artBahrain:  As one of India’s top artist, how would you define success for yourself as an artist? What are some successes you have achieved on your journey, and what has been a key factor in you achieving your success?

Chittrovanu Muzamdar: Thank you for giving me this status. It would be very difficult for me to call myself “successful”. For me it has been an ongoing process of work. There have been successful as well as very difficult moments.

ab: You graduated from the Government College of Art in Calcutta with top honours. Does your work have more in common with the Calcutta school or with the Expressionist in Paris?

CM: Let me start with telling you a bit about myself. Although I was born in Paris, most of my childhood years, except for a few long spells of stay in France, were spent in Calcutta; I did my schooling in India, in a school where education was motivated by strong ideological beliefs, like in changing society through inventive education with a focus on literature, poetry, art, philosophy. That was a very important period in my education; I later joined Government Art College and since then I have been wholly immersed in my art practice.

Yes of course my work was influenced by expressionism, but as I mentioned earlier there are many threads of influences and one moves on…

ab: Abstract Expressionism has a great influence on you than any other school of art. Is there anything that you are able to present that an earlier Expressionist could not achieve?

CM: I would never say that I have achieved anything more than they have, if at all there is a thread of expressionism in the work it would only be that it is of a different time. The now-ness is what makes the difference.

ab: Looking at your works online I can see that you do work in a number of styles and other art forms. Is there one particular style and form that you enjoy the most? Why?

CM: I have been working with sound, light and nonconventional materials like tar in my work for almost two decades. Ditto with digital technology, with photography. I think what has happened is that the typical nomenclature used to define the art community – like he is a painter or he is a sculptor or a photographer – is no longer valid; that is wonderful, as one can now easily permeate from one medium to another. An artist always wishes to transgress the limits of what has been created and tries to find or add an extra element that goes beyond the existing structure.

ab: Can you describe your painting process? Do you work from life – abstracting from observation, from memory, or both?

CM: It’s a deeply private process. I’m not an artist who can work in the public eye. To me my work is the space of freedom where everything can move, turn around, transform and become something else. Although there are also structures and systems that one follows up to a point, and then gets out of. There are ideas, beliefs, music and a sudden epiphany…and the work comes to shape….

Untitled 2010
6 x 5 ft
Acrylic on canvas

ab: What is the inspiration behind your work? Where do you find it and what stimulates your imagination best?

CM: My work mirrors my deepest experiences. It starts with something that moves me, it could be something I see on the street on in the newspaper, a line unexpectedly encountered, a piece of music, a snatch of conversation; it becomes and idea which develops into a coherent whole. That is when the work becomes complete.

I tend towards change, perpetual quest, a moving away from the familiar and comfortable and a continuous testing of myself against the not-yet-mastered. I dislike the predictability of knowing how something will turn out. And yet, at times I use certain favourite gestures, like pet habits one has a fondness for (or, as Rilke would have it, which have a fondness for one), colours, motifs, memory-fragments.

My references and influences come from so many places, from literature to comic books, from cinema to language and music. You certainly never think of it as ‘History of Art’ or even ‘Art’. You open a book and there are images of war atrocities, the next image could be of Christ, there images of Buddhist tankas and Islamic scriptures… and it’s all equally strange and fascinating. It’s never linear. But it’s very natural, very unselfconscious. You don’t even question it, and the only time it begins to seem unusual is when you step out of it. It’s when others question you that you realize that you have destroyed linear history of images to create your own private museum to immerse yourself in.

Untitled, 2007
266” x 164”, Variable
Lit mild steel suspended boxes with filters.
Photography, digital works and collage on archival paper

ab: Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

CM: Everything / every object / every material could have the potential of becoming a work. It is how sensitive and receptive one is to the possibility.

ab:  Do the criticisms affect your work or affect you? Does the audience play a role in your creative endeavor? Or whatever you want to do, you just do it, regardless of what we’ll they say.

CM: I think in art one should be free to express themselves. The work is the work of an individual where the other has practically no role to play in the process and it is only much later that the viewer comes in to be a part of the experience.

ab: Finally, do you still have an unfulfilled wish? Is there still something you aspire to as an artist?

CM: There is always something unfulfilled which is what drives one to carry on working to find an answer.

ab