Abstract Art: Popular Myths and History
JohnyML
Women doing abstract art was a thing of scandal. But this view started changing by the advent of 1970s. In India an artist like Nasreen Mohammedi could create a new path for herself by doing abstract works in an unprecedented style. Nasreen looked at her surroundings as the meeting points of horizontals and the verticals. She created lines to resonate these movements and the results were fantastic. Nasreen’s place in Indian art had helped many women artists to come up with interesting abstract works. The works of Zarina Hashmi are the best examples. Today, many of our young contemporary women artists dare to work in a language which is predominantly abstract.
Sudipta Choudhry’s works could also be seen as a part of this continuum. Her works are inspired by her surroundings and her emotional and intellectual responses towards them. If you look at the verticals and horizontals and the color patterns that vibrate in her works, one could say for sure that Sudipta carries forward the legacies of her Indian training and ethos and that of a country where she lives currently. India’s colors, the deep reds, blues and greens come back to Sudipta’s work again and again. And true to her surroundings in Oman, the verticals and the horizontals play a major role in her works. As I mentioned elsewhere, abstraction does not mean that the artist has to do away with all kind of images. Sudipta plays with images and abstract them to the essentials and suggests that there is a possibility to build up a linguistic structure in and around the pure language of abstract art.
Any painting done in a non-figurative way does not qualify to become an abstract piece of art. Abstraction is a way to reach out for the essence and core of things. It needs a lot of conceptual depth from the artist’s side. If you look at the calligraphic renditions and architectural decorations, one could see how abstraction is an essential part of our life and thinking. Thanks to those artists who do abstract works as an escape route to galleries, without heeding much to the notional and conceptual demands of the abstract language, today abstract art do not have too many patrons in several countries. However, one could say that whenever an artist, who has philosophical depth, experimental verve and an aptitude for the fundamentals of things, does an abstract piece of work, he or she naturally finds a patron, if not many patrons. We have a proven example before us in Sudipta Choudhry.
Thank you.
Sudipta (Bubbly) Choudhry's Singular Metaphysical Perspective
Marie R. Pagano
The Indian artist Sudipta (Bubbly) Choudhry, who is scion of a family painters and sculptors which includes Jamini Roy, long one of India’s leading painters and Meera Mukherjee, an internationally acclaimed sculptor, was the subject of a recent solo show at Montserrat Gallery, 584 Broadway.
Choudhry showed a group of paintings in oil on canvas in which flowing organic forms and severely simplified figures suggested states of life and mystical union. Some of her forms suggest leaves, shells, and flowers among others things, while others hint at more ethereal elements, such as wind and fire. All of her paintings, in one way or another, appear to be about the interconnectedness of the physical world and energetic forces that unite all physical matter, Even in one painting of a flower within a geometric setting, ostensibly a still life, there was a feeling of the physical world morphing into the mystical, with vessels depicted in a manner that suggests an organic softness.
Titles such as “Escaping Time” and “The Visitation” telegraph a sense of the super natural, as well as qualities innate to Indian art that cannot be replicated by painters. Such as Francesco Clemente who attempt to adopt those qualities to more trendy ends. In the latter work a shadowy, spectral figure appears in a dark portal, while in the former, sea shells and leaves seem equally weightless as they swirl gracefully in mid-air. Both paintings project a timeless quality, as well as mysticism unique to the East Indian Tradition. In this regard, Choudhry can be compared to other artists from her country, such as Francis Newton Souza and Balraj Khanna who successfully balance elements of East and West to create paintings that exemplify the best qualities of postmodern multiculturalism.
Choudhry accomplishes this especially well in “Karma” one of most magical visions. Here an oval organic form with inner divisions that suggest a more complex configuration curled within itself floats against a ground of sharply geometric rectangular forms painted in luminous rainbow hues. Although the shapes are sharply delineated, the paint quality is fluid and subtly modeled to give the sense of shading. That “karma” is one of choudhry’s most overtly abstract compositions. With no hints of the figure or other recognizable objects, allows one to concentrate on its formal virtues, which are considerable indeed, what Choudhry accomplishes with color in this work seems to validate the title of her show, “ Chromatic Quest.”
That her mysterious subject matter exerts its own spell, however , is made clear in other oils on canvas, such as “Sun Dance”, where figures are juxtaposed with a crescent moon and swirts of color, as well as in the “The Road Less Travelled By “ Where figures recoil from sinuous bare trees in a barren landscape amid glowing orbs and swirling ribbon-like shapes. Such pictures explore a range of human emotions, from joy to stark terror, yet the main thrust of Sudipta (Bubbly) Choudhry’s work is invariably spiritual, which should make it of equal interest to those inclined to New Age ideas, as well as to admires of bold, adventurous formal innovation.
Marie R. Pagano
Nov-Dec 2002/Jan 2003
Comment From The Late Artist Antje Manser
When you visit the artist Sudipta Choudhry and ring the bell, you feel something special will wait for you inside. Her paintings give you a warm welcome and you want to see more of this mysterious art work and colourful abstract feelings. These paintings are unique even if they are influenced by Hans Hoffman and other expressionists. These intense colors talk to me; they are powerful and filled with harmony at the same time.
It’s always nice to see an artist following her own path, full of creativity.
Antje Manser
20 April, 2009
Antje trained under Helen Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland