GIEVE PATEL | Drowned Woman

Acquired directly from the artist, Bombay, 17 January 1984

R. Cornu (ed.), Coups de Coeur, Geneva, 1987, illustration p. 83

N. Tuli, The Flamed Mosaic, Indian Contemporary Painting, Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Ahmedabad, 1998, illustration p. 349

Reminscing about these 'Head' works (lots 29 and 30), Gieve Patel notes “The conceiving and the execution of these works was a complex process. For a start, I knew these were shocking, even forbidding, subjects. I was not interested though in working on them from that context. But that primary premise had to be acknowledged, and faced, so it could be transcended. Starting from source material: I had of course seen such things in the morgue, or in the course of my experiences as a medical practitioner. In addition, I had read detailed descriptions in textbooks of Forensic Medicine. And these descriptions were often accompanied by close-up photographs. To begin with this material, and to arrive at the actual completed paintings, was a substantially difficult process. I had to decide what elements from 'real life' would be granted a presence in the paintings, and what part purely fantastical imagery would play. Life in its mere gross manifestation can always be disappointing. A dead body after all is merely a dead body. But a true exercise of the imagination never disappoints. And in this latter category I would hopefully place the finely stippled treatment of the fluids emerging from the Drowned Woman's mouth and nostrils. As also, the treatment of the woman's saree -- the patterns printed on the cloth, and the swirling direction of the saree help to evoke a sense of engulfing waters. So also with the Crushed Head -- the tilt of the mutilated head echoes the impact of the accident. The clearly delineated veins and nerves are pure inventions. They do not correspond to anatomical reality. Also to consider -- these heads that were once living beings are now inanimate matter. How could one suggest a sense of the vigorous life that once inhabited this inert material? Each brush stroke articulated during the painting process would need to deliver this message. Finally, the most important question: to what purpose all this? In a way this question takes precedence over all other considerations, and is the starting point for doing these paintings. My answers could only be tentative: to come to terms with mortality, and so achieve within myself a sense of oneness with the rest of humanity. Even, to come to terms with the most violent forms of mortality, for who is to say who will be spared those. Perhaps also, to open one's heart to a feeling of tenderness for all of life that must live and die. Does this sound like a tall order? Yes, it is that, maybe." (Correspondence with the artist, April 2019)