How Artist Nasreen Mohammedi Broke the Monotony of Grid and Life
- Inspiring us to look deeper and longer not just into our memories, but also at the textures and patterns surrounding us
I’ve often wondered what draws (only) some artists and art enthusiasts towards abstract art. What makes them stare at a work in a gallery that the lovers of figurative art dismiss as too complex, or even laugh at? Those who look away from abstract art, reason that it is either too simple or too complex. They may find it easier to interpret figurative art, especially when it doesn’t confine itself to the classical rules. Every deviation from rules provides a tip to decipher an intention or takes us on a journey to unknown realms. The same process of probing deviations, surprises, and strong reactions can help us to make sense of abstract art. However, they may make too long a list and run too many questions in our heads. It is hard work. But it is all worth it. Only after handling the overwhelming reactions and patiently looking at an artwork will we enjoy the rewards.
There are other ways too to understand art — through an artist’s practice and their ideologies as communicated by their art, interviews, or accompanied literature. Sometimes, the names of artworks convey a lot of meaning and thought process. Quite often viewers read the title of an artwork searching for a clue to understand or interpret it. Yet in the case of abstract artworks, many times, the title seems irrelevant or shown off as the artist’s after-thought.
Titles and ecritures are usually expressions of an artist. What if an artist considers art not to be a means of expression? Then it loses its quality to preach and doesn’t rest on a base of literature, philosophy, or even a bounded ideology. There are a few such artists who intentionally stay away from providing even a title. And it is not out of languor or a lack of clarity, but to not restrict reactions, feelings, and responses to art in words. Their art offers the viewer even another degree of freedom. Devoid of clues, we need to get comfortable in enjoying this uncommon freedom. Engaging with such art requires us to contemplate and comprehend it from the feelings, responses, and emotions it evokes in us. We search inwards, from our memories, sensory experiences, surroundings, relationships, etc. It is this experience and engagement that drew me towards Nasreen’s work. Her work revealed to me that art by being objective can offer more freedom to the viewer and charters with their thoughts to their subjectivities.
Nasreen’s art may seem confusing or ridiculously simple at first gaze. But it is more enriching when looked deeper into the artwork and not just glance or seek its meaning elsewhere. Not presenting expressions and subjectivities of the artist, consciously, this is pure art– not just the one on the paper or canvas, but also the reactions of the viewers. Such art is not much about the artist but the dialectics between an artwork and the viewer.
Nasreen Mohammedi’s art was introduced to me during an Art Analysis course by Prof. Rico Frances of BICAR. The change her art brought in me was deep and extensive. I began to view every line and corner of the world around me through the lens of Nasreen’s art even though many of her works were not representations. Some of them have intersecting planes and modern architectural spaces impossible to create or unidentified in real world. They seem to show us illusions and memories superimposed on one another. Her linear brevity is visible across her works, except in a few works, like the one above in Fig1.
Nasreen’s work is unique in many ways. It stays away from both figurative and philosophical (ideological) foundations that many of the works by her contemporaries relied on. This deviation is too risky for a modern Indian women artist. She seems to have successfully embarked the risk and along with it her intentions of creating deceptively complex abstract art. As simple and mundane they might look, viewers very soon recognise her exemplary skill and attention to detail. A simpler abstract artwork, like the one in Fig1, may suggest organic textures or familiar forms or colours. However, I think, its essence lies in relations, and not things. The relationships may carry juxtapositions or contrasting similarities. The beauty beheld by the viewer may be unintended and serendipitous, or they may be carefully crafted and placed in their minds by the artist. The rule books of abstract art are rather fluid, but not simple, making abstract art truly free, accepting, diverse, and intelligent.
A woven mat — Is that all it is?
Unlike plants, animals, and other material stuff around us, we humans are stuck with names even when they don’t reflect the essence of whatever the name indicates. If one must name the artwork in Fig1, one will call it a mat. But is it just a mat?
