He uses the ploy that is perhaps the most common in our ancient iconography, of creating multiple images to convey motion, just as the many arms of the Nataraja represent the movement of the hands in the Bharatanatyam dance form. This was also used by the Italian futurists of the twenties and de Chirico.

Tyeb, however, blends that with the radical vision he acquired in his days as a member of the Bombay progressive artists' group, taking a strand from Britain's irreverent portrait-painter, Francis Bacon, who did not even spare the Pope.

Tyeb has used this ancient Indian treatment of motion to great effect, to reflect the continuing decline in the price of a man's work in the face of the rising pricesof other commodities; the increasing marginalisation that has reduced common man to the level of an animal, in this case the butcher's buffalo or for those who must have literary reference to come to terms with the brute truths of daily life, he let us see his work through the eyes of the epics and puranas, in this case the legend of Mahishasur; focussing at the same time on the violence heaped on the victims of these developments to make such and inhuman prescription acceptable. Indeed, it is his technical excellence that allows such a complex message to be communicated with such ease.

Tyeb Mehta has for long been pursuing this technique of blending experience and motion. And today, his art has built up that resistance to being marginalised in his viewers as well. That is why it ranks with fellow artists like F N Souza and S H Raza, with whom he started out in Bombay around the time that India became independent.

In Christie's London sale of 1995, 2 of his works came up, while four followed inthat of June 1997. He still ranks among the middle range artists, but he neither overproduce works nor easy to come by. So a visit to Vadhera's is well worth it to see his latest, which as always, is well-finished and has every possibility of surviving well into the future.

Artists, it is said, reflect the lives they live in their works. And seeing Tyeb's work, one can conclude that life in today's Maharashtra is something close to that of an abattoir. Indeed, these works reflect the helplessness of people becoming increasingly unable to control their destinies.

But there is another artist, Bulbul Singh, who is exhibiting at Art `n' Soul, who shows how the individual confronted with chaotic and unexpected events, learns to develop them along their own lines, but through the conscious effort of the artist.

Bulbul's work is much prized in Delhi and Bombay for this curious blend of these two processes.

Among other artists, are the up and coming, the holograms of Balasubramaniam at Art Inc; the sculpturesfor use of Atul Sinha; Mrityunjoy Mondal water-colours at Art Konsult and Neeraj Bakshi's African drawings at the Academy of Literature and Fine Art, have all shown that Indian contemporary art has as good a future as its past.

There are enough independent-minded people working hard to maintain the high standards of originality and innovativeness that were earlier shown by artists of the Bengal School and the Bombay Group before and after independence.

Only it is more difficult to maintain them as the pressures of the market to derail artists are stronger today than ever before, leading them to produce decorative and inconsequential works rather than art.