No. 07 / 20 · Movements, by Gastón Solís
Visarjan
the Sanskrit ritual of release
Jehangir Art Gallery, the Reserve Room · Bombay · 1968

Visarjan. The Sanskrit ritual of release, accomplished by lowering a clay deity in water until it loses its form, given back to the universe. The word belongs most often to the clay figures of Ganesh, which are carried in procession to the sea at the close of his festival and immersed under the water. In the procession depicted here, the form is not clay but organic, which reminds the participant he is not divine.
At the center of the composition, a small black pupil is embraced by a light blue iris, recalling at once both the bindi and the bindu — the worn mark and the sacred point from which all creation emerges. It is neither. The eye is not an eye.
Provenance
The artist’s studio, Bombay; private collection, Bombay, by 1968; lent by the above to Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, for Bhāratīya Chitrakalā ke Ikkīs Varṣ (Twenty-One Years of Indian Painting), 1968; private collection, Mumbai, 1969–2003; Saffronart Mumbai, 12 March 2004, lot 87; private collection, London, 2004–2017; Christie’s London, 21 March 2017, lot 142; the present collection, 2017.



















