People can enjoy them whether they are done in an Impressionist style, ala Claude Monet, Expressionist style like F N Souza; whether they are presented as an abstract, as we often see with painters like Ram Kumar and Laxman Shreshtha do or as a Company School painting that depicted India as a lush and conquerable land. They could also simply be realistic renditions of verdant hills and dales done in the spirit of a John Constable. However, one needs to distinguish between cheesy calendar art that of course is collected by those who want a pretty picture in their homes, and an innovative way of depicting an age-old style that flourished in the Romantic era.

I would recommend that one looks at recent photography-montage and painterly works to discover how artists like Natraj Sharma, Atul Dodiya, Sudhir Patwardhan, Gieve Patel, Navjot Altaf and photographer Gauri Gill have looked at the urban landscape in their works. The notion that the city evokes none of the clichéd elements like verdant fields is questioned through their works. The lush past is juxtaposed with the concrete of the present. These works, rather than pine or romanticise the past, give us the conflict of the future where stone and plate-glass tussle with trees and waterfronts for space. Artists like Patwardhan and Navjot fragment their picture plane while Dodiya’s early works and Patel’s recent suite present a pithy image of the city and the hinterland, both in its beauty and its horror. One can also enjoy the romantic land and seascapes painted by Paresh Maiety which is valued as a work of art with resale value.

Demystify art, e-mail