As many other Indians, I have played on woven grass mats as a kid and have watched babies learn to crawl on it. The texture and the sensory friction are still fresh in my memory even now when most contemporary middleclass homes have stopped using it. The mat was a simple and mundane object that provided a casual resting place and additional seating space without making the one sitting on it feel inferior for being closer to the floor. It didn’t demand a prominent place in our homes and is usually tucked away in a corner behind some door.
The first time I viewed this artwork on the web, I was surprised that unlike the artist’s other popular modern works, this one is more realistic. It provides a clear starting point and a pattern to our thoughts, but if we resist the temptation of dismissing it as too mundane, we discover a lot more. It is not purely representational.
Juxtaposing Realism with the Abstract
This is a very realistic work. Sometimes, we find it so tedious to even trace our eyes along the minute details of the work, that we doubt if it is a photograph. We perceive the artwork as flat and textural. It evokes nostalgia. Visually, it seems to present only a small snippet of an infinite flat plane. It is not really representational though it looks like a mat. No one paints a mat and a flat one like this, with such detail, without perspective, and very intentional additions. I imagine a mat, viewed or understood as a part of a much larger image, or view. But the artist might have been mesmerized with the textures and its deceptively dominating importance that she may have presented it as a main theme, rather than a part of something else. And rightly the textures were stripped out of some original or imaginary context to make them universal and objective.
Despite the lack of context, our thoughts, on viewing the work travel much across our memories and symbolism, to pure art, and the response it evokes. The work reveals and unravels and yet offers a freedom to interpret. This juxtaposition of realism in an abstract painting makes us open our vision to other textures and tonal variations surrounding us. While it prompts us to embark on a search for textures, it also makes us wonder what makes the viewer involved in it — The details? The connection with known sensory experiences? The old and familiar colours? The lack of negative space and boundaries? Or the lack of meaning? Or the abundance of meanings it evokes?
In another direction, we wonder what inspired such a flat composition, especially because this seems different in colour and perspective from many of her other paintings. It is this path of thoughts that leads us towards the grid, its relevance in the painting, and Nasreen’s artistic genius behind creating her own version of the quintessential element of modern minimalist art — the grid. The bifurcation in Fig1. seems to be inspired by Rothko. However, her style is unique and doesn’t carry Rothko’s style of colour treatment. Lines and strokes seem more prominent, much like many of Agnes Martin’s works.
Once we are acquainted with the grid in modern art, we can’t help but view it in our homes and surroundings, the human-made environments. I see it in the tiles lining the walls and the floor of my home. It is exciting to discover that the mats that were once unrolled to drape our tiled floors became the subject of a modern abstract piece, much like the tiles and metal grills.
The tangible aspects of the infinite plane — Colours and lines
Akin to many other works by the artist, the base in the painting in Fig1 too is a natural light wood colour. Probably the papers on which Nasreen created art, gradually absorbed the colours of elapsed time that it became now, after her death, an integral aspect of her work. One of the ways this work is different is that the colour and the paper become a base, and yet is not perceived to be negative space. In a few of the other works, as depicted in Fig 3 below, the base takes the form of a three-dimensional space even devoid of any shadows or separations.
The positive space depicted by the lines are so dominant that they lend a dimensional quality to an albeit simple two-dimensional plane. The signature of the artist’s style across her works is the meticulous lines. They are not simple. We read a carefully planned precision behind each mark. Sometimes the perspectives are contradictory or puzzling, as depicted below in Fig4.
In some of the artist’s works, lines suggest objects like rods, planes, pillars, or buildings. They evoke a sense of man-made modernist architectural impressions, much like her unconventional photograph of Fatehpur Sikri (Fig 5).
Probably because of our familiarity with thin metal sheets and rods, her works strangely feel metallic at times, even when they are made on paper and do not contain shiny paints. But Nasreen’s art practice is quite diverse and cannot be confined to even her most popular works.
