More art unto the people

Art belongs to everyone. That’s the point Sujata Timbrewala wants to make. She flips back to the prehistoric man to explain, “Look at the early man. He painted on cave walls even before language had evolved. Art, that way, is our first language.” The young visionary then turns to an infant. “Notice how it’s innate in toddlers to doodle around,” she says with a giggle.   

She then gets Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung on her side before adding, “According to these great thinkers, the subconsciousness is the most powerful part of our brain. Visuals and images make up our subconscious mind and that’s why everybody has art in them.”

She travels back to her childhood days in Jaipur where she sat in the garden and painted. Soon, she confesses that a pragmatic career path had her studying at IIT Khargpur and IISC, Bangalore before fitting into a corporate role. But after eight years at a typical workplace, Timbrewala quit to focus on what had been her first love. Not only did she bounce back to painting full time, she also began to attack the stereotypes of art around her.

Having been just a layperson with a usual job, she unfolds the larger mindset on art: “People think that art is elitist. Everyday people can’t relate to it. This is what I want to change. The only people who have a relationship with art are artists or people in the business of art – collectors, curators etc.”

Thus began the idea of ‘Democratisation of Art.’ “People will catch a movie over the weekends, but no one wants to go to an art gallery. There’s absolutely no rapport between artists and people. Visual art is like music, the more people listen to music, the more their taste evolves and the more they want to listen. This isn’t happening with art. So I sensed the need for a connect between artists and people.”

A two-day event packed with artists and people, ‘Democratisation of Art’ apart from inviting people to paint, will address various topics related to art.

Art – food for thought
Artist KP Hari shares Timbrewala’s unrest when he sees art being stereotyped. He will speak at the event on how art can be a way of thinking. “Art can be used as a complementary way of looking at the world. The way experiments and subjective evaluation are used in schools, art has great potential of being a tool in learning,” he says.

Working with unconventional materials such as red ochre, turmeric, match sticks etc, this artist encourages people to not admire art. Hari’s belief in art is derived from his own personal journey. “I never started as a conventional artist but through the years, I discovered that art helped in giving me new perspective,” he says.

Canvas of Artmatics
People tend to isolate art from the world around them. Addressing this mind block, mathematical artist Anand Bora will speak on the application of maths in art at the event.

“When you talk of a rhombus, no one thinks of a bird. But the truth is that a lot of mathematical fundas, especially geometry, can be applied to art. I will also speak on the work of masters such as Leonardo Da Vinci and MC Escher,” reveals Bora. He also informs that mathematical art is increasingly being practiced by intellectuals from top academic institutions such as Oxford University, MIT and Cambridge University to name a few, while in India, people are unaware of it.

Interpreting the form
“People will look at a piece of art and complain that even a child could scribble the same way and the artist gets crores for the work,” says Tejashvi Jain, assitant curator, National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore, of the psychology people look at art with. She explains that while a piece of art needs to be felt and not so much analysed, knowing the basics would help for some people to just feel and appreciate art.

“Like any language, people can learn the basics about principles and elements of art.” The purpose, she reminds, is to create art awareness and help people widen their take on art. After all, like Timbrewala says, art does belong to everyone.