Art in Urban Spaces

The Bazaars in India are spaces for everyday but they are also places where vendors express themselves through their creative displays, to attract people and to sell goods. This is a form of art perceived not as a "representation" of the real world but as a "way of seeing".

A walk through a traditional Street bazaar can be compared to a walk through a modern Urban environment. Although two people could see the same things at the same time, they might not always do so. In a Bazaar, what might be within the range of vision one moment, might not be, in the next.

If you don't see the hands that make the flower garland at this moment, in the next moment, you see only red and blue plastic buckets. When two of us walk along a street, you experience in one moment the labyrinth of garlands to your right, and I, the brass pots in front of me. The next moment, you see no twirling garland in the making and I see no sunshine on the brass. It was only for the moment and that moment is now gone.

In the Indian City, the urban experience draws from more than just architecture. The streets are also places of exchange. Each vendor finds his own way of displaying the goods and makes a shelter within the public space with materials locally and easily available, with a sensibility very much his own.

There is a pictorial language in the forms that the goods bear individually and collectively and the spaces that are generated between goods and the vendor, between vendor and a building façade and between the vendor, façade and the customer.

There is a temporariness in this creation that depends on the time of the day, the season of the year and the access to public space. Here, the art is functional; it attracts and the wares are sold. It is not the art that sells.

The photographs included here are from a collection that was exhibited at the Urban Visualities Exhibition and Symposium at Dakshinachitra in Chennai from 27Jan – 27Feb 2011

Read about :
Art and daily commodity
an Art Installation

about this blog

This blog has been writing about and photographing bazaars. So, many of the posts are about experiences in the bazaars in Kerala, in Chennai and in Vizag. Its at the moment just fascinated with this part of our living heritage.

In the month of April, the blog has focused on how in India, Art is a way of life and that one does see this in our Bazaars everyday. In this april section and also in a few posts in the end of March, bazaars were seen not only as spaces for everyday but as creations of the people to whom they belong to. Art is seen for a while not as a "representation" of the real world but as a "way of seeing" that is photographed for that moment in time. The creation continues to be where it always was.

In May 2007, the blog will go back to the bazaars as a spatial experience, since this research must go on. There are for now, thoughts that belong to the bazaar, which are here at INDIAN BAZAARS and those that belong to experiencing architecture, experiencing life which are in the blog a way of seeing

spice art

Bundle of something

You see a bundle of cloth and nothing else for that moment. And, as you photograph it, the bundle has eliminated that which you have seen the moment before and also the moment after, the next bundle of yellow cloth and the man who sells the cloth and the chappals that lie on the floor next to bundle.

The pile of brass pots is a picture too. It is moved into the shop when it is time to go home and close shop. It is picture during day. Brass, steel, aluminium make the picture. Light falls on brass. It does not fall on aluminium. The photograph catches the sun at four o'clock in the afternoon. The picture of pots continues to be there when the sun goes down. Only you are now not in the bazaar.

There is a bundle of coco-cola and pepsi crates. Yellow public telephone booth, red coca-cola crate. This is not art. Is it articulation? Articulation is defined as 'the manner of joining or interrelating'. It is also 'the act of giving utterance or expression'. These are by people who bring this articulation into their work, people who link creativity and entrepreneurship.

art and daily commodity

There's a painting with 'puffed rice, parboiled rice and chillis'. There is another painting further down the market which is 'small lamps and big lamps' This one is different also because the sunlight has changed the way it looks. There is painting with 'marigolds, betel leaf and coconut'. There is also painting with 'heap of tamarind and block of jaggery'. These were people whose livelihoods were in the bazaar and creativity was a small part of it.

people and places

Christopher Day in his book 'Places for the soul' speaks of photographs as fragments of experience. I agree with him in that art and architecture are essentially much more than what the eye can record. It is possible for us to develop a way of seeing and then, in some days or years, to change that way of seeing within ourselves.

People photograph and people paint. They make "representations" of life that we term as art. These are people who see life as art. There are also others who see as much, but do not record. The art continues to flow outside of the artists, in life itself.

women in the bazaar

In October 2006, it was the Festival of lights all over the country. That Diwali, as in the Diwali the year before, there were more flowers in the bazaar than everyday. In Vizag or Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, there were marigolds everywhere. Poorna market and the Rama Talkies junction were crowded with people and with flowers. There were women selling flowers and women buying flowers. There were heaps of marigolds and strings of marigolds. Poorna market is primarily a fruit and vegetable market but had created spaces for flowers for the week of diwali. The visual landscape of Poorna market was different that week.

