The year opened on a great note with Osian’s Bachhanalia feast, that saw the Big B in fine form, conversing with Bhawana Somaya at the TATA theatre on Saturday last; the exhibition of vintage memorabilia was a treat in itself. In terms of trends in collecting, from photo cards and film posters to graphic novels; the idea of the collectible has already changed; thanks are due to the foresight of auctioneers with an eye on objects that blur the lines between art/craft/design.

With the publication of Amruta Patil’s Kari, the graphic novel was injected with a fresh dose of life. It added to the ranks of the other six Indian graphic novels, including Orijit Sen’s River of Stories (1994), Naseer Ahmed and Saurabh Singh’s Kashmir Pending (2007) and Sarnath Bannerjee’s

Corridor (2004) and The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers (2007).

And while the debate on art, literature and the comic-book genre rages on, excerpts from the sketchpads of this new genre of ‘art-makers’ are stepping cheekily past the hallowed portals of art galleries, mostly due to the shifting perspectives of risk-taking gallery owners and curators with crisp sensibilities.

But can a graphic designer be described as an artist?

Importantly, can comics and text based imagery (among other variations), be deemed ‘art’ on the sheer strength of the fact that it is being shown in a gallery? Orijit Sen, a graphic

designer, was quoted recently as saying that, “Comics combine elements of literature, painting and cinema.” Be that it may, but the question still hangs uncertainly in the air, due to the fact that contemporary Indian art is still shaking off its rigidly held hierarchies and definitions about what constitutes visual art, as we know it.

The text-based work of Abhishek Hazra, Nina Pandolfo’s graffiti art made their presence felt last year. In the city this week, Chatterjee and Lal in collaboration with Thomas Erben, will present the work of New York based, Chitra Ganesh. Ganesh’s work offers a whole new spin to the idea of heroes and others that all of us grew up with. Combining a strident and witty graphic sensibility, her work—Farah Siddiqui’s FSCI showed a large work at its inaugural exhibition in 2008—integrates image and text to arrive at alternative narratives.

Her show, The Ocean Beneath, includes works on paper, digital collage and a video piece. Zeenat Aman’s visage surfaces in lenticular prints. Making one muse on the fact that if contemporary artists can delve into the realms of cinema and literature for fodder, why can’t graphic artists do the same with art. In the end, do we still need to continue to classify and box expressions the way, we do? Or should the emotive charge and the visual merit of a work be the deciding factor in terms of whether it is, within the purview of art or not?

On that uncertain but happy note, here’s wishing that 2009 turns out to be the best year for Indian art, and not just from a market perspective.