The saxophone player and bassist in this painting emerged in a very rough form after a hurried improvisation, only to be abandoned for more than year. When I took it up again I had a very specific concept I wanted to get down on the canvas.
“The Quartet” is an attempt to visually depict how the average listener perceives a live band. The solo instrument – in this case the saxophone – is the object of focus for the listener, and hence is rendered in crisp detail. Things get fuzzier when you move beyond it. The bass is definitely there … prominent, but not particularly clear – almost a silhouette. The piano is far away in the background, really faint, hard to make out. It really is all about that saxophone. Didn’t even realize there was a fourth musician.
Under African Skies, Joe Berlinger’s documentary about the making of Paul Simon’s Graceland album, opened in New York and Los Angeles this week, and I was lucky enough to get to see it twice. The film is exhilarating and heartwarming as it explores the cultural phenomenon of one of the greatest albums ever made, and the stories of the South African musicians who played both on the album and the world tour that followed. Even if it merely focused on the music, it would still blow away any documentary about the making of an album, but it also has another, more potent, layer. It is entirely framed within a political argument that was seething at the time – an argument that as a child of the 80s, I was blissfully unaware of when I first grew to love the music on the record. I want to break with my usual musings on my own art to discuss my thoughts on the film in this post. Warning: spoilers below, if you have not seen the film please, please, go see it – it is absolutely wonderful.
In the mid-80s, Paul Simon became obsessed with South African music, but rather than round up accomplished musicians in New York to replicate the sound for his new album, he decided to travel to South Africa to collaborate with the masters. The problem was that he did this in violation of the United Nations’ boycott of South Africa’s apartheid government, and at a particularly inopportune moment for the liberation struggle. The documentary is speckled with images and videos of protests and furious confrontations that arose after Graceland’s release, and its backdrop is a tense discussion between Paul Simon and Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid, which runs throughout the film.
During the film, arguments are made on both sides. Dali Tambo and Wally Serote continually reiterate how problematic it was for Paul Simon to flagrantly violate the cultural boycott, and how important it was to keep the racist regime isolated. Simon’s camp makes the argument that as artists they should have been allowed a pass, that he meant no harm, and that it was a wonderful life-changing experience for everyone involved in the project – a point that is hammered into the audience through intensely emotional scenes of oppressed musicians finally tasting freedom. Even though the film is primarily about celebrating the music that resulted from the collaboration, the film tries to be as neutral as possible in its presentation of the debate. Though it is abundantly clear that even 25 years later, Simon remains deeply hurt by the criticism, the film concludes with a “reconciliation” – a handshake and hug – where Paul Simon acknowledges his mistakes and apologizes for any harm he caused, and Dali Tambo professes that he and his organization hold no grudge, the music was brilliant, and that Simon was merely caught up in the whirlpool of a political struggle. The viewer is left without a clear resolution or opinion and the general conclusion is that it remains a complex issue with no clear correct answer…he was probably wrong to do it, but we’re glad he did because the music was so good.
However, I don’t think of this as a grey issue where the truth lies somewhere in between. Even though Paul Simon didn’t set out to specifically violate the boycott, I think he was right to do what he did, and wrong to apologize for it – mainly because I question the idea of a cultural boycott in the first place. This is something that the film doesn’t do – it merely dances around whether Simon was right to break it and the implications of making an exception for him. I’m of the opinion that the cultural boycott was not just wrong, but misguided and counter-productive.
History is brimming with examples of art making a difference in political struggles. Art is and will always be one of the most potent forces that drives people to change. It moves the human soul in a deeper and more profound way than any rational argument has a hope of doing. From Beaumarchais’ Marriage of Figaro to Stowe’s Uncle Tom to Bob Marley’s anthems, art has changed opinions and incited and inspired protest. Could you even imagine the anti-Vietnam-war movement without the soundtrack of the 60s to fan the flames? While Ellen DeGeneres would probably take issue with Joe Biden’s recent quip about Will and Grace’s supreme influence on public opinion about gay people, the point remains valid. Art inspires change. To censor your most powerful weapon in a protest is to shoot yourself in the foot – and that’s what the ANC and Artist Against Apartheid did. Isolating a morally corrupt regime is effective – there is no doubt about that. But while a trade boycott may hurt the regime as it is intended, a cultural boycott hurts the liberation movement because it prevents the most influential and moving voices from making themselves heard to a wider audience, with the result that it actually shields the regime from people who would have been moved to support the movement in other corners of the world.
Paul Simon’s visit and subsequent world tour were subjected to intense criticism and vitriol because the dogma of a cultural boycott went unquestioned. Since the heavyweights of the liberation struggle decreed that art should be treated no different from trade in the isolation of the regime, any violation was perceived as pro-apartheid. But the ANC could not possibly have been ignorant of the fact that within South Africa, artists were integral to the anti-apartheid movement. Throughout the history of segregation, protest music gave black South Africans hope and courage to continue and eventually win the fight – which is what makes the restriction on their creative expression even more damning. Artist Against Apartheid and the ANC should accept the blame, not just for the harm their cultural boycott did to the muted artists of South Africa, but for making it harder for their cause to garner support all over the world. Thankfully, an unlikely and unwilling revolutionary emerged in a diminutive New Yorker. Paul Simon, who started out largely apathetic to the cause and unconcerned with the struggle, eventually ended up taking grave personal risks for his art and on the behalf of the musicians who helped him achieve the zenith of his career. He confronted the boycott, and won. And the world is a better place because of Graceland.
Been having a bit of an obsession with red recently. After painting a wall in my apartment burgundy, I had a bunch of leftover paint, so that’s how I began this canvas. It’s a big one – 5 feet long, 4 feet high.
