Jyoti Bhatt and the artwork of civic reminiscence

At 91, Jyoti Bhatt nonetheless works from his Baroda studio, engrossed in portray, analogue pictures and printmaking. The studio is quiet however alive, full of etched plates, photographic prints, and the mild persistence of a lifelong apply.

For over a month, By way of the Line and the Lens, a landmark retrospective curated by modern artist and his pupil Rekha Rodwittiya (first at Bikaner Home and now on exhibit at Latitude 28), has provided greater than a tribute to the modernist who has a storied historical past as an artist and a trainer. That includes many years of labor, the exhibition, the biggest so far, is a reminder to us that artwork holds our rituals, resistances, and on a regular basis textures as types of remembering. And that Bhatt has spent a lifetime recording them.

Realizing the artist

Bhatt’s affect runs deep — in how we see sample, archive the on a regular basis, and construct artwork schooling in India. He did this not by grand proclamations, however by treating the extraordinary as worthy of creative inquiry. His photographic documentation of rural Indian tradition saved for posterity motifs, mural fragments, and the lives of craftspeople with the identical care afforded to superb artwork.

Born in 1934, he got here of age with the nation, studied in Baroda, educated in Naples and New York, and returned to form a distinctly Indian visible grammar. “I didn’t got down to make overt political or social statements, however having grown up in a always shifting socio-cultural panorama, these experiences naturally seeped into my visible language,” explains Bhatt over e-mail.

Me, Dreaming Younger (etching)
| Photograph Credit score:
Particular association

As a founding determine of the Baroda Faculty, he wasn’t simply an artist — he was an institution-builder, whose educating and apply gave type to how generations would study, make, and see. This meant designing curricula that built-in Indian aesthetics with world strategies, encouraging interdisciplinary work, and mentoring college students to develop their very own voices, together with Rodwittiya.

Totaram (etching)
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Particular association

Discrediting techniques of elitism

When portray dominated modernist creativeness, Bhatt turned to printmaking, then thought-about minor, and made it inexpensive, replicable, and subversive. Later, he took to pictures with the identical care. Hespent years constructing a visible archive — not simply of his personal work, however of his friends and the communities he admired — quietly preserving traditions that had been susceptible to vanishing.

“Printmaking and pictures enabled me to bridge aesthetics with accessibility,” he says. Each mediums turned methods of remembering. “Immediately, with digital applied sciences, these mediums proceed to function highly effective, democratic instruments — difficult hierarchies and increasing the boundaries of latest Indian artwork,” he provides.

Ardhanarishwar, Venice, 1966
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Particular association

For Bhatt, artwork and pedagogy had been inseparable. At M.S. College, Baroda, he helped form not simply artists however a complete ecosystem of constructing, considering, and documenting. He had an extended and formative profession as a trainer — constructing establishments by important dialogue, collective workshops, and a refusal to isolate artwork from its social and materials contexts. His legacy lives within the questions he posed, the instruments he handed on, resembling strategies in intaglio printmaking, field-based analysis, and methods of visually coding reminiscence by symbolic motifs.

Artist Paritosh Sen (left) and sculptor Sankho Chaudhuri photographed by Bhatt
| Photograph Credit score:
Particular association

“I discovered myself documenting my family and friends, my travels and every day conferences, superb artwork gala’s, exhibitions. Finally, pictures turned out to be a instrument for me to watch and protect the vanishing rural creative traditions within the face of modernity. I consider private identification creates collective reminiscence, which comes out most vividly in self-reflective types of dialog.”Jyoti BhattArtist

Graphic prints and politics

Bhatt’s brilliance lies in giving symbolic element actual weight. He doesn’t simply doc people motifs, he enters into dialog with them. He renders them with humour, sharpness, and generally irony. In a single print, a goddess stands beside a client brand; in one other, a parrot speaks with near-human mischief.

The Tree (Kalpavruksh; etching -1978)
| Photograph Credit score:
Particular association

“Within the graphic prints we see how Bhatt usually makes use of subversive inflections as a method by which he positions his politics, and the critique he has of institutions that he views as retrogressive to the beliefs of pluralism and liberal considering,” says Rodwittiya. She sees this not as polemic, however as quiet dissent — delivered by linework, wit, and deeply embedded references.

“This exhibition marks a big milestone in each scale and substance. [But] what makes it really particular is the private funding behind it. I’ve been amassing Jyoti Bhatt’s printmaking works over time with deep admiration and intent. Apart from just a few early items loaned from non-public collections and the artist’s personal archive of pictures, practically 75% of the works on view belong to Latitude 28. This makes the exhibition not solely a tribute to considered one of India’s most essential trendy artists, but additionally a mirrored image of a long-standing dedication to his legacy.”Bhavna KakarFounder-Director, Latitude 28

Kolam Varieties (etching)
| Photograph Credit score:
Particular association

Why he issues

By way of his work and educating, Bhatt reminds us that establishments matter — as ecosystems of alternate, care, and critique. In a time when the formal research of artwork is undervalued, and pedagogy decreased to metrics, his life’s work is a blueprint for what considerate, long-view cultural stewardship can appear like. As an example, his collaborative efforts to deliver rural and concrete practices into the identical tutorial body helped dismantle slim hierarchies of information.

Bhatt’s prints are greater than ink on paper — they’re maps of how a rustic may come to know itself.

‘By way of the Line and the Lens’ is on until Could 25 at Latitude 28.

The essayist and educator writes on design and tradition.

Printed – Could 22, 2025 07:47 pm IST