Backwater Buzz

35-year-old artist.

Iranna confesses that even today, his creative process begins with his ears. 8216;8216;The smell of clay is my strongest memory, and I always carry that when I am constructing the ground of my thoughts. I try to convert the vibration of their voices into my painting,8217;8217; he says. Most of Iranna8217;s works have subtle references to his roots.

A decade ago, the art fraternity didn8217;t take Iranna seriously. His family8212; 8216;8216;who don8217;t understand art8217;8217;8212;packed him off to the local Gulbarga Fine Arts College of Visual Art simply because he was 8216;8216;good at drawing8217;8217;. Later, with no knowledge of either English or Hindi, he arrived at the Delhi College of Art, where he discovered life was not about free lunches. After passing out of college, a rejection slip from a local school for a teacher8217;s job was enough to push him into mild depression.

But artists like Iranna are a rage now. With the new frenzy for art, Iranna, who recently had a solo show in Delhi, is hot. So are Jagannath Panda and Bose Krishnamachari. Their works, which project the rich contrast between their rural roots and urban culture, appeal to the sensibilities of the current crop of buyers.

Unlike the Progressives of the 8217;50s, who had a specific agenda to be 8216;8216;modern8217;8217;, or the Baroda School, which broke away to introduce the figurative-narrative style in the 8217;70s, these younger artists have studied abroad on scholarships and overseas residency programmes and swapped tradition for their own free school of thought.

Like Iranna, who went to study in London on a Charles Wallace scholarship, 42-year-old Bose Krishnamachari got a Master8217;s degree in art from London8217;s Goldsmiths College. Recently in Delhi to curate Double-Enders, he traces his artistic ancestry to Mangattukara village, near Cochin.

The son of a carpenter, he left home for Mumbai with Rs 2,000 in his pocket to pursue studies at Sir JJ School of Art. 8216;8216;I didn8217;t know English or Hindi, nor did I know anything about contemporary art until I reached Mumbai. The city has given me everything,8217;8217; he says.

Like a dislocated migrant, Krishnamachari has achieved both fame and notoriety. The artist was the 8216;Face of 8217;938217; in The Illustrated Weekly magazine. He was expelled from college for speaking out against the faculty. Like his life, his works have oscillated between extremes; they speak of chaos and order, colour and austerity. 8216;8216;I live in both worlds,8217;8217; he says.

A doted son from a family of five brothers and one sister, he suffered from idiotype thrombocytopenic, a blood disorder, as a child and was compelled to live in a mental asylum briefly to treat depression caused by the disease. 8216;8216;Because of my roots, art is more functional than entertainment for me. I don8217;t like rules, and I don8217;t believe in grammar,8217;8217; Bose says. With Double-Enders, which showcased works of 69 artists from Kerala, Bose wanted to prove that the role of curating is not in the hands of an elite few.

Artist Jagannath Panda perhaps best exemplifies the success story of this breed of artists. Once too poor to even pay his fees at Bhubaneshwar8217;s BK College of Arts and Craft, his security guard father had to borrow money to fund his education at Baroda8217;s MS University in 1993. 8216;8216;My works never got sold, and I used to wonder what I could do to make people buy them,8217;8217; says Panda.

Winning a visiting research fellowship from Fukuoka University of Education, Japan, and a postgraduate degree in Fine Sculpture at the Royal College of London, in 2002, changed everything. Panda began experimenting, and today his insight into the shifting urban demographics and depiction of the territorial distance between the high and low life are in demand.

As the number of moneyed collectors grow, driven by the boom in real estate, technology and manufacturing, prices of these young artists are escalating like never before.

A year ago, Panda sold his painting, City Breeds, to a private collector for about Rs 1 lakh. This July, the same work fetched Rs 7 lakh at the Saffronart auction. Similarly, Iranna8217;s work has risen from Rs 3.5 lakh to upto 7 lakh within two years.

The escalating prices are creating a milieu of artists, originally from small towns and backwaters, who can today afford to rent an independent studio, buy fancy cars, holidays and flats next to Aamir Khan.

Van Gogh may not have lived to get recognition, but with talent and promotional spiel, today8217;s artists are turning the spotlight on themselves.