This Delhi-based art historian is building a case for catalogues

Art curator Uma Nair believes it's important to create art catalogues to document the work of artists.

What’s the worth of a few pieces of paper that have images of art and words to describe it? Well, art historian Uma Nair vouches for these catalogues, sharing: “There are many exhibitions happening now but not every one of them gets a catalogue printed, as it’s very expensive and demands a lot of work.”

Art historian and critic Uma Nair has been writing on art and creating catalogues for more than three decades.

The Delhi-based art curator has recently completed 34 years in writing art criticism and catalogues for artists, including photographers and sculptors. “In 1990, as a young schoolteacher, I went to the US for a summer break. It’s there that I saw an exhibition, came back and started writing on art. Amongst early catalogues I wrote was [for] Sudip Roy (1996), following it up with many others. I wrote the first book for Paresh Maity (2005) — in 1993, when I discovered him, he sold his Venice watercolours for just ₹3,000... In those days, catalogues were not printed like books, but like cards or brochures.”

This catalogue by Uma Nair was recently created for an exhibition titled iSculpt, which was curated to mark 100 years of art critic Keshav Malik.

She considers herself lucky to have “learnt by seeing art in America” at a time when some of the “greatest exhibitions took place”. What’s in it for artists in today’s digital age? “Why are Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher among the top artists in the world today? It is because the gallery Hauser & Wirth in London published their works as catalogues. These are not just a piece of literature but an iconic documentation of artists’ work,” she says.

Nair feels that in creating these written guides, the aesthetics of the “composition” also play a crucial role. “If a gallery doesn’t want to spend the money in printing, at least create these online... so that the life span of an artist gets known to the world,” she advises.

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