Late one night, perhaps an hour or two after midnight, I peeked into Skypak's Project for Enhancement of Art Realization (SPEAR). A quick browse took me to paintings by Deepak Shinde, who was then featured at SPEAR. In the early '80s, Shinde shifted from interior Maharashtra to Mumbai, wondering what his future would be.Now, as the '90s come to a close, he has begun his migration to the Net. His work on display at SPEAR showed that he was a much-changed man. He was painting with a renewed vision - something that his presence on the Net should have made obvious. On an impulse, I sent an e-mail to SPEAR in the hope that they would pass it on to Shinde and an old bond would be renewed. In a flash, I had a response. It was from Dilip Kulkarni and he assured me that the message would reach Shinde. Was it, like, the Dilip Kulkarni, chairman of Skypak, answering the mail personally? Yes, came the reply, "I enjoy answering e-mail from visitors to the site. SPEAR is something close to my heart."Spear is part of the Skypak website at www.sky-serve.com. Expectedly, it has plenty of corporate content, littered amongst which is access to a cool juke box, a chat room, a page that lets you send chocolates, cakes, flowers and silver coins to anyone in several Indian cities and even a video of Kulkarni with him seated before - what else? - a painting (Barwe, I think). You can even set up an appointment with the artist currently featured on the site for a personal on-line one-to-one conversation. Last week, you could have been chatting up Anjolie Ela Menon on the site. For art lovers, this offers an unprecedented opportunity to view the latest work of well-known artists and engage them in conversation.Art sites are quite popular though the design of many would make a nuclear winter look cosy by comparison. Art Today, a gallery which is part of the group that publishes this magazine, has a website (at www.india-today.comatoday) that draws art lovers and buyers from all over the world. This week, a visitor to Art Today's cybergallery wrote in to say that he discovered the prints of M.F. Husain's Madhuri series of paintings at the site. "I have been looking for prints of the series for a long time and had pretty much given up hope of ever finding any," he says.Which more or less explains why Kulkarni, a well-known patron of Indian art, is so enthusiastic about SPEAR. "The sheer number of the audience which is available through the Net has prompted us to take SPEAR on to the World Wide Web," he says. Dealers of Indian art would do well to encourage this trend..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}(Arun Katiyar is executive editor of India Today Group Online)Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jan 12, 1998--- ENDS ---
