The Art of Hopping

Cartoon pic caption: We have been gallery hopping and it looks like he is gotten drunk on the art and sculpture!

The need-of-the-hour always produces the jargon-of-the-moment.

A certain term was recently being sprinkled about rather generously by large chunks of Chennai’s citizenry:

‘Gallery Hopping’.

Specifically, around and after March 20, 2011, when the city saw a veritable explosion of art.

A gallery here, a gallery there, here a painting, there a sculpture, everywhere creativity in spate...

‘Hopping’, you can’t help thinking, was pretty mot juste.

You’d have had to display the alacrity of a jack rabbit – with particularly sturdy legs – to get about. ‘Hopping’ would have also ensured swift passage through and over the waves of artists/collectors/curators/critics you’d have encountered.

Not to mention the general junta, a judicious mix of from-the-heart art lovers, shrewd business types, and the ever ubiquitous must-be-seen-at-the-right-places-at-the-right-times obsessives, programmed to appear at such quintessential Page 3 photo-op events.

Why people ‘create’ the way they do, or ‘collect’ the way they do – well, that’s all part of the many enduring mysteries of the human mind and soul.

Which explains the bemused “Oh, for Art’s sake....” look on some faces.

One slightly stunned citizen was heard remarking: “I didn’t even know Chennai had 22 galleries!”

Good for Chennai, eh?