What is a catalogue? Outside the circles of Art, a catalogue is usually understood to be a systematic list of names, books, pictures, etc; usually complete, and in alphabetical order. However, (in the context of art exibitions), we usually refer to such a list as the ‘price list’, and a catalouge is necessarily (almost) with photographs and an essay by a art critic/historian. Over the years, the space for a catalouge has ‘grown’, and gradually in (some cases) the lines between a catalouge and a book have got blurred. However, there are still certain important factors which seperate the act of catalouge writing vis-à-vis a book or article writing. The role of a catalouge essay is very transparent; the purpose is to legitimise the artworks that are presented for display and to place them as a part of the artist(s)’s creative journey. Thus, catalouge writing has to legitimise an entire set of artistic practices, whether right or wrong. Against this, writing a book or an article is very tricky as far as the business of transparency is concerned, the process of legitimisation is often hidden under various masks of ‘critical positioning’.

Clearly, even if one were tempted to review a catalouge within the framework of a book review, certain crucial changes need to be made in one’s approach. One has to begin with assuming the precence of flattery, and then begin to look for how the flattery is ‘executed’. So it is not really the ‘critical insights’ that one should look for, instead it is how the catalogue writer uses such ‘critical insights’ to take the ‘eyes’ away from certain uncomfortable questions and focus them on the more comfortable ones that one needs to look for. Once the eyes are focussed on the comfortable questions, the process of legitimisation is (more than) half over for a catalogue writer. Then like a suave court painter, the writer uses skills in rhetoric and imagination (often in collaboration with the artist) to weave a suitable context and bestow it with cultural capital.

The catalogue essays by Nancy Adania and Ranjit Hoskote for Atul Dodiya’s ‘The Wet Sleeves of My Paper Robe’ (Presented by Singapore Tyler Print Institute and Bodhi Art,
first exhibited at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute 7 – 21 January 2006), are examples of two highly successful catalogue essays, and are a clear indication as to why both Adajania and Hoskote have emerged to be leading art critics (especially in terms of catalogue writing) through the nineties till the present. The essays were written for the travelling solo exhibition featuring works produced during Dodiya’s three-week stay at the STPI as a resident artist.

The catalogue begins with Nancy Adania (fashionably) situating Atul’s work at STPI as a collaborative venture, reminding the reader of Atul’s eccectic explorations of mediums, and then goes on to sitiuate the current body of works into the larger narrative of Atul’s artistic journey. Having done that, she steps back a little and enters a descriptive monolouge about the physicality of the art making process.  However, Adajania masterfully weaves into the process a sense of wonder, writing in a poetic descriptive style she re-presents her encounter with the ‘process’ as if she had witnessed a magical unfolding of Forms. It is at this point that she enters the most difficult part of her narrative, the legitimisation of the ‘theme’. With elan, Adania situates Atul’s engagement with Sabari within a larger post-colonial empathy for the subaltern and celebrates the new myth-making that Atul’s works represent. The tools for celebration are well chosen, the ‘nuances of Atul’s narrative approach’ is nicely lingered upon. Locating this engagement with Sabari within the larger history of the ‘Indian Modern’, she sites Nandalal Bose’s series on Sabari and pitches that as Atul’s “immediate inspiration”. This gives her a good ground to enter a comparitive mode pitching Atul Dodiya and Nandalal Bose in a manner which is wonderfully complimentory, and eclecticisicm becomes the cherished ground where they meet.

Ranjit Hoskote begins in a similiar mode, except that his eloqusim seems more ‘theoritically rendered’. The piece by Hoskote is immensely successful in conjuring Atul Dodiya as an artist with the right kind of post-modern, post-colonial, metrosexual sensitivities. This is what Ranjit Hoskote is brilliant at doing and he successfully locates this body of works in feminist politics “Dodiya has been fascinated by the labouring female body…he never renders his subjects in an idealised romanticised fashion …she disturbed the settled order of the patriarchal universe.” (Italics mine). However, Hoskote’s biggest strength is his position as a critic who has the articulation to advocate a certain kind of post-modern Indian art, which is rich with the possibilities exiting consumers through their value within a particular definition of multiculturalism. In this catalogue, his argument for Atul to be ‘viewed’ in the frame of an ‘international’ artist’ is very strong and is a case point for any student hoping to learn how to argue a position of legitimisation. He positions Atul’s mixed media works as works bordering on oriental themes or mediums, but presented with a dose of post-modern concerns, just the right positioning for a ‘politically correct, multi-cultural, first world audience’. The writer strikes the right notes in bringing in the artist’s engagement with the classical strands within European abstraction and ‘recounting’ for us the artist’s journey through this engagement.

It will be naïve to assume that Nancy Adania and Ranjit Hoskote are not exposed to theoritical positions (or are unable to value the merit of such positions), which may have the power to (at least in part) delegitimise certain strands of Atul’s artistic practises. Their mastery is in actually guarding the artist from the possible attacks from such ‘quarters’. This is like watching the artist-critic-gallery in perfect harmony. It is a beautiful picture.
( by Rahul Bhattacharya)