Vivan Sundaram: Indian art 'needed a new vocabulary'

The title of artist Vivan Sundaram's retrospective at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in New Delhi welcomes the viewer in with a promise: "Step Inside and You Are No Longer a Stranger." Coming from one of India's most original creative minds, it's an assurance that is at once comforting and gently ironic.
Inside the exhibition, you might feel overwhelmed by the range of media from the artist's 50-year career, but navigating through the images and objects also instills a sense of belonging.
Whether you're familiar with the trajectory of Indian history or not, you will feel co-opted by this staggering body of work, which draws richly from world history and emotions of universal resonance.

"People say I'm more of a political artist," he said, "that aesthetics always gets sidelined in my work." This work, on the contrary, demonstrates the "dialectics" between the political and the aesthetic, he explained, expressed by the tension between the object itself and the content inside.
Art of its time
Sundaram has never been content sticking to a signature style, restlessly absorbing influences and responding with urgency to his immediate personal circumstances and the changing world.
In 1966, when he arrived at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Sundaram was mentored by R.B. Kitaj, an American artist who pushed him to reflect on his relationship with color and form. Sundaram's friendship with the late Bhupen Khakhar had already lent a youthful exuberance to his earliest paintings, some of which will be displayed at KNMA, while feeding his taste for pop art, kitsch and erotica.

But the student protests of 1968 -- as well as his deepening commitment to communism -- gave a distinct turn to his sensibilities. During his time in Britain, Sundaram was also struck by innovations in cinematic language, especially those made by filmmaker Luis Bunuel, whose 1972 masterpiece, "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," became one of his major influences.

Source: cnn