Important Notice

  Lot 105 of 130  

SUMMER ONLINE AUCTION
26-27 JUNE 2024
Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000
Rs 1,66,00,000 - 2,49,00,000


Winning Bid
$456,000
Rs 3,78,48,000
(Inclusive of Buyer's Premium)

USD payment only. Why?

ARTWORK DETAILS

Arpita Singh
Untitled

Signed and dated 'ARPITA SINGH 99' (lower right)
1999
Oil on canvas
42 x 36 in (106.5 x 91.5 cm)

PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist, 1999
Private Collection, Singapore

“I have always believed that a primitive force exists within us. As individuals, we have to satisfy this instinct; we cannot escape it. As an artist, I try to distil into each of my lines my own stories of darkness.” - ARPITA SINGH

Arpita Singh’s oeuvre is defined by a deceptive playfulness that obfuscates an anxiety about the abyss in front of us. Art historian and critic Deepak Ananth describes it as “an oeuvre that has incessantly circled around an abyss while giving the impression of making light of it. This is the great ruse of Arpita Singh’s art: a surface plenitude that is the paradoxical form of the void that subtends it, a horror vacui accompanied by a lingering undertow of nothingness.” (“Profound Play”, Deepak Ananth, Arpita Singh, New Delhi: Penguin Books India and Vadehra Art Gallery, 2015, p. 13)

She achieves this through creating an atmosphere of playfulness, suffusing her works with a palette one would associate with childhood. Her “ludic impulse” (Ananth, p. 35) generates opportunity for Singh to revel in the visual and tactile delectation afforded by her mediums. “The play instinct is, first of all, a heightened responsiveness to the plasticity of language: the variety of marks that pencil, crayon and brush can be made to yield; a continually renewed pleasure in surface and texture, in the unctuosity of oil paint or the translucency of watercolour; a delight in the touch, in experimenting with the most varied notations, their lightness, their density; and the sheer bliss of colour.” (Ananth, p. 16)

This present lot, featuring Singh’s favourite subject- the woman-and her lover, relishes in the opaque lushness of oils. The couple are ensconced in comfort on a couch of rich red, placed in defiance of spatial coherence required of realism, covered with a blanket. Around them are many objects, some domestic and some botanical in nature. The top right of the canvas is occupied by a palm tree with inky green leaves at the same time a host of kitchen paraphernalia like jugs and paper seemingly rain down behind the couple. At their feet are a series of flowers of brilliant white. Marc Chagall was an important formative influence on the artist and his impact is evident in the fantastical nature of her images. Ananth contends, “The topos recalls a generic dreamscape familiar from Surrealist painting, as if the spatial discrepancies in Chagall had been nudged towards a plane that was oneiric and reverie-like in equal measure.” (Ananth, p. 17)

The flowers which populate the bottom of the canvas are a recurring motif in Singh’s oeuvre. She often disrupts more benign or cheerful associations with her elements to create a sense of unease. “Even if the mood of Arpita Singh’s paintings is never as dire, the proliferation of decorative motifs around her figures can occasionally appear to verge on the manic or, at the very least, seem anarchic in their invasiveness.” (Ananth, p. 36) Here, the flowers are placed very close to the ageing woman, creating a palpable relationship between the two. This motif has a long history of association with the feminine in art, which the artist upturns by introducing a sense of agitation. “The floral motifs, when associated with the female form, can, from one painting to the next, suggest vernal efflorescence or something rather more oppressive and wreath?like.” (Ananth, p. 35)

Arpita Singh attests to the fluid meanings of her motifs. She has said, “Motifs are negotiable, so circulate easily.” (The artist as quoted in Nilima Sheikh, “Of target-flowers, spinal cords, and (un)veilings”, Arpita Singh: Memory Jars, New York: Bose Pacia Modern, 2003) Singh often repeats the same motifs across her paintings. There, they create new meanings by being in conversation with her other works which employ those motifs in different contexts. Artist Nilima Sheikh credits Singh’s habit of reworking her elements across her oeuvre with her hermeneutic ingenuity. In her words, “repetition is the warp of invention. She uses it to lay the ground field of her world. The rhythms of repetition form structure and continuity within her paintings and between them.“ (Sheikh, 2003)

Category: Painting
Style: Abstract

ARTWORK SIZE:
Height of Figure: 6'