’ll pay over a period of four months. Since they know me for sometime, they trusted me. Do you know what i did? i was wearing diamond earrings that my mother had presented me. I straight went to Jhaveri bazaar. I sold it. Put the money down at Chemold. Thats how i bought it.
K: M F Hussain is in exile today! A student is put in jail right from his classroom internals for allegedly obscene presentation of Gods. Dr.Shivji Panikkar, the art history teacher who supported him and defended the Indian art history for its rich human expressions, is punished by university authorities.
Sara: Ya, today at this moment Shivaji panikkar is in truble as the news goes....
K: So, freedom of artistic expression is a contested issue even in one of the world’s ‘ largest democracies’. What do you feel about such political state of art affairs today?
Sara: Because extremists are making it political. No other reason is there. What they are doing is putting Victorian petticoats on gods and goddesses. This narrow minded outlook is ridiculous. People who do this they don’t know Hinduism. Tell one Hindu goddess who was clothed till Ravi Varma’s time? Sexuality was not defamed subject in early India. We considered it as honourable as religion. For Indian mind body was not a discredited thing. It is not lust we see in body. It was so open and shown that men didn’t lust after the body. Some must of course have misused it. But by and large, body of men and women are considered as perfection of god. Hinduism framed and glorified body. Islam covered it. As a religion it is more mental. Islam is a very beautiful religion in a different way. But there is nothing in religion to fight about. Gandhi had no fight with Islam or any religion. Narrow minded people of today are doing it.
And see, Hussain has done nothing against Hinduism or against any religion for that matter. He is a very religious person and a very good man, warm hearted, all-giving, generous and thinking person. People just don’t know this when they condemn him.
K: Today our ‘artworld’ seems to be increasingly conscious of the role of art market just as it is conscious of aesthetic judgements and critical practices. Millions are floated into the flux of art market today. Major art funds are forming. Corporate participation in Indian Art market is growing in proportion. So collectors and artists are also very energetic. But it has its own problems -like artists are increasingly said to be ‘under market pressures’ that care for nothing but ‘sufficient productivity of a promised quality as fostered by the market demands’. What do you say about such ‘market pressures on artists’? How do you look at today’s art collector’s attitude?
Sara: sometimes I am rather contemptuous of the way things are going now. Buyers are often blindly pouring money and I think the artist is losing his values. Even a boy out of school of arts whom i wouldn’t even look at, would demand a huge sum for a sketch he makes. It is ridiculous. U must grow gradually if u r to become an artist. U must see. U must travel. Todays artists r making pictures out of colours and black and white to entice the eye.
K: But it is also that a few of younger generation of artists are more focused and articulate in their art today. May be partially because of the new found financial security they are gaining. They are not as powerless as they were before....
Sara: Human eye appreciates kitsch before they appreciate art. So glitter is the catch word. It is very important fact that it takes years for the eye to discard kitsch. We like loud sounds before music. Grotesque poses before dance. One needs to refine one’s taste. That u can do only through incessant watching of good art. But i am sorry that i can’t travel much now and see the youngsters works enough today. I get feedbacks that there r some young artists working in fine arts colleges in kerala now ...
K: you were a multi tasking person as a woman. Why did you suddenly leave the practice and close ‘Kalayathra’?
Sara: Ya, one can of course do house work, do job or function with an art gallery. I have done it. But you can not have a major calamity in life and do justice to art promotion. That is why i stopped running ‘Kalayatra’ as i had to look after my daughter who was ill. I could somehow afford to go out and sit like this. Good that i came out of the field before it gets into the form as it is now with decaying artistic values. For me it was very easy leaving except that it broke my heart to leave Art. Artists and buyers trusted me and they got something from my gallery. To leave such position was difficult. When I was doing gallery, no other gallery in Bangalore did this. Moment i left, many sprouted. See, I had a complete calling for art. Even now I assist people to buy good works. But i don’t take a commission since I am not running a gallery. Now I am rather happy with life. Somewhere on the way i had to draw a line. I am secure enough to know that I have enough lived. I have a beautiful roof over my head and ample Art that live well with me in each an every spot of this house.
K: But you never drew a line in the beginning....
Sara: I never did so because I was actually beginning something new. I borrowed money from my sister and ran exhibition for the first time.
K: yes, you had to build up the very platform on which to stand, a sort of positive space where the nation at large was envisaged in terms of Art. Your collection is a true slice of such a modernist taste...
Sara: My entire collection is getting documented now. A catalogue is shortly to be published. I am very glad to tell you that Gallery Sumukha in Chennai is going to make a huge show of this complete collection on my eightieth birthday. The show will start on February 9th, 2008.
K: A much awaited show indeed...thank you very much.
Throughout the talk, Sara Abraham was revealed as a person of crisp convictions.
Her house welcomes anybody with an A Ramachandran work of lotus pond. M.F.Hussain adorns her wall with strong fraternal charm that she explains and defends with dignity. Lakshma Gawd’s letters to her are framed beautifully. They seemed like testimonials of immense sharing possible through Art between sensitive artists and tasteful connoisseurs.
Human relationships, as expressed through such refined creative filters easily overcome personal fancies and touch the deeper veins of history. It happens only when Art works are nourished as deliberate choices with discretion. Then Art enters the well-informed human sphere of interaction. Sara Abraham knew it very well.
She envisaged an Indian Art in all its modern forms. Her collection generally shows an affinity for figurative language. Some interesting abstractions are also there in her collection, like Ghaitonde and Viswanathan. But anything done with carelessness made her contemptuous. The whole gamut of decorative distortions from regional art centres and the kitschy academicism do not figure in her collection. She had the skill to identify masters at their very mastery. So she now treasures skilfully rendered crows by K.G.Subrahmaniam or thoroughly sinuous expressiveness of tropical flora and fauna by A Ramachandran.
F.N.Souza, Ganesh Haloi, Gogi Saroj Pal, Ramanujam, Bikash Bhattacharji, Tyeb Mehta, Vivan Sundaram, Ganesh Pyne, Jogen Chawdhury and Janaky Ram are some of those displayed in this house with propriety.
Sara may cross her fingers to the complexities in pos- modern fragmentation of tastes. She might not be totally comfortable with the way a fast expanding Art world functions today. But she had created a set of new frameworks to practice Modern Art in India, a sort of space where human dignity could be constantly negotiated.
Any discourse will have a certain impasse after a flooding of brainstorming openings. The time comes when ‘quality standards’ are to be reformulated. Sara Abraham and her much convincing collection of modern Indian Art will be a historic pointer at this stage.