The work in Fig.1 that I’m keen on is different from the artists other works in several ways. It is flat, representational, coloured and not very minimalist. The marks seem more textural and organic. Most of the lines are not continuous and are made up of two tones, giving them some non-mechanical, hand-made aura. The upper half, where the natural shade is predominant blends in with the lower half where colour and strokes are more significant. There is a structured blending of space erasing the duality between positive and negative.
Paradoxically, there is a different kind of duality with a clear bifurcation — the top half and the bottom. The contrasts in both the parts depict a weave, even though the colours are different. The grey lines and marks in the upper half balance the painting, as an answer to similar contrasts on the other side. However, more importantly, they indicate usage or purpose. They are crucial in making the viewers think of memories. They hint non-newness.[DK1] Each mark, line, and colour seem to have been carefully thought out, and carries some purpose or meaning. Every mark however small or insignificant it may be imparting balance to the painting. Any absence would be felt, any deviation noticed.
Perfection is more applied to hyper-realistic paintings. However, Nasreen seem to have put in great efforts and perfected her own style of creating modern Indian abstract art.
What gives this artwork ‘a weave’ quality?
The lines in Fig.1 are interrupted. Yet what holds them together as identifiable lines? It may be because we think of a warps and wefts that continue throughout a woven object. Or maybe because the complementing tones in the painting don’t intersect but rather join in without growing thinner or thicker. Like a master craftsman who cleverly enjoins the ends of threads without an identifiable mark or knot, Nasreen joins the simple strokes organically to create a weave. She plays with our minds by using similar shades in many adjacent lines — the shades pick off where they end in the adjacent line, creating a subtle flat-topped wave like pattern. This gives us a sense that the lines are moving horizontally, just like the way dried hay moves as a craftsman weaves a mat. Carrying the same analogy of the mat, the viewer identifies the lines as made by the lighter of the two colours and dark tones are perceived as the folds in a weave. However, it is not uniform throughout the painting. This deviation from beauty of uniformity and yet craft it more beautiful is what makes Nasreen a genius.
As much as the painting (see Fig1) looks like a mat and carries a weave-like quality, the artist intentionally placed clear continuous horizontal lines. A thin black line in the upper half seems continuous but grows lighter as it moves from left to right. Another red coloured line runs continuous horizontally at the centre. On scanning the artwork, the viewer can identify thin black lines in the darker strips too, but none of these extend from one edge to the other. Each of these lines carry the artists intention as well as restraint to create a work of art beyond representation. They provide a subtle but necessary balance to the work.
Art of naught and Other Influences
Nasreen’s art is modern, objective, and irreligious. Yet it carries its importance of line from eastern aesthetics. Negative space or nothingness that forms a background derives its meaning from immediate surroundings. This is quite opposite to the usual practice of employing a background, and an interplay of light and shade to suggest forms from shapes. Lines play an important role in this reverse practice of attributing space from an image to its surroundings.
These lines may be more eastern than they look. The light and wind carrying negative space in lattice walls derive their shape from the matter that surrounds it. Nasreen transfers the same meaning of negative space from the architectural realm to her two-dimensional sketches. Notice the space marked in the above figure. They form a line by the continuous discontinuities of their surrounding pencil strokes. This space evokes a different interpretation when compared to the negative space marked in dark blue in the above picture, Fig 6. However, Nasreen’s art practice deviates from the very formulae she created for herself. While we can observe lines intersecting places and spaces in many of her works, she surprises us with a new style in works like the one in Fig1.
The unity of style beyond differences accommodates contrary juxtapositions. While Nasreen’s practice with negative spaces makes the accustomed viewer identify vertical lines, these lines stop at the centre and continue after the deep red interruption. Despite the interruptions and the usage of two different art mediums, the viewer perceives the painting as one style. In fact, the two mediums worked together to create a unity of texture and perspective. This coherence is significant when the viewer’s eye traverses vertically along the lines and spaces, intersecting strong tonal differences and linear divisions (both hard and soft).
