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Ranjit Hoskote’s book on late Gieve Patel’s art explores the artist as painter
Updated On: 01 March, 2024 07:32 AM IST | Mumbai | Nandini Varma
Most of us knew Gieve Patel through his poems. This new book of essays by Ranjit Hoskote explores 30 years of the artist as painter and sculptor
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Off Lamington Road, 1982. Pics Courtesy/Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke
Poet, art critic, and scholar Ranjit Hoskote’s book of essays on late Gieve Patel’s art, To Break and To Branch (Seagull Books), is a beautiful nod to a friendship he shared with the painter. It is also an acknowledgement of the legacy Patel left behind as an artist. To know Bombay (today’s Mumbai), his paintings whispered to us, is to know it through its people.
In the six essays, Hoskote directs our eye to Patel’s assiduity in finding untold stories — “the private drama” — of the characters who make the city. Among them, we witness a street performer at the BEST bus stop with a garland around his neck; an illiterate Andhra migrant worker dictating a letter to be sent home; a boy enjoying a slice of mango; a man running in the rain with bread and bananas; a typical scene from Off Lamington Road. We also encounter the wounded, the mourners, and the aged. “Gieve Patel’s testimony is important,” shares Hoskote, when we catch up with him over a call. “His Bombay was not self-enclosed. Through his characters, you also understand the deep connection that the city has to its hinterland. You see the circulations through which people come to the city for work,” he tells us.
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