On V Sanjay Kumar's "Artist, Undone"

Writing about art and artists has always been a slippery slope. In 1998, the Scottish author William Boyd released a book called “Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960”, the biography of a hitherto neglected Expressionist painter, discussing his work, his friendships with Picasso, Braque and others, and his tragic suicide at 32. The book had a blurb by the doyen of American letters, Gore Vidal, as well as one by rock legend David Bowie, who claimed to own one of Tate’s last surviving works. Bowie even read from the book at the lavish launch party, where a sizable cross-section of Manhattan’s glitterati and art world were quizzed on this forgotten artist. Critics nodded and hummed on cue, and some old-timers even claimed to have attended Nat Tate retrospectives back in the 60s. Which was all fine- except that Nat Tate and all of his paintings were entirely fictional, part of an elaborate literary hoax pulled off by Boyd, with a little help from Bowie and Vidal. The incident left a lot of people very red-faced indeed and all because they were too proud to admit their ignorance.

Clever conceits like this feature prominently among the better portions of V Sanjay Kumar’s debut novel “Artist, Undone”, a very screwball take on the world of contemporary Indian art. Harsh Sinha, the self-described “foul-mouthed Bihari” protagonist sees a painting called “Fat, Fucked and Forty” and becomes convinced that he is the subject of the painter’s grim vision. After spending a small fortune to purchases the painting in question, and taking a sabbatical from his advertising job in Mumbai, Harsh leaps headfirst into a world of idiosyncratic artists, collectors, curators and critics. 

This, however, happens only after his wife Gayathri shows him the door in favour of the artist next door, Newton Kumaraswamy, a well-known Lothario and “famous thief”- his body of work being entirely derivative of the much-acclaimed, erotically charged paintings of Francis Newton Souza, the real life Indian artist who died almost a decade ago in March 2002.

Harsh takes potshots at just about everyone who is a cog in the wheel in the art business- from hack artists to arcane, inaccessible critics and hare-brained collectors. Says Roongta to Harsh after the initial rounds of market research: “Guru, I have learnt that craft is not art. What is art is not tightly defined but it excludes more than it includes. Our intricate carpets are not art, all these wonderful stone “murtis” are not art and these classic pichwais and gilded Chettinad paintings are also not art. Basically that rules out my entire house, my whole neighbourhood and my entire colony.” These quirky initial exchanges do raise a few laughs out of the reader, but ultimately the book flatters to deceive. The novel’s pivotal character, the artist Newton Kumaraswamy (a portmanteau of Francis Newton Souza and the art historian A K Coomaraswamy perhaps?) is perhaps symptomatic of both its strengths and its ultimately fatal weaknesses.

Much is made of Newton’s “borrowing” from his illustrious namesake Francis Newton Souza. The outrageous exploits of Newton at his exhibitions make for intermittent fun. However, sadly for the novel, loopy, grim rhetoric about the concept of originality in art lets down what could have been a genuinely fascinating character. Far too often, the author sets up a chapter or a scene nicely, only to lose the plot as it were, simply because of lazy writing, one feels. Sample Newton talking about his determination to continue “ripping off” the dead master: “All art is a form of thievery. We steal. And we record it for all to see… (…)Only empty vessels boast of originality. I too drank of that Holy Grail and spat the spit of centuries.” This syndrome is also manifested in the form of certain tics or devices which are repeated ad nauseam throughout the book.

Like the one-sentence paragraph, which the author clearly adores.

It is a powerful device when employed fittingly.

When overused, it can be very, very annoying.

The author does throw up minor attractions our way every now and then- Artist, Undone uses a number of striking pieces by contemporary artists like Atul Dodiya (whose 2009 oil and acrylic painting “The Wall” dedicated to Rahul Dravid fetched Rs. 57 lakhs at an auction) and Tracey Emin. The use of our gut reactions to art as a source of mirth does not work everywhere, but some scenes utilize this situation in an unexpected manner. Another pleasant surprise is the appearance of Arun Kolatkar’s “The Cupboard”, a poem taken from “Jejuri” his iconic collection of poetry.

In the final equation, however, the author V Sanjay Kumar fails to tie his characters’ stories in a cohesive manner. The gags begin to lose their sting halfway through the novel, and before you know it, a succession of unfunny minor characters lands the book in the doldrums, on which note it hurtles to a rather uninspiring end. Which is a pity because one gets the distinct impression that the author had bigger plans for at least two of the major characters, but somewhere along the assembly line those plans, like the titular artist, simply came undone.