The purpose of art

Digital art that Mondal created in Australia

We all know that Neanderthals painted on the walls of caves. But do we know why? Did they serve a purpose? Was that purpose purely pleasure? Or did it have deeper intent than just mere entertainment? These were the sort of questions that consumed artist Samir Mondal when he inadvertently found himself spending a year in Australia in 2020 due to pandemic-induced restrictions. It gave him the leisure to study the country's indigenous aboriginal art in detail, and the conclusion that was cemented in his brain is this - early man used those drawings as a form of visual communication, the paintings effectively serving as a substitute for the spoken word.

Samir Mondal

Those are the type of revelations that have influenced his latest series of online exhibitions, Essence of Desert, which will be displayed on the websites of four galleries, including Jamaat Art Gallery in Mumbai. In it, he quite literally draws inspiration from the trips he took to the middle of West Australian deserts, travelling for miles on end with not a single human being in sight. "Yet, people have inhabited that same barren land for centuries now. But how did people know where to commute before the advent of road signs and modern vehicles? Through paintings on the walls of hills or caves," Mondal tells us, adding that hundreds of years ago, people in the area used the pictures of celestial objects like the stars and moon as navigational symbols.

The painter says, "Art is always made with some purpose - to entertain, educate, scare, communicate, gain power, make money, whatever." That has never changed, and never will, he adds.

Till: April 13
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