It’s been a few years since I painted Sensuality and I’ve always wanted to create more works in that slimy soft style. That was the original idea with this one but I decided to go with red instead of orange as the base. The female form in Sensuality emerged after an improvisation, but for this one I decided to chalk some in from the start and work around them. As you can see from the photos I took as it was progressing, at the start the figures were much more loosely defined and distorted. But as the composition started to fill in, I began to have more fun with creating better defined female forms so I just went with it. The painting ended up racier that I had originally intended too…not that that’s a bad thing.
A couple more things I’d like to say about this painting. First of all, I’m not 100% sure that I’m done. It could be complete as it is now, but it might need a couple of finishing touches still. I like the monochrome red, but it’s hard not to feel like it’s lacking something. Also I cannot for the life of me figure out how to capture the richness of the color on film. I’ve tried a bunch of different cameras and settings and different types of lighting, but I still haven’t been able to reproduce the colors to my liking. I’ve had the same trouble with a couple of other painting where red is dominant – most notably Lasya. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.
A bold abstraction of love–
An embrace in time.
Suspended in our colors,
Both ourselves and yet apart.
But bring us together
Just for this once,
Before the hanging abstraction
Of the future
Pulls us from each other
Forever.
“Lasya” is the creation dance performed by the Hindu god Shiva in his depiction as Natraj. The inspiration to meld Indian and Spanish dance came from my sister Behnaz, who is a dancer. She’s been performing Flamenco for many years now and some time ago she had explained to me how it had originated from Indian classical music and dance. I thought a many-armed flamenco dancer in the place of a Natraj would make a good image.
Lasya is one of my few “planned” paintings – the idea hit me when I was trying to come up with an appropriate subject for a rich red background that I had already laid down on canvas. The dancer is modeled after my sister based on a few performances that I’ve witnessed.
I stretched the canvas myself in 1995 and created what could only be described as a juvenile homage to Dali’s landscapes. It really was quite awful and I only saved it because it seemed like a waste to throw away such a massive canvas. In the early 2000s, I decided to start working on it again. The photo on the right was taken just before I started, so you can see what it looked like originally (and you can see my cat peeking out from behind it). I blanked out vast sections of it, kept some parts like the black mask, a couple of fish, the sky and the stereo, then abandoned it.
In late 2010 I started working on it again. This time I decided I needed to break it up into sections, so I used masking tape and created random sections. The sections ended up looking like a spider web. The mask became an eye. Then I shelved it again. Wish I had a photo of it from this time but I can’t find any.
Finally in late 2011, I decided to get serious about completing it. The spider web thing wasn’t really working, and at the time I was trying to pick out wood flooring, so I had wood grain on my mind and wanted to paint wood, so I turned the web into wood. I had also just finished painting hundreds of tentacles for Gorgonomcephalus, so some tentacles were laid down on the left side, which eventually turned green and became vines. I wasn’t really feeling up for painting leaves even though the vines needed something. The painting seemed to missing reds – I wanted deep, bright reds, so I added the chillies, still avoiding having to paint leaves. I liked the way the red chillies looked, started craving more red. Poured myself a glass of wine while I sat there trying to figure out how to add more red…
So the painting is finally done – many disparate elements, not really sure if it “works” to be honest, but there it is. I was struggling with a name for it so I asked my friends to suggest one. My friend Arish Dastur came up with the name “Chamber 51” – I really like the name because it doesn’t try to reference anything in the painting or tie anything together. It just adds another layer to it – pretty appropriate for a painting that just grew out of disparate ideas. Also makes me think I may be painting a few other chambers soon.
Since my grandmother passed away recently, my folks have been clearing out her old apartment and finding closets full of art supplies – pristine boxes of oil paints, bundles of brushes, and a number of rolls of canvas. There were also two stretched canvases – I decided to tackle one of them while I was visiting family for two weeks in Bombay. The painting ended up being a perfect example of the way I love to develop my compositions.
I really had a desire to fling red paint at the canvas (yeah, red again – go figure). Since that wasn’t an option at my parents’ place, I decided to paint a splatter. It was relatively free-form and loose (just short of actually flinging the paint). While I was developing the splatter a female form started to take shape, which eventually ended up being a dancer. I went with it, and then covered up the parts of the splatter that I didn’t like with some dark blue-black paint, going with curved lines to enhance the form of her movement.
After playing some more, the curved form took shape as a wave – mainly because I started mixing some white paint in with the blue-black, and turned it more blue. I’ve been itching to paint more “flung” liquid since I painted the wine flying through Chamber 51, and that ended up being the most fun part of painting this one too. I really love those liquid textures – I’m sure I’ll be doing that some more.
I was staring at a photo of the painting so far in my phone in a taxi late at night when I realized that the whole thing was starting to resemble a flower. Probably wouldn’t have made that connection without seeing it in miniature. Went at it the next morning and it worked – and now the whole painting suddenly became all about the flower. Love it when that happens.
I was mostly done – or at least I thought I was, and my parents had an artist friend, Delna Dastur, over for tea. We started discussing my painting and she said she thought it wasn’t done yet – the background needed to be something other than white. I agreed, but I was hesitant because it would be hard to lay color down so late in the game – the paint splatter especially would have been hard to negotiate. Plus, I would be leaving in a day. She said “It’s always worth the risk”, and as soon as she left I used a rag dipped in watered-down paint to roughly dab a thin wash of indigo over the white. Took around 5 minutes and it was done – thanks Delna!
The saxophone player and bassist in this painting emerged in a very rough form after a hurried improvisation, only to be abandoned for more than year. When I took it up again I had a very specific concept I wanted to get down on the canvas.
