15 Oct The Extraordinary Appeal of Salman Toor’s ‘No Ordinary Love’
I write this post as a practicing artist from South Asia, not as an art critic.
While browsing Instagram sometime in late 2020, I was quite taken by a glaring green image shared by the Nature Morte gallery in New Delhi. The painting depicted four wiry men, two dancing like only South Asian men could dance, and the other couple, reclining over a drink. This room could have been anywhere, but to my mind, it was somewhere familiar. A house we would have frequented so many times.
That was my first time seeing Salman Toor’s painting. Toor is one of the most celebrated Pakistani American artists today. His trademark palette, strokes and stylized bodies make his work instantly recognizable. This year when it looked like a certainty that I will be relocating to Baltimore from Ahmedabad, one of the things I was the most excited about was the opportunity to witness Toor’s paintings in person. I made it a point to visiting the Baltimore Museum of Art for Toor’s “No Ordinary Love” despite my jetlag. I stared at this wonderfully curated show deeply struck by the extraordinary tenderness of his work. His training as a draftsman and classical painter comes through his work. His strokes, his lines, and his colours stayed with me. I visited the show a few times thereafter.
How do we define his work?
Neither his technique nor his medium is novel. His paintings are not pretty wallpapers that can adorn manicured living rooms. The singular strength of his work, if I could say so, is that his paintings suck you in. They coax you, cajole you, even force you, to make you deal with them. He is an artist of the everyday. His appeal arises from his sense of humour, a diva-like-irreverence, playfulness about his identity and a deep commitment to his artistic vision. His gleeful insertion of himself into the canvass is not like the awe-inspiring self-portraits of Kahlo. Most of his men are femme or seen through queer lens. Toor’s world is not mystical or magical, but of the mundane. There are paintings about museum visits, cab rides, (many) bar scenes, and intimacy with other men. We bear witness to the process of seeing like Toor; we learn to see the object that is being shown. He makes us desire his desires. Seemingly random objects are all huddled together in his edgy “fag puddles’’. Phallic and gluteal part along with footwear, candles, phones, and sartorial heaps; objects of desires interacting organically all are displayed in one picture plane. Many of these objets d’art are flaunted from inside vitrines, highlighting their own embeddedness, while alluring onlookers’ gaze.
The seduction of Toor’s works lies in the fact that he shows you the world he inhabits with pride, with irony and style. His canvasses scream green and emerald, they are luminescent with the everyday. The narratives we witness are undoubtedly from Toor’s life. By the looks of it, his life is of someone privileged and loved. His central persona is around close friends and wistful lovers. Despite the motley crowd his persona is surrounded with, he could paint loneliness so honestly.
He tells you as no one has ever told you, how queer South Asian masculinities look like. However, his paintings are not just about that. He layers his work with the art traditions he is deeply familiar with. Be it Titian’s Venus, Van Dycks’ Rinaldo and Armida, Amrita Sher-Gil’s Composition, or a Mughal miniature depicting Krishna and the Gopis; he recreates those as only he could.
His landscapes are reminiscent of the Pakistan of his childhood, the bungalows, the lawn, and the roads are familiar to people growing up in South Asia in the 1990s. His perspectives could have been yours if you knew where to look. But because you did not, he points those out to you now. You are rendered a puddle of nostalgia yourself.
The extraordinary, “No Ordinary Love” will be displayed at the Baltimore Museum of Art till 22nd October.
No Comments