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Suneet Chopra
The Christmas season is over, and with it, Christmas cards have been collected and put away, or even thrown out. But I wonder how many art collectors have bothered to retain those of value. Some do, I know, like art critic Ratnottama Sen Gupta. Postcards with drawings of the well-known Bengal School artists, like Nanda Lal Bose, Abanindranath, Gaganendranath and Rabindranath Tagore, fetch anything from Rs 15,000 to Rs 45,000, depending on the work and its quality. Recently, postcards of Roop Krishna sold for Rs 25,000. All of these were received by the addressees as we receive our Christmas cards.
Every year, the average person receives some 60 Christmas cards. Among them, it is easy to spot those that are of value. For example, I have received a number of hand-painted cards by artists over the years. And I have preserved them. This year, I received two such cards. One was from the noted artist, Beohar Ram Manohar Sinha, who trained under Nanda Lal Bose and leading Chinese masters. He now lives in Jabalpur.The other was from Vijay Sarraf `Meenaghe' of Jammu, a gifted innovative artist. Then there was a screen print Atul Sinha made in support of the people of Iraq, condemning the US-British bombing with a visual that has already caught the eye of a number of perceptive art-lovers who are in the field of journalism. Then there was a limited edition of Picasso, sent out by the International Union of Trade Unions in Paris.
Apart from these, there were a number of other cards, with etchings, lithographs, wood-cuts and even photographs on them. One of these, from a young camera buff, Kabir Narang, who is at Keble College, Oxford, impressed me with its simplicity and subtlety of tones. It was a picture he took of leaves around a tree-trunk at the college. Clearly, the work shows promise. I have kept the card for I believe one day, it might remind the photographer of his early stirrings. And it is a work of art that merits preservation.
There were a number of other cards, too, that I have kept. Some, like that ofthe Art Konsult gallery this year, portray a lesser known work of Sailoz Mookerjee, which will probably go into a private collection and not be seen for some time. So it serves as a sort of record for me. The same thing goes for a number of cards received from abroad. There are Ukioya prints from Japan, a print of the Brazilian embassy building in Delhi that is one of the few existing private residences of the time that has remained intact. A reproduction of an Algerian painting, powerful liberation cries from the Philippines and Western Sahara, and a designer card from A Ramachandran. I will, in fact, preserve many more, but these are the few that come to mind at once.
What is the rule of thumb in preserving cards then? Top of the list are cards that are hand-painted or drawings. They may be by well-known artists or amateurs. But these always have a value. Then, of course, reproductions of certain rare pictures. And finally cards received from people in public life whose signature carries a valueanyway.
Everyone receives a greater or lesser number of these cards every year, but few care to preserve them. Let us hope the collectors who do so from this year will help to save very personal works of art. For example, I have in my possession a post-card sent by Roop Krishna to Alokindranath Tagore from Lahore just after Chauri Chaura in 1922, asking for Rabindranath's reaction to Gandhi's retraction of the non-cooperation movement after the incident. Then there is Vivan Sundram's card figuring Indira and Sanjay Gandhi that the CPI(M) circulated during the emergency. Another is a drawing of Benode Behari that starts with an emaciated dog and becomes a whole village. I also prize the cards sent by Usha Biswas with nymphs and pan-like Krishna figures or mini-print cards of Anupam Sud and Kanchan Chander. In preserving them, I feel I am preserving valuable fragments of art history.
Cards like these have been received by hundreds of people all over the country. They have enjoyed receiving them. And theymay even preserve the odd one. I have recently acquired one by an anonymous English artist that had been preserved by the noted anthropologist, Verrier Elwin. He had obviously preserved it because he felt it was important to do so. But the majority will be thrown away.
Therefore, this is also the time for rummagers to con their local kabariwalas and maybe come across some very good examples to preserve. In any case, if you still have your Christmas and New Year cards, go through them once more, for the best of them may one day command a five-figure price.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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