Air India has hit the headlines again, this time for bagging the world’s biggest commercial aviation deal — an order of a fleet of 470 jets from Airbus and Boeing.
The multi-billion dollar deal will expand the airline’s horizons in India and abroad. Meanwhile, at the India Art Fair in Delhi last weekend, there was much talk about another acquisition that dates back to the 1950s: Air India’s priceless collection of thousands of pieces of art, sculpture and textiles specially commissioned from artists as legendary as Salvador Dalí.
Last month, an MoU was signed with the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), which will now house the airline’s collections, including the ‘Maharaja Collection’, which has works by Jatin Das, Anjolie Ela Menon and M.F. Husain. Union Minister of Civil Aviation and Steel, Jyotiraditya Scindia, said that Air India could now act as an ambassador of Indian heritage and culture. These works of art were under the charge of the government.
What everyone wants to know, however, is how this collection can be accessible to them. According to Meera Dass, an art historian who was engaged by Air India between 2016 and 2018 to prepare an inventory of its art works, and has a forthcoming book on the cultural history of Air India, there could be about 7,000 works of art and sculpture and 1,000 pieces of textiles. The most fascinating work is a Husain, she reckons, a giant 15x6 feet painting, called Saptam Ashvaha Bhaskar, of seven horses, one of which glows orange like the rising sun.
M.F. Husain’s Saptam Ashvaha Bhaskar | Photo Credit: Airindiacollector.com
Air India CEO Campbell Wilson has said that they plan to borrow some of the artworks for the airline’s new office in Gurgaon, which will be ready later this year. Hopefully, in the next six months, most of this unique art — collected over decades — will be accessible to the public at NGMA.
Flashback to Dali
The year was 1967, and a team of Air India’s publicity division was busy identifying a baby elephant. When none was to be found in Mumbai, where the airline was headquartered, the team got a calf from the Bangalore zoo. Then, over the next few days, a special enclosure would be designed for it, sufficient food arranged, and its visa processed, before being flown to Geneva from where it would be taken by road to the Spanish village Cadaques for the world’s best known surrealist artist, Salvador Dalí.
The baby elephant was the fee Dalí requested for designing ashtrays for Air India’s special clients and first-class guests, during a chance meeting in New York with one of the airline’s team.
Salvador Dalí in Cadaques with the baby elephant gifted by Air India | Photo Credit: instagram/amrais_art_studio
The Dalí ashtray designed in 1967 | Photo Credit: instagram/adcdirector
Uttara Parikh, who was then a 26-year-old junior officer in the publicity division, and later retired as deputy commercial director, advertising and special promotions and product development, was the person tasked with identifying the elephant for Dalí. She was gifted one of his famed ashtrays for this very special job.
“The ashtray was based on Dalí’s reverse image painting. These were white shell-shaped ashtrays with a serpent on the edge and three legs: one leg was an elephant and two were shaped like swans. If you turned the ashtray around, the elephant looked like a swan and the swan looked like an elephant,” explains Parikh.
Once Dalí provided the design, Air India had the ashtrays made in the French city of Limoges from where they were sent to the airline’s stations around the world.
Cheeky tags and menu cards
While Air India had hired an advertising agency, J.W. Thompson, for hoardings, banners and other publicity activities, what is little known is that its in-house art studio, which was part of the publicity department, produced a wide range of artistically-designed material, such as calendars, posters, route maps, time tables, and sales letters for travel agents explaining new route launches. Then there were in-flight materials such as cheeky do-not disturb tags for first and business class passengers, baggage tags, and menu cards. The art studio also created the designs for aircraft interiors, which were all exquisite art works that narrated India’s rich legacy. Presentations were made to J.R.D. Tata, with multiple options to finalise from, and once approved by him they would then be sketched and coloured by the art studio and sent to Boeing or Airbus for installation.
The art studio was the brainchild of Air India’s creative genius and commercial director, Bobby Kooka, known for his mischievous sense of humour and for being the creator of the airline’s mascot, the bowing maharaja. He is also credited for many of Air India’s naughty posters such as the one depicting the maharaja as a Playboy Bunny in New York.
The Air India maharaja as a Playboy Bunny in New York | Photo Credit: Getty Images
On the 18th floor of Air India’s famous Nariman Point building in Mumbai, the art studio comprised seven artists, a librarian, four to five managers and some administrative staff.
A major preoccupation of the studio were the calendars, which included those inspired by the modern paintings of well-known artists such as S.H. Raza, Husain and V.S. Gaitonde, collected and commissioned by Air India. These calendars were given to customers as part of the airline’s loyalty programme.People flocked to the office in pursuit of their favourite ones, says Dass.
One of Air India’s famous ‘Miniatures Recreated’ calendars (1983) | Photo Credit: Airindiacollector.com
One among the many outstanding calendars was the series titled ‘Miniatures Recreated’, which has miniature paintings where the central character is substituted or mirrored by a similar looking and similarly dressed model. The models were clothed by none other than famous costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, who is the first Indian Oscar-winner for her work in the movie Gandhi.
As giveaways, the team sourced handicraft specially developed for the airline such as glass swizzle sticks, marble inlay coasters, copper enamel candle stands, nut bowls, mushru stitch kits, special handkerchiefs, and bidri work boxes from Hyderabad.
