Cinema on Atul Dodiya’s canvas
For his new show in the city, after a gap of three years and two lockdowns, artist Atul Dodiya revisits the films of his boyhood
Mumbai: No cancer in India has gained the fame of lymphosarcoma of the intestine. It was the death sentence given to Rajesh Khanna, in the 1971 bittersweet classic, ‘Anand’.
The first superstar of Hindi cinema, the only actor to give 17 super hits in a row, is a key influence on artist Atul Dodiya’s new show at Chemould Prescott Road, in Fort. “In 2019, I was asked to do a commission for a newly built house on Carter Road.” It was on the plot where Rajesh Khanna had built his darya mahal, Aashirwad, which was eventually torn down. “I was asked to paint on any subject, but I said, ‘We should do something with him.’ The new owner was also a fan. It was during the pandemic, so I started watching his movies. I would paint small watercolours by day, and in the evening, we would watch ‘Ittefaq’, ‘Amar Prem’, ‘Aradhana’, ‘Anand’, and so on.”
In his home theatre, when Dodiya would pause these films, he would see a composition of painterly quality. “It was an abrupt, frozen still. I realised there are certain schemes, certain tableaux that I’m interested in.” He started taking screenshots and later rendering them in oils. Twenty-four of these have made it to his new exhibition, ‘Dr Banerjee in Dr Kulkarni’s Nursing Home and Other Paintings’, on till February 25. His previous show in the city, three years ago, was based on Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Blackmail’. The new one is a homage to the films of Guru Dutt, Satyajit Ray, Raj Kapoor, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Yash Chopra and Jyoti Swaroop.
He says, “Those who are into serious cinema may ask, ‘Where is Satyajit Ray, the great Ray, and where is ‘Padosan’? How could this artist put these two together? But, there are many ‘me’s within me. I can’t afford being high-brow and serious all the time. Van Gogh and Picasso are part of me, but Raja Ravi Varma and Raghuvir Mulgaonkar are also part of me. Great writers and film-makers are part of me, and so is the popular, cheap, and garish cinema of Bollywood.”
An evening in Paris
A graduate of JJ School of Art, Dodiya is considered one of “India’s most acclaimed postcolonial artists”. A weak maths student, who flunked SSC twice, he received a gold medal from the Maharashtra government in 1982, and a scholarship from the French government in 1990. His year in Paris, accompanied by his artist wife Anju, was a life-changing experience. “When I saw the great masters, from pre-Renaissance to post-modern, I saw that they were not afraid of anything.” Since then, for those who are good at maths, his works have fetched more than half a million dollars at international auctions. His latest show is his 33rd or 35th; he isn’t sure. “I had my first solo show at Chemould in 1989, so it’s almost 34 years now.”
Originally from Kathiawar in Gujarat, Dodiya grew up in a chawl next to Ghatkopar station. “When Doordarshan was launched in 1972, we didn’t own a television set. So, we would go to a friend’s house. That was a unique thing at the time: the film coming to your home.” The antenna was like a weathervane, and some poor kid was always stationed on the roof. “Those were the days,” he says. Along with the calendar art that his mother would cut and frame, motion pictures were his earliest introduction to painted pictures. “On my way to town, I would see these huge hand-painted film posters. I would be amazed by the likeness on such a scale. Within a second, you could recognise the actor or character actor. There was a film called ‘Kachche Dhaage’, with Kabir Bedi and Vinod Khanna. They played dacoits, and the portraits were painted with a palette knife. We generally paint with a brush, but with a knife you can apply thick paint, so that it looks rugged, rough and textured. There was a violet light on one side, and an orange light on the other. Even from a distance, the characters looked like villains.”
But, it was the heroes on whom Dodiya trained his own hand. “Rajesh Khanna was a phenomenon at that time. Young people may not know this, but when he appeared on the scene, there was nothing like him before.” Dodiya grew up with five sisters, so the national crush was naturally the family crush. “Their friends would come home on Sundays, and to charm them, I would draw his portraits. I was good at achieving likeness and realism. My first cinema drawings were all of Rajesh Khanna.” He has done over 100 cinema paintings since then, and his new show is also like switching on Doordarshan. “I wanted to create the feeling of old, tinted photographs. I have used pale turquoise, pale emerald, pale crimson or vermillion. I have filled the gallery with large canvases. Each individual painting is from a specific narrative, but there’s only a four-inch gap, and then there’s another story. So, it’s placed like a film negative.”
At 5x6.5 feet, the linen canvases are filled with stage props rather than the ‘chand ka tukda’ faces of Saira Banu, Sharmila Tagore and Waheeda Rehman; the actors are mostly portrayed from behind. “When you show the back of a person, there’s a mystery in it. Most of the popular films, even Ray, are shot on sets. They are quite weird and haphazard. When I took snapshots for the paintings, I looked at each square inch. A wall is actually a painted window, a chequered floor is actually paper, a window grille is cardboard. It’s a funny, strange world. We talk about these films so seriously, but everything is actually fake.”
With its reproductions of known films, the show is easy to understand and enjoy. “I’m not working in isolation. In the studio, the boy who makes tea for me or someone who cleans my studio. I notice whether they are looking at the painting or not. Everyone has their own way of looking and seeing.” Maybe, the opinions of strangers seem less strange when you have grown up in a chawl. “Living in a chawl is like living in a joint family. Even your neighbours have total haqq, total right over you. They can ask you, ‘What is this? Why is this? What does it mean?’” They would sometimes compare his works to the print on their bed covers, but that just comes with the territory. “It is not necessary that I exhibit only to the people living in south Mumbai, the educated people who visit art galleries, travel abroad and go to museums. Art is also for those who don’t have these opportunities. Even they have the right.”
It is for this reason that this show needs no curatorial walkthroughs, wall text, or even captions. Anyone who’s seen ‘Anand’ will recognise Rajesh Khanna, even from the back of his head.