Vizag does not have an art plaza like the one outside the Jehangir Art Gallery at Kalaghoda in Bombay. But, Vizag, like every town in India, has a street bazaar. And, all of us go to the bazaar, whether we are art lovers or not. There is much to see. At diwali time, there were flowers here, crackers somewhere else. Only, each exhibit was on display for only one day. And, the exhibit diminished in size as the day moved on. Especially the flowers. The hands of the women sometimes created a new heap, sometimes emptied it in parts, sometimes wove the flowers into a string and at other times, separated the yellow from the orange.

Art _ a way of life

An earlier post "Art & Representation" is about looking into a "painting".

One may read a little about why art is, what it does for man, why it still lives and so on. Understanding art can be a long quest. Experiencing a painting is also like reading Roald Dahl's "Charlie Wonka and the chocolate factory"

The painting 'Annunciation' is an assignment that was done for an elective course 'Architecture & Representation' at Cornell University, 15 years ago. Today, when you look at Bazaars, you know there is art there. It reminds one of the journey into the annunciation painting. You wonder why the Bazaar is not also "painting"

Many years ago, an american art historian who was in Bombay for her continuing research on the Elephanta Caves, asked us if we had seen and understood India the way we ought to know it, that "in India, one does not visit museums to see art, because, here, art is a way of life"

what we see, what we know

in the bazaar, space is ...
both
what we see
and what we know



it is not known
what is private
what is public
space is eternity




you sell, you buy
you occupy, you vacate
you give, you take
you include, you exclude



People come
People belong
People form society
Society within nation

All in the 'Everyday space'

an art installation

How did "art installations" come into being? Where was its birthplace?

What did an art installation do when it first appeared? What does it do for us now? Do renowned artists make art installations?




Is art for the common man? Does common man make art?







In the bazaar, "there are cities within cities" as they say. What is the smallest atom of this city? Is there a DNA helix also in the city of people and goods?

Art in everyday spaces

Art in everyday spaces
the first pure still-life
born out of need
to live, to grow












what we do
what we think
how we create
how we express

the Bazaar_its representation as Art

the painted painting
the photographed image
the designed space
the theatre AND the stage




it confronts us
not as immediate sight
but as experience

art transcends time
the bazaar is for the moment
a tangible aesthetic
in our intangible times
















"Space by itself
and time by itself
are doomed to fade away
into mere shadows"
- Hermann Minkowski













the bazaar
art, space, time or shadow

the Spice vendors & their displays

In the old days, at Kumily, it was heaps of cardamom and pepper that you passed by as you walked the main street. Today, strings of spice packets make the displays in shops. The spices are the same, the packaging is new.

In the informal sector in the towns and cities in India, one finds a different display each day that you go into the bazaar. In the vegetable and fruits bazaar, sometimes it is only the heap of tomatoes that attract attention. At other times, it is the bananas that hang in bunches that are the most eye-catching. As you walk into the streets around the central core of the vegetable market, you see brass pots that sit outside a shop and on the footpath. There are often aluminium utensils of all shapes that begin to form a screen outside the shop, a “shop window” that is outside the shop.

It’s the quantum of brass or quantum of steel that must fill the display to catch the eye. It is afterwards the nature of the arrangement. So it is with spice vendors. The shop windows are first filled with spices and more spices. They create their own pattern. Glass and plastic are used extensively in urban shopfronts, their transparency making the showcasing of spices and other goods, more attractive. The spices are either in glass jars, in small glass containers or behind a glass front or panel of glass. Often, spices are in small plastic packets that hold in one string, more than ten packets, each with its names written, so that foreign tourists can take these back as “spices from india”

Aesthetics in the Bazaar

Each vendor finds his own way of displaying the goods and makes a shelter within the given area with materials locally and easily available, with an aesthetic very much his own. This means that no shop has the same design because the parameters are not same; each is built within a different context. This applies to open bazaars where it is much easier to establish one´s own identity and define one´s own boundaries. It is an aesthetic that is native to the region, that cannot always be uprooted for use elsewhere.

There is ‘Art’ in the sounds, the forms, the colours, the spaces, the light, the textures, the materials that each vendor brings with him, some that he must part with before dusk and some that he must withold for the next day. There is a temporariness in this creation and every sunrise gives him a fresh palette to do as he chooses. He displays his wares artistically to attract people. Here, the art is functional; it attracts and the wares are sold. It is not the art that sells. Sometimes, it is a part of the selling concept, sometimes it is simply a part of the vendor’s being.