Pop goes the Easel

Tea time
Red wine in cutting chai glasses, at the beautifully restored Ruia Mansion.

Post-dinner
Atul Kumar8217;s version of Anton Chekov8217;s Lady with the Lap Dog or Chokher Bali, a Rabindranath Tagore classic, directed by Rituparno Ghosh.

WELCOME to High Pop. The latest path that merges middlebrow aspirations with elite lifestyles. Not to be confused with the sequinned and loud 1990s read, kitsch, this sugar-coated capsule has a dash of snobbery and a smidgen of intellect8212;without all the existential angst the classics are famous for. Coined by scholar Jim Collins, this late 1990s American trend, in its desi avatar, has gained steam only now.

The aforementioned diary of a socialite gives a fair idea of how art has moved out of white cube 8216;culture8217;. While Ruia and Nosh8217;s art house party included a bit of roadside cuisine, Rituparno Ghosh8217;s version of Chokher Bali repackages the classic. So what if Aishwarya Rai, who plays the dark-edged protagonist Binodini, has not read Tagore8217;s novel and simply let Ghosh 8216;8216;lead her8217;8217; through the role. Rai didn8217;t feel the need to read it; that she was doing a Tagore classic was enough. Ditto for the audience which hailed an otherwise average film as a modern classic.

The yuppie brigade might not have the brawn to stomach the stark reality of a Satyajit Ray, but they are all game for Ghosh8217;s modern rendition of Chokher Bali. After all, it8217;s a status symbol for the multiplex-driven audience.

Even Gurinder Chadha, a diasporic film-maker from Britain, thinks so. The lady, known for 8216;8216;bending8217;8217; the global box office with her football shootball cocktail8212;Bend It Like Beckham8212;is scripting new fare. And purists be damned. For Chadha is adding Punjabi flavour to Jane Austen8217;s propah classic Pride and Prejudice where the Bennets are the Bakshis from Amritsar and Elizabeth is Lalita. There8217;s even a hip hop track by pop sensation Ashanti called Goa Groove in Bride and Prejudice.

Similarly, Vishal Bharadwaj brings Macbeth and his vaulting ambition to Bollywood via Maqbool, while Mumbai-based Atul Kumar8217;s Company Theatre makes Shakespeare and Anton Chekov8217;s plays more accessible by weaving an Indian perspective in each case.

One-time illustrator Sunil Padwal also taps into global imagery. 8216;8216;I am not just an artist. As part of the urban clique, it would be untrue if I said I wasn8217;t influenced by what I see,8217;8217; says the artist whose latest body of large paintings on wood are clearly inspired by the glossies, a shift from his earlier works where his protagonists had a universal look about them.

Highbrow opera just got a little more popular, too. Thanks to Pavarotti jamming with the bodacious but extinct Spice Girls. Back home, it8217;s Shubha Mudgal selling Sufi. However, Mudgal, a trained classical musician, doesn8217;t believe in hierarchies. 8216;8216;It8217;s okay to categorise music in a shop for convenience, but there shouldn8217;t be a distinction between high and low music; there can8217;t be a caste system like this,8217;8217; defends Mudgal, who easily flits between ragas and Indipop.

With a resumeacute; featuring thumri to a ballet score, Mudgal wants to continue experimenting8212;anything but Indipop. Even santoor maestro Pandit Shivkumar Sharma has never gone as far as bringing out his own Indipop album, but he8217;s definitely a favourite when it comes to elevator music. Combine that with a 8216;best of8217; album and you have the masses lending a ear.

Rahul Sharma, a second generation musician he8217;s Pandit Shivkumar Sharma8217;s son, is getting an earful by not being fussy about adding a wave drum to his music. Hence Zen, his last album. 8216;8216;Eight steps to meditation, it8217;s meant for the younger generation,8221; says Sharma, who8217;s toured with classical American pianist Richard Clayderman. And then there are films like Mujhse Dosti Karoge for which he8217;s composed music.

Even Shankar Mahadevan hasn8217;t faced breathlessness juggling jingles, film music, fusion and kacheris classical music concerts. 8220;I have always believed that classical music is the greatest form of music, but it8217;s not the only form. I think that embracing popular culture has been a way of life for me,8221; says the singer who released two albums last year8212;Nine, a collaboration with lyricist Javed Akhtar and Shaiyarana with Alka Yagnik and Akhtar.

Pandit Shivkumar Sharma was one of the first to compose for Hindi films and had to struggle for more than a decade 8216;8216;to convince the purists that the santoor was an acceptable instrument8217;8217;. No wonder he doesn8217;t want to fall into the 8216;8216;trap of a closed mind8217;8217;. He says he8217;s driven by the 8216;8216;challenge of each style8221;. 8216;8216;Curiosity drives me,8217;8217; says Mudgal.

We say it8217;s High Pop, what with its practitioners embracing the influence of the popular with open arms. Like Andy Warhol, they don8217;t go out looking for Campbell cans. The soup comes to them, through fashion glossies, pop icons and, of course, MTV.

Artists like Sunil Padwal and Delhi-based Manisha Gera Baswani have always drawn from such influences.

The latter loves James Bond films, while her sister-in-law Tara Baswani has a pink room dedicated to Elvis. Manisha watches MTV, looking out for Mrygya, the band Tara croons with. No wonder then, that Manisha8217;s paintings are dedicated to pop icons. 8216;8216;Elvis, Travolta and Bond appeal to the Indian upper middle-class, thanks to globalisation,8217;8217; explains the artist, whose earlier works drew largely from kitsch. Manisha gravitated from using the 8216;street-side Romeo8217;8212;the man with a comb in his back pocket8212;as her subject to the more sophisticated images of the King and Bond. Travolta is her latest pin-up boy for a series that she8217;s working on in her Hauz Khas studio.

Even maestros like SH Raza and MF Husain8212;in a bid to make their works accessible to a large audience8212;have turned to either Bollywood Husain8217;s Madhuri-Tabu-Urmila syndrome or couture houses like Satya Paul. Eighty-three-year-old SH Raza 8216;8216;feels a sense of pride if some of India8217;s beauties wrap a Satya Paul scarf8217;8217; bearing his painting.

The line between kitsch and high pop is a thin one. Making a statement by painting an old cupboard a la Anjolie Ela Menon and the late Bhupen Khakhar is not what Mumbai-based artist Sunil Padwal intends with his popular images8212;be it the androgens of fashion glossies for his latest show or images from the telly.

His patrons former Israeli Consul General Dov Steinberg and corporate collector Harsh Goenka don8217;t, by any yardstick, refer to his works as kitschy. Though they agree that it8217;s High Pop.

Inputs by Harneet Singh, Che Kurrien and Lalitha Suhasini