Unknown Artist
157 x 107 cm; 62 x 42 in
Known for her ability to create portraits that went back to her childhood, Anjolie Ela Menon?s 1990 work incorporates her blue eyed grandmother, her mother and the bronzed maid without whom the home did not run. In a typically classic portrait with all three figures sitting abreast, it is interesting how the maid belongs to the canvas and is also the outsider given a space that is removed from the aristocrats. `My grandmother was an extremely important part of my childhood and home,? says Anjolie as she reminisces. The colour of the grandmother?s gown and Anjolie?s mother?s sari both provide a contrast in tonalities. The tiger according to Anjolie, is the Indian element in the drama of life. The drapes and the arch in the background signify the artist?s tryst with time. And yet in the entire scheme of things the narrative that unravels is so much like an overlapped computer memory in which the animation of the past energises the truths and beliefs of yesterday and today. Perhaps that is why in this series she positions and poignantly perceives, the tenuous nature of relationships, there is a tendency to play with the form and also invest her objects with an enormous spiritual significance. Stylistically, this is the old Anjolie at her expressionist best, recreating the image of the mystic while arresting time in the picture frame.