Atul Dodiya

in good condition, minor abrasion to the extremities of the metal curtain pelmet, as viewed
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This work is part of the series titled 'Each Father Lost' that Atul Dodiya produced shortly after his own father's death. It was one of eight works from the series after a poem of the same name by artist and writer Gieve Patel. Gieve Patel's poems frequently refer to death or his fascination with the finite and the fragility of the human condition. He states that his poems deal  'with early experiences of death, with early experiences of painful social reality and what it means to live in this difficult country.'  According to Atul his series of paintings relates to his personal feelings of loss for his father and was part of his 'process of mourning'. In each work from the series, mundane elements from middle class interiors appear as elements in the work, like radios or curtain pelmets, pipes and portraits. The small image in the current lot depicts Atul himself holding an old fashioned leather water carrier ' like a guitar'.  In the upper left of the installation the square black form represents home or the desire to return home. Although the series remains a highly personal expression of the artist's mood during a difficult period in his life, it also makes more general references to loss and insecurity and continues the artist's inquiry into the process of making art and the vocabulary and grammar of art and art appreciation.

Nissim Ezekiel is regarded by many as one of the most talented Indian English poets of the last century, critics have admired his ability to create a contemporary style of Indian English verse despite having been trained in the modernist idiom.  It is therefore apt that his poem in praise of the poetry style of the American poet William Carlos Williams titled 'For William Carlos Williams' should be chosen by Atul as the text for his painting.

I do not want
to write
poetry like yours
but still I
love
the way you do it.

Atul Dodiya has said 'when I look at the work of Jasper Johns I feel the same emotions that Nissim expresses in his poem, I do not want to paint like him [Jasper Johns] but I am still in awe of the way he paints.' The poem written by a leading Indian writer in English in praise of a western poet reflects perfectly the sentiments that many of Dodiya's work imply in reference to western artists.  Atul happily draws from the vast reservoir of Western art history, using the styles or the vocabulary of western artists, with multi layered messages in praise of their work and yet the references are restrained like footnotes almost acting as a bibliography to his own work.