The gallery that wanted my work "modernised"
One gallery in Delhi told me they loved my Mithila painting but the buyers there want something more "contemporary", maybe less traditional, fewer deities, bigger and louder colours. They said keep the technique but drop the old stories.
I told them politely no. This art is the stories of my people. If I remove the meaning, what is left? Just decoration. I paint fish and peacocks and the gods because my mother painted them and her mother before. That is the whole point.
Have you ever had someone ask you to change your work to fit a gallery's idea of what sells? Did you bend a little, or did you hold the line? I am curious how others have handled this.
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Good on you for saying no. That takes more spine than people think, especially when it's a gallery actually interested. But the thing is they didn't want YOUR work, they wanted a product that looked vaguely like your work. That's not the same thing.
I get a version of this in ceramics all the time. People see handbuilt wonky vessels or these little faces I do in the glaze and they're like "lovely, but can you make it more... sleek? more minimalist? more expensive-looking?" And I've bent a little here and there, honestly. Tried the safe palette, the cleaner forms. The pieces sold fine but I hated firing them. They went out the kiln and I felt nothing. Now I just say no and my studio's full of stuff that makes me happy instead, even if my bank account disagrees sometimes.
The fish and peacocks and the gods being the whole point, that's it. The technique is just the how. The why is your family and your people. A gallery that can't see that doesn't deserve the work. There are buyers out there who want the real thing, it just sometimes takes longer to find them.
The "more expensive-looking" bit hit me. That's the tell, isn't it. They're not asking you to make better work, they're asking you to make work that photographs richer in a white room. I've had someone basically say my pieces would sell better if they looked like they came from a showroom catalogue instead of a human hand. Which is... the opposite of why anyone buys handbuilt stuff, surely?
The bending thing is real though. I think most of us do it once, early, when the money's thin and a gallery actually looking at you feels like proof you're not crazy. And then you stand in the studio holding the thing you compromised on and it just feels dead in your hands. That's what told me not to again.
You kept the stories. That's the whole job, honestly.
You have said it very well. "Photographs richer in a white room", that is exactly the thing. They are not seeing the work, they are seeing the photograph of the work, and then the price tag beside it. The hand that made it is invisible to them.
And yes, the bending when money is thin. I have done it also. One time I made a piece with less detail, bigger shapes, thinking maybe this will please them. I sat looking at it and felt ashamed, like I had betrayed my mother's line. I did not send it. I keep it to remind myself.
The handbuilt thing is the whole value only. If they want a perfect thing from a machine, let them buy from a machine. The small unevenness, the little mistake the hand makes, that is where the life is. People who understand pay for that. The others, let them go. 🙏
You have understood it exactly ji. They did not want my work, they wanted the idea of my work with the soul taken out. I have seen this also with my students, the young girls learning. Everyone loves the pattern, the line, the colour. But the story behind it, why the fish, why the peacock, why the god's face, that they are happy to leave behind. To me that is like keeping the body of the painting and throwing away its life.
I have bent also, in my younger days. Made smaller pieces, changed the size of the paper, used ready-made colours because the buyers found the natural ones too dull. Some of it sold. But each time I felt I had given something of my grandmother away cheaply. So now I do not bend anymore. If the gallery wants modern, they can find a modern artist. There are many. There is only one Mithila.
Your ceramics, the little faces in the glaze, I think that is your soul also. To make it sleek is to make it someone else's. It is good that you tried, because now you know. But it is also good that you came back. The crooked vessel that shows the hand is worth more than the perfect one made by machine, no?