Eighty-Five Safety Pins

From the 1970s onward, Prabhakar Barwe began to employ the conceptual devices of Surrealism in his paintings, placing series of simple objects and ephemeral shapes in atypical compositions. Painting a few forms on each canvas, the artist allows each to exist in its own right, related to but not disturbing those around it. Speaking about the conceptualisation of his paintings, the artist explains that the visual experience created by these concrete components within an otherwise abstract composition, “is like a thought-free space of the mind, or like an undivided, unruffled mental state”. According to Barwe, material objects may end up as abstract forms in his paintings, and conversely, abstract concepts may emerge in his work as concrete forms. He states, “my effort is to examine how and where the concrete and the abstract meet in the course of such journeys.” (Artist statement, Prabhakar Barwe, exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 1992, unpaginated)

In this painting from 1990 titled Eighty-Five Safety Pins, Barwe elevates his quotidian subject, transforming it into a vehicle that enables viewers to examine their experience of the material world. Artist Gyan Panchal, who included the painting in the 2015 exhibition, the doorstep, describes this phenomenon, “The object, as common as it may seem, represents, just possibly represents the missing link between ourselves and the experience of the world. Eighty-five safety pins levitate in the space of the painting like a floating puzzle. Daily safety pins, tiny and tenuous links to as many lost things as we should never have forgotten.” (G. Panchal, ‘Curator’s note’, the doorstep, 2015, Jhaveri Contemporary website, accessed April 2018)

This striking painting was part of a series of works the artist conceptualised in a commercial studio in Mumbai with the help of graphic design software on an early Macintosh computer along with several other artists including M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, Akbar Padamsee and Manjit Bawa. Organised by Abhay Mangaldas and Sonal Jhaveri, this project culminated in major exhibitions in Mumbai and New Delhi called State of the Art, which explored the potential of ‘computer-aided’ art in India for the first time. However, while most of the other artists relied more heavily on the software and printed the images they designed on canvas before adding hand-painted elements, Barwe chose to transfer his concepts to the canvas entirely by hand without any printing.

Speaking about this experience with digital technology, he noted, “There was a certain fear in my mind of losing creative freedom in this completely mechanical process. On the other hand, the computer offered countless possibilities in colours, textures and multiple variations of form, which was encouraging. However, super-glow colours and weird perspectives do not interest me, so I decided to limit myself to two-dimensional graphic possibilities. With Sonal and Abhay's help, I began experimenting with different juxtapositions of the visual material of my choice, such as a leaf, a safety pin and a clock hand. Once the image was finalised on the computer, it was then enlarged with a laser printer and I transferred it to the canvas manually. After this, I had freedom to paint with my usual enamel paints. I preferred this process because the body of color that is apparent with enamel paints, I noticed, was missing in the computer print - it resembled a glossy magazine print, without the dignity of oil colour.” (Artist statement, ‘Experimenting with Computer Graphics: In Search of Aesthetic Objectivity’, Leonardo, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1993, p. 73)

Archival information courtesy Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation.