Chemical Attraction

Chemical attraction by Kishore Singh

Our thanks to Mr. Singh & Business Standard for their permission to post this article on Art Lab
Source: Business Standard

It is time Souza was widely identified for his excellence in creating a new
language of art — chemical alterations

Though the breadth, vitality and provocation of F N Souza’s oeuvre has been explored at
length, considerably less effort has gone into studying his chemical
alterations, a medium that he made uniquely his own. When he shifted
from London to New York in 1967, Souza experimented with a chemical
solution to blur print, using the background of magazine pages as his
canvas. Perhaps because a number of them were shockingly pornographic,
or because critics short-sightedly termed them lazy, it created the
impression that Souza’s best works were behind him, and the chemically
altered works never got their due.

Now that collectors have begun to realise their uniqueness, the prices of these chemicals have started
to inch upwards — Rs 50,000 at the start of this century, under Rs 2
lakh till a couple of years ago. A few fetched attractive valuations at
auctions: a record Rs 18 lakh at Freemason’s, Philadelphia; Rs 13 lakh
at Bonham’s in 2008; Rs 7.8 lakh at Saffronart last year.

Souza’s chemical works are currently, generally, in the region of Rs 3-8 lakh
in galleries. Because the chemicals are confined to the size of single
or double-spread magazine pages, they’re good to invest in when you want
to keep the outlay small. Of course, that’s only for a short time —
before they become, quite inevitably, the Next Big Thing of Indian art.
These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation
with which the writer is associated.

kishoresingh_22@hotmail.com