Then there were exclusive aircraft livery and interior decor for the sidewall panels that were designed in actual size, presented to Mr. Tata for his approval and then sent to Boeing for production and installation in the aircraft.
Murals in the sky
“Indian art was the inspiration for the motifs featured in the exotic interiors of the Air India aircraft fleet back then: immortal legends of Krishna, the refined beauty of Ajanta’s frescoes, B. Prabha’s series of Indian villagers at work and at leisure, and calico and paisley motifs from the airline’s art collection. The erstwhile upper deck lounge for the first few Boeing 747 aircraft had special semi-circular murals created by artists such as R.V. Savant, and their theme was based on the name of the aircraft, inspired by Indian emperors such as Ashoka and Rajendra Chola,” says Parikh.
An air hostess stands in front of a decor panel in Air India’s art studio | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
Parikh and Roshan Kalapesi, a specialist in costumes and textiles, also embarked on a curation drive around the country for a travelling exhibition organised with the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. They scheduled appointments with notable personalities and received costumes donated by dancers Jhaveri sisters and Yamini Krishnamurthy and a ghagra-odhna set from maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur. The exhibition titled ‘Shringar’ travelled to some of the airline’s key global destinations, such as the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., London and Sydney.
“Air India was taking Indian art overseas, as well as providing new emerging artists from India an opportunity to showcase their work abroad and be paid for their contribution through air tickets. Through its engagement with art and Indian culture, it created a unique identity. It was able to turn the world’s gaze towards India, something like Bollywood today. And it was doing this in order to sell better and attract more customers,” says Dass.
The airline also collected and commissioned a large number of paintings from artists who would later strike big. The interest in artworks increased after the inauguration of the airline’s first overseas booking office on Berkeley Street (London) in the early 1950s. It received an astounding response, and would then be replicated in other booking offices in Paris and Geneva; artists would be flown in, helping them connect with a global audience.
There are also stone sculptures dating back to the 9th century, woodwork, decorative friezes, a collection of clocks. While some have pegged the total number of art works and other artefacts at 4,000, Dass says it could well be twice as much as the inventory process undertaken in 2016 couldn’t be concluded by the time the government decided to privatise the airline and transfer the custody of the artworks to the NGMA. The airline’s plan to build a museum at a cost of ₹3.5 crore as per a 2017 tender too was abandoned because the government was intent on privatisation.
Art community weighs in
Last month, through an MoU, the NGMA was officially given the custody of the artworks, which remain housed at Air India’s Nariman Point building. They will now be catalogued, before the process of shipping them starts possibly in the next six months. While there is some concern over what the NGMA will do with a collection that goes far beyond just modern arts and paintings, it will provide enthusiasts a window to Air India’s and the country’s past.
“The Air India collection put together over five decades is a slice of modern Indian art history representing not only highly acclaimed artists but also those who have slipped off the pages,” says Kamini Sawhney, director, Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru (which opens to the public on February 18). “More significantly it provided patronage to artists at a time when there were very few individuals or organisations willing to support the arts. The company will be remembered as a forerunner of corporate patronage for the arts in India.”
Gallerist Mortimer Chatterjee; and (right) Kamini Sawhney, director, Museum of Art & Photography | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
The most important task now would be to uncover the documentation of this collection, identify the location of all the works and explore the possibility of reassembling them as the complete Air India collection, says Sawhney.
“The 1960s and 1980s were an interesting period in Indian art history as there was acquisition and collection happening. And in the absence of state support, corporates came forward: Air India, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Taj Hotels and Larsen & Toubro. Their collections became treasures because India didn’t have galleries such as the Tate in London,” says gallerist Mortimer Chatterjee. “The artworks must be made accessible through the use of digital media. The NGMA could create an online resource for the collection to let scholars write and research Air India’s collection before it is exhibited.” Dass adds that it is the right time to think of an aviation museum for the country.
Air India’s latest is a collab with the Kochi-Muziris Biennale — the tail art adapts artist Smitha G.S’ painting | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Global firsts
Indeed, the time has come for this legendary collection to be made accessible to all.
“We have three NGMAs and it should go to them and to public institutions because it belongs to the nation. What is this collection unless it can be celebrated and talked about? asks Kishore Singh, senior vice president at the Delhi Art Gallery. “Many of the works were painted before the artists became famous. Take the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which owns and manages a priceless art collection… I wish more people had access to seeing it.”
As public museums don’t have the money, some private museums do pick up works. But you need places where people can come in and treat it with respect.”
V. Sunil, co-founder of Motherland Joint Ventures, the man behind the ‘Make in India’ campaign and one of the trustees of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, concurs. “People don’t know a lot of the history of Air India, or what they did in those days. They are only aware of the posters. But each product they created had massive historical references. The maharaja stood for something. They had beautiful cabins, and great upholstery with rich Indian textiles. Any show should have both: serious research and cultural depth. At the same, it should be a fun show. This is also thought of as a pop culture milestone.”
Posters created for Air India’s international routes | Photo Credit: Airindiacollector.com and Getty Images
A travelling show, for instance, would be fantastic for the country’s soft power building, says Sunil.
“A separate museum would be great, too. India does not have enough good museums. There is a lot of awareness of art and culture, but people don’t know where to go. Young people need to see more art. It needs to be exciting, it needs to be fun.”
With inputs from Surya Praphulla Kumar and Rosella Stephen
