Artistic Relations: Mapping KCS Paniker’s Constellations

Abstract

As student, teacher, and principal of the Madras School of Art, and as mentor, colleague, editor, and painter, KCS Paniker (1911–77) lived within a network of relations that one might map, following Alex Seggerman’s reading of Egyptian modernism, as a constellation. These figures include artists and critics in his immediate local network, students who helped build Cholamandal Artists’ Village with him, and his legacy in the form of the following generations, including his son, the sculptor Nandagopal. He also corresponded with a range of collectors, critics, scholars, and artists around the world, during three trips abroad and in subsequent editorial efforts related to the journal Artrends. In past frameworks, we might think of these constellational relations as “influences” but this too unidirectionally defines them, and it causes us to privilege one end or the other of the interaction. My project here is to think broadly and critically about these relations, to acknowledge them as deeply important for our understanding of Paniker’s work, but also to look for the dimmer stars – the fleeting comets that might be missed. How might attentiveness to Paniker’s intellectual and artistic wanderings enable us to find toward a richer, pulsating and shining, picture of relation?