Three Questions: Amlanjyoti Goswami with Sudhir Patwardhan

Abstract

Amlanjyoti Goswami (AG): A profound humanism characterises your paintings. Where does it come from?

Sudhir Patwardhan (SP): From the time I turned to painting, I believed that Art is about people. I wanted to be an artist because I wanted to speak about, speak for and speak to people. For me, my response to people, their condition, their lives and the relationships one forges with them, this is the stuff of art, my art at least. Not that I was not attracted to other things—nature, man-made objects, abstract patterns. But all these are somehow seen as related to people’s lives. The belief, this conviction that art should be about people is I guess at the heart of the ‘humanism’ you speak of. It comes from the way I am, and also from many different influences—early upbringing, the art and literature I was exposed to and Marxist philosophy.

AG: Your cityscapes encompass the panoramic as well as the micro; they embrace scale as well as the particular, all in one breath. Where does that eye come from? How do you see a city and how has your sense of the city changed with the times? Your practice as a radiologist enables a detached view of the material realities of our time.

I am reminded of Miroslav Holub, the great poet who was also an immunologist and managed to convey realties in such pithy lines as in his ‘In the Microscope’ (https://utmedhumanities.wordpress.com/2014/10/12/in-the-microscope-miroslav-holub/).

SP: My training in medicine and radiology have definitely influenced my practice as a painter. For me the essence of medical training is learning how to be fully involved in the subject yet maintain objective distance. To maintain a balance between these binaries—involvement and distance—is something I have also tried to do as an artist.

In painting the city, I have tended to move between close-up views of the city and more distanced views. This movement is linked to my need to be a participant at times, to soak in the street life of the city, and then at times to move back and see the city as an observer from a window or balcony. When I am a participant, there is an autobiographical element that comes into play. The figures are more graspable, real, and they tend to dominate the composition. When I move back and become more of an observer, I begin to notice and paint details of the material condition of the people’s lives. The emotional charge is dispersed over the whole composition and not concentrated in the figures alone. Pushed further, this distancing can increase and then I begin to see the city as part of the landscape, a panorama. It becomes a cultural organism embedded in an environment. Like a marker of human civilisation on the face of the earth. These three ways of painting the city—street level close-up, middle distance and panorama—evolved with time, from the late-1970s to the 1990s. Later they have also been combined to make more complex statements in which far and near, inside and outside all come together.

AG: You are able to convey private domestic realities with a public gaze, as if what we are seeing inside, is from outside, as if what goes on, in people’s inner lives, is what goes on in everyone’s everyday lives. How do you reconcile the private and the public in your work?

SP: There are times when your attention is focused on the large social and political questions. At such times, you are painting a life that is shared socially with many. Then, there are times when you need to look at your inner circle of relationships or withdraw within yourself to confront your private ghosts. At such times, you will paint your own private life. I think honesty and openness are key features that can make the most private statement accessible to an audience, even beyond class and gender. It is in fact true that most of us go through the same challenges and problems as we live out our lives. The artist gives these particulars context and form, turning experience into a form of understanding. Trust between artist and the audience is something that needs to evolve naturally. It allows the audience to step into the artist’s shoes and see that the artist’s life is a reflection of their lives too. This trust is a very delicate thing. It is the basis of rich cultural understanding and also of the possibility of artistic freedom. Unfortunately, it is often purposely and maliciously undermined by some for political reasons or with a narrow sense of morality and culture.

Figure 1.