Artists Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra are amongst the hottest names in Indian art today. The creative duo have captivated art lovers all over the world with their vivid, colour-splattered works — one of which, Somnium Genero Turbo, sold for around Rs 1.8 crore at a Christie's auction in Hong Kong.

But for them it is not the oil but the toil that delivers the goods. Their playful and humorous questioning of Indian identity is done using computer tools like Photoshop and freehand.

“We don't see any other way of doing our paintings,” says Thukral, rather as a pointillist might have said in the 19th century. “Art, after all, is an expression of society today. You see people on their mobile phones or computer all day long and it finds reflection in art too,” says Tagra.

Rahman's rhapsodies

A.R. Rahman brought fresh sounds into India's musical world and revolutionised contemporary music. But, o tempora, o mores, today the very people who applauded him for his sound engineering are condemning him for “too much digitalisation of music”. The recent Commonwealth ditty he composed — Jiyo uttho — was a case in point, where he got a lot of flak for coming out with a ‘synthetic creation'.

So, are tech tools robbing the pure arts of their lustre and spontaneity?

Purists may frown at the way the machine is replacing the human touch. The heart can speak through the hand but not the mouse, they suggest. Are they the Luddites of art?

After all, art galleries, publishers, recording studios — and the audiences who have the final say in such matters — are all embracing the digital creations. Clearly, there is no wishing it away.

“People might say this is a bastardised form of art, but digital makes all the difference,” says Tagra. Very soon, he says, digital art may even be called traditional art, and using digital tools to create traditional art may become very mainstream, taught at art colleges, and so on.

Look Mama, it's digit

He may be right. In a clear indication of how much tech is influencing art, Tagore National Fellow for Cultural Research and art writer, Ella Datta points out how even traditionalists like Ghulam Sheikh and Nalini Malani are embracing the new media.

She also points to examples like Jitesh Kollat who has juxtaposed the screen prints of images of his paintings for a striking effect. Combining photography, painting and collage, his works make a bold statement. “Many prominent artists today are using photoshop a lot,” she says.

Mumbai-based artist Bose Krishnamachari, whose vibrant canvases beckon you with their sheer energy, feels the technology takeover of the arts is a temporary transformation. He calls it an interesting engineering experiment or a design process — where an amalgamation of science and arts is taking place.

“I believe that the touch of your finger is much more important than the technological machine. I believe in human intelligence than artificial intelligence,” he says.

A Purist's Pain

Of course, Bose, who is a relentless artist, always thinking, creating, and exploring, has experimented widely with the digital too — video installations, camera images, et al . But he says the fundamentals have to be strong. You have to know a lot about light, shadows, forms, shapes, line, colour, texture, anatomy and so on. One grouse he has is that digital is making art into a mass industry, like a factory almost. The tools are so easy to use that, as he points out, “anybody and everybody can be an artist.” The result could be that a lot of bad stuff will be going around.

Ella Datta, however, disagrees. “I don't blame the digital media, the computer and the advancement of technique for bad art. Even the conventional, even in canvas images, you see plenty of bad art. Of the dozens of exhibitions held in, say, a place like Delhi, there would be may be one or two at the most that make the grade. The rest are very amateurish, mediocre stuff,” she says.

She says the medium cannot be blamed. “It depends on the artist's sensibilities.”

Watching Thukral and Tagra at work at their Palam Vihar residence-cum-workplace, this appears true. Even as they effortlessly move from pen and paper sketches (the starting point is always that, they say) to the computer, and then zip out to take photographs, coming back to tinker with those, it's their imagination and creativity that is at the forefront. And as they take you through the creative process — through the rejections, the constant reworkings, the going back to the drawing board time and again — what comes through is that there is as much perseverance and hard work in the new way as the old way of painting.

In the end it is the message, not the medium, that counts.

> chitra.n@thehindu.co.in

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