Grids are usually coherent, uniform, and flat. On a flat perspective, they contain horizontal and vertical lines that intersect with mathematical precision. In Fig.1, we can identify horizontal and vertical lines. But they don’t seem to intersect each other and hence do not form a grid. They seem to coexist — by taking turns. When one sees the vertical lines, the horizontal ones seem to fade away, and vice-versa. The vertical lines are made by the restraint of the artist, fewer strokes to show the paper background. These lines are not drawn but formed in the viewer’s gaze. They are continuous, but periodically broken. They are broken not with any mathematical precision, but with a slight imperfection, slight enough to hold together as lines.
Once we see the grid in the painting, we may consider it as a response to Agnes Martin’s grid. It seems to extend the grid, making it more about marks and textures. It introduces more interest into the grid with subtle variations across the flatness of the surface. But it is not just the grid it reminds us of.
Whatever the inspiration might be, as in her other works, in this one too, her style is clearly visible and even dominates any possible inspirations.
Why should the viewer look beyond the mat?
Anyone who has seen or used a woven mat or rug can see it in the artwork. The artwork may be perceived as a reproduction of an unassuming, common, and mundane object. Yet one wonders about the complexity of the artwork and the skill required to create it. In a sense, the artist seems to have balanced both representation and abstraction. She answered quite skilfully the burden of representation, of being accurate and meticulous, with careful strokes. The light wooden shade, the natural colour of the paper matches with the colour of straw that is used to weave mats, and thus gives the artwork an antique feel, despite it being very modern. It takes us to our memories with objects like sarees, mats, and curtains, that were in similar shades, texture, and composed of similar lines.
The artist seems to intentionally lead the viewer towards recognizable forms and objects. The work doesn’t establish any intellectual superiority that is sometimes attributed to abstract art and doesn’t belittle the viewer who starts with identifying forms and familiar objects. However, it clearly leads them beyond their first comprehension to more careful reading and responding. The viewer reads into the painting as they run their eyes across the surface and identifies meticulous marks and the subtle variations. They respond as they connect it with their memories and their relationships with textures, crafts, colours, tangible objects, etc. The viewer starts with a clear and simple response, “This is a mat or a weave”. Unlike the artist’s other works, this makes them feel accomplished to have worked it out quite easily. But the gratification is quickly disturbed, as they try to work out the other nuances. The sense of achievement is not lost but only postponed as they solve the grids and lines and their variations across the surface. The viewers can’t dismiss this artwork, as being realistic and simple, or too abstract and complex.
Any art enthusiast who can identify this work as being vastly different from the artist’s other ones containing mechanical lines, perspectives, optical illusions, and overlapping planes, will naturally probe deeper. They may, like me, consider it as the artist’s process of identifying and creating a more creative version of the grid. The grid (or the lack of it) in this piece of art is rooted in memories and is yet modern. It is textural, non-mechanical (organic), and seems to extend beyond the boundaries of the artwork. One sees it as an object, yet the boundaries of the canvas don’t offer interruptions. As in a grid, there is a sense that what is presented is just a part of some infinite vastness. But this vastness contains a striking duality that extends in one form in the upper half and in another in the lower half. The duality further moves, albeit smoothly, to contrasts — modern vs old, abstract vs real, industrial vs crafty, parallels vs intersections.
There are also some aspects wherein this artwork is different from the grid — the viewer doesn’t imagine the rest to be the same as what is before their eyes. The rest is similar, and yet unique to our imaginations, much like the various parts, lines, and tones of colours in the artwork. Unlike the mechanical marks of a grid, this one is organic and very much rooted in the artist’s observation of things, forms, and spaces surrounding her. For me, this deceptively complex piece of art carries a complex and deep duality despite being rooted in memories and nostalgia. By making an effort to understand and interpret the work, I moved closer to my goals — to understand modern Indian abstract art, especially Nasreen’s art. And only by carefully looking into one work and understanding why and how it is different from her other works did I make progress. The artwork in Fig.1 started my journey inwards into my responses, understandings, memories, and dialectics, in a way that no other information I read online about the artist did. By this writeup, I hope I can inspire others to embark on a similar journey.
