Atul Dodiya Meditation (with open eyes) 2011
Discover Dodiya’s tribute to artists and cultural figures who have inspired him
Atul Dodiya has assembled a range of portraits and objects which relate to his upbringing and artistic development. They are arranged in glass cabinets that resemble museum showcases but also recall personal displays of souvenirs and sentimental items that are particularly common in Indian homes. The cabinets also act as shrines, celebrating the lives of these inspirational figures.
The portraits on the upper level include artists Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso, as well as poet Rabindranath Tagore. There is a detail from Henri Rousseau’s painting Portrait of a Child and an image of actors Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan from the Bollywood film Anand 1971.
The objects range from the sacred to the everyday. Copies of artworks by other artists as well as those made by Dodiya sit next to photographs, miniature figurines, and incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu. There are quotations from American painter Jasper Johns, Bengali poet Sunil Gangopadhyay and French writer André Gide.
Two of the cabinets include tributes to the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. These relate to Dodiya’s first direct encounter with Mondrian’s paintings during a visit to Tate Modern in 2001. He noticed the cracks on the surface of the paintings, a detail not visible in printed reproductions. The cracked surface reminded him of the damaged landscape of his native state of Gujarat in India, where a major earthquake had just taken place.
Mondrian’s painting Composition B (No.II) with Red is displayed here alongside Dodiya’s work.
Tate Modern
Natalie Bell Building Level 2 East
Free
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–8
In this black and white photograph Francesca Woodman, naked and looking at the camera, appears seated on a cushioned wooden stool low to the ground with her left arm covering her left breast and her toes curling around the edges of a rug. On the rug to her right stands an unidentified naked woman whose head is out of the frame and whose right hand rests on her belly. A mirror propped against the wall behind her reflects the shadowed backs of her legs. Words are scrawled on the wall above the mirror and, above these, two cloths hang from a horizontal beam, one showing several unclear words and an image. Above Woodman a photograph is tacked to the wall, as well as another cloth that hangs lopsided. The left third of the image is dominated by shelves that contain books, papers and bottles of different sizes. Below the shelves an array of papers and various objects sit on the floor.
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artworks in Atul Dodiya
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–6
This square black and white photograph is attached to an off-white paper mount. Shot from above, the photograph shows the American artist Francesca Woodman crouched on her hands and knees on top of the reflective glass of a rectangular mirror, which lies flat on the floor. The mirror is bordered by a dark carved frame and fills most of the image at an oblique angle to the edges of the picture. Occupying the top left corner of the image and covering nearly half of the mirror’s surface is a small woven rectangular rug. Woodman, who wears a sweater but apparently nothing else, is positioned diagonally across the mirror so that her head is framed by the corner of the rug to the left of the image, while her naked backside arches up towards the top right corner. She leans down low towards the mirror with bent arms but turns her head, which is slightly blurred, to look up at the camera. Below the photograph, on the off-white paper mount, Woodman has written in red ink, ‘See you Sunday Bow Wow love Spot’.
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Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1976
This black and white square-format photograph features the artist sitting in a chair in the corner of an abandoned interior space. The room has bare floorboards and a heavy skirting board. On the right of the composition, behind the artist, is a window through which light enters the scene, while on the left is what looks like a filled-in window surround. Woodman is seated on a white wooden chair and is nude except for a necklace and a pair of dark single-strap ‘Mary Jane’ style shoes. She wears her hair up, with a single lock falling on the right side of her face. Looking straight at the camera, she sits upright with her legs almost together and her feet tucked in close to the chair, while her hands are positioned in her lap just between her legs. Her bare breasts and torso are lighter in colour than the rest of her skin. On the a particularly white area of the floor to her right, forming a diagonal from where she sits, is a dark silhouette or impression of what looks like a female body, with its head at the artist’s feet. The outline is only partial, missing its forearms, hands and left leg.
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artworks in Atul Dodiya
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–8
This square black and white photograph is attached to the top right corner of an off-white paper mount. In the photograph, Francesca Woodman leans sharply to her right beneath a low ceiling. She wears a pale polka-dotted dress and dark shoes, and her right arm comes up to touch the top of her head. She looks in the direction of the camera, but her facial features as well as other parts of her body are blurred. She stands just inside the frontal opening of a small brick structure. Many of the bricks appear to be aged or stained. Around the structure’s exterior are pipes, wiring and other industrial materials. A stack of bricks in the foreground dominates much of the photograph’s left side, and the entire image seems tilted slightly to the left. Below the photograph, on the off-white paper mount, Woodman has written in blue ink: ‘Bunny bun I’m in the photolab come fetch me if the mood or a rock should strike you’.
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artworks in Atul Dodiya
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–8
In this square black and white photograph Francesca Woodman stands with her back against a wall. Her body is oriented towards the camera, but she bends over so that her head – which, mostly out of frame and seen from the top, is little but a nose – faces the ground. She wears a patterned dress or blouse and skirt and is barefoot, while her arms hang down in front of her, blurred in action. The wall and skirting board behind her are peeling and cracked, and on the floor around her feet are dead leaves, plaster and assorted debris. A slant of light from an unseen source creates a bright diagonal line that passes from Woodman’s right hand across her right knee and left calf, before ending in a patch of light on the floor to her left. From her right hand – and perhaps also from her left hand – hangs a flimsy material, obscured by the blur and the light. The image is captured at an angle so that it tilts down to the left.
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artworks in Atul Dodiya
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island 1975–8
Francesca Woodman stands at the far right edge of this black and white square photograph with her hands resting on her upper thighs so that she is slightly bent over. She wears long, horizontally-striped stockings that cover almost all of her legs. Aside from the stockings, she is naked. Her head and long hair are blurred in movement, and her hair obscures her left breast. To the left of Woodman hang a variety of dresses, one from a hanger on a horizontal beam with nails, and the others from tacks in a large panel on the wall. The wall is otherwise bare except for some cracks and areas of discolouration. Towards the bottom left of the image a wide-framed mirror – cropped half out of the image – sits on the floor against the wall and reflects several objects situated behind the camera.
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artworks in Atul Dodiya
Francesca Woodman, Me and Benjamin in May c.1976
This black and white photograph is attached to the centre of an off-white paper mount. Francesca Woodman appears along the right edge of the photograph standing with her back angled towards the camera. She wears a loose-fitting dress, and her hair is in a ponytail. Benjamin Moore, her boyfriend at the time, stands opposite her at a short distance in the middle of the image, also at an oblique angle to the camera. He wears a plain dress shirt tucked into a pair of dark trousers and holds in his left arm a tall, rectangular mirror that rests against his body. The mirror reflects light originating from outside the frame as well as what appears to be part of Woodman’s upper body in its lower right corner. Moore’s head is mostly cropped out of the image and he appears to be holding something long and wiry in his lowered right hand. Woodman and Moore stand in a nondescript room lit from the right so that they cast shadows against the wall behind Moore. Leaves and debris are visible on the floor. Above the photograph, written in ink on the paper mount, are the words: ‘me and Benjamin in May’. Typed below the photograph are the words: ‘photographs by francesca woodman / addison gallery, andover, mass. / october’. Woodman’s name is handwritten in slanted ink letters over her typed name.
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artworks in Atul Dodiya
Art in this room
Francesca Woodman
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island
1975–8
Francesca Woodman
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island
1975–6
Francesca Woodman
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island
1976
Francesca Woodman
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island
1975–8
Francesca Woodman
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island
1975–8
Francesca Woodman
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island
1975–8
Francesca Woodman
Me and Benjamin in May
c.1976
