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Lot Essay
“Store bought and available in mass quantities and an infinite number of forms, these plates, bowls, cups [...] are some of the most widely available objects in the country, intensely common and loaded with connotations of class distinctions. Outside of India, in the first world capitals of New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo, where culture is capital and artistic expression is the highest form of entrepreneurship, these steel objects look to be magical and revelatory [...] Inside of India, these objects may appear as unsophisticated, old-fashioned, awkward and, to many, embarrassing and indicative of the inherited weight of the past [...] The success of Subodh’s sculptures using these objects is not this either/or situation [...] but that their meaning and reception in either locale emphasize." (P. Nagy, ‘Subodh Gupta: The Metaphorical Sublime,’ Start.Stop, exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 2007, unpaginated)
Subodh Gupta's post-modernist ideas channel far-ranging influences from the work of Marcel Duchamp and Josef Beuys, to that of Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol and more recently Jeff Koons. Koons' Easyfun-Ethereal series extols themes of gratification created through a collaged fantasy-scape, combining child-like and adult desires by the elevation of consumer goods, offering commentary on consumerism. Gupta's works use an artistic vocabulary that is firmly rooted in the vernacular of everyday India. Gupta ironically states, "I am the idol thief. I steal from the drama of Hindu life. And from the kitchen - these pots, they are like stolen gods, smuggled out of the country. Hindu kitchens are as important as prayer rooms. These pots are like something sacred, part of important rituals, and I buy them in a market. They think I have a shop, and I let them think it. I get them wholesale." (Artist statement, C. Mooney, 'Subodh Gupta: Idol Thief', ArtReview, 17 December 2007, p. 57)
Mesmerized by the sheen of these quotidian vessels in Gupta's painting, viewers cannot help but be reminded of the vanitas commonly depicted by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The utensils represented in these old master paintings were a celebration of the commerce and the prosperity of their time, while also commenting on the transient nature of vanity. Gupta's deceptively simple-looking works, garbed in the high-gloss sheen of familiar, homely, stainless steel forms, similarly offer commentary on contemporary India, socioeconomic transitions, and the inherent contradictions of globalization.
Subodh Gupta's post-modernist ideas channel far-ranging influences from the work of Marcel Duchamp and Josef Beuys, to that of Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol and more recently Jeff Koons. Koons' Easyfun-Ethereal series extols themes of gratification created through a collaged fantasy-scape, combining child-like and adult desires by the elevation of consumer goods, offering commentary on consumerism. Gupta's works use an artistic vocabulary that is firmly rooted in the vernacular of everyday India. Gupta ironically states, "I am the idol thief. I steal from the drama of Hindu life. And from the kitchen - these pots, they are like stolen gods, smuggled out of the country. Hindu kitchens are as important as prayer rooms. These pots are like something sacred, part of important rituals, and I buy them in a market. They think I have a shop, and I let them think it. I get them wholesale." (Artist statement, C. Mooney, 'Subodh Gupta: Idol Thief', ArtReview, 17 December 2007, p. 57)
Mesmerized by the sheen of these quotidian vessels in Gupta's painting, viewers cannot help but be reminded of the vanitas commonly depicted by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The utensils represented in these old master paintings were a celebration of the commerce and the prosperity of their time, while also commenting on the transient nature of vanity. Gupta's deceptively simple-looking works, garbed in the high-gloss sheen of familiar, homely, stainless steel forms, similarly offer commentary on contemporary India, socioeconomic transitions, and the inherent contradictions of globalization.