Interview for IDC: Anil Gupta (Inkline Studio)
This man is someone I consider as a friend and is an open book. This isn’t even a third of the interview. No introduction is needed for this extraordinary man and artist.
If you did go to college what college did you go to?
“I was a college dropout I went to school in Bombay, India at a well-known Institute for art from 1981 to 1982 and then got my BFA bachelor’s degree in finance for art in two years which had to do with graphic design so I just did that in the beginning of my career.”
Do you find it important to have preliminary courses in Business and finance in order to make art a successful career?
“Art is no different from seeking any other kind of money seeking activity. Art could be leisurely, art can be therapeutic, and art is absolutely a key instinct of our psyche. As a caveman we try to draw, as a kid we try to pick up crayons and draw. It seems to be in the DNA level. It’s an activity that seems to come pretty naturally, but with any activity that is natural it can always turn into commercial. For example dancing could be natural and it could be feel good but once you’re out on that stage you could make money off of it cause you’re providing your skills to the public. Having said that many people starting out at a young age with art have no idea that they will end up making a career out of it. For my own example when I was 12 and I loved drawing I didn’t know I was going to be a “commercial artist”. I was doing it because it felt right and you don’t want to take that pressure of pure financial gains from something that you love, because you can’t put the magic in it. It’s very hard not to put in your soul and art into it because then your only goal is to make money. Becomes almost mechanical. A machine for example. It is important to understand the gain from the art and I think that situation doesn’t come in your life until you’re reaching your 20s. Where everyone else is becoming doctors, accountants, and lawyers what have you, they are using the courses you know the majors that they had to seek jobs and money. So as an artist you mingle with your friends that go with the usual route of making money and it seems little safer if you asked me. A doctor can go and just make money guaranteed you could just go out there and make money, but art for example is extremely risky from that point of view. As a kid born in India competition is pretty severe parents often push their children to seek out jobs that will guarantee them money, life supporting you know well you could secure your life and make sure you have a roof over your head and Feed yourself. It’s like a survival type of society in India so when you break the news to your mom or dad your going to be an artist they start worrying about you. Extremely a gray area so yes you have to be extremely focused and bold and persuasive and resilient if you’re going to pursue art as a career and I can speak from my experiences I was really strong at it and I knew there’s nothing else I would do otherwise. So of course that’s how I took art and I’m still doing it. I was very fortunate to have found myself in the right place at the right time. If I was in a village somewhere or like a suburb I probably wouldn’t have been successful but art also resides and culminates and survives in location. That is the key if you look into the history people were in the right place at the right time. Da Vinci was from Venice, which was the city at the time and allowed him to make art for people who would sponsor and pay for it. Pretty sure there are people in remote areas and the suburbs that have skill levels but no means of applying that and making a career out of that.”
Do you feel that artists need to have something that makes their art different from other artists? To make that Clear, I know that you will never make the same tattoo twice. Why is that?
“I see what you mean. But those are personal goals and those are personal standards. Not repeating something, to me, is ethical. Those are ethical issues. If a client is being told that tattoo is unique to their body, it is pretty personal to them. So they’re walking around out there with this tattoo on them with the belief that they have this unique piece they are proud of and came to me, sat down with me, and they spoke to me over consultation and we drew something up and you can’t make it again; it is one of a kind. Once you establish that belief it would be unethical to then copy that and make money off of it on someone else, but that is my opinion on the matter, my standard. In many ways there are things out there called flash art, which is when you walk into a tattoo parlor and the walls are plastered with different tattoos with numbers next to them and you just pick one and now the whole town is having the same tattoo that you have. That’s the difference between a custom tattoo studio and a regular tattoo parlor. Which is also a legitimate and I would say pretty much the majority of most tattoo artists in America are flash Studios out there. That is how I’m different from them; you know that custom is personal.”
When it comes to a custom tattoo studio do you think it’s almost a little more fulfilling because of the personal attachment to the clients?
“Um, customization is the peak of art. Personalization and customization I hate to say it but it is kind of like the elitist style. So for like example if you are to buy a Ferrari they will literally take your butt and make the impression in the main seat with your butt and it will be that car made specifically for how big your ass, I mean butt, is. It’s like what is the difference between the rich man’s house and the poor man’s house. The rich man has all this money to get every line of the house down to the exact T that he wants. So that’s the key of it. I find myself catering to that kind of market. So that’s pretty much the key to me, customization.”
So you wouldn’t per se judge someone like Jackson Pollock, who made his living and his art off of repetition of the same product?
“Life emulates art, but then art also emulates life. There was a time when somebody must have started doing something original. We live in a time of conveniences. So when you go to write a poem you don’t go use or like rent the language. You don’t reinvent the wheel. You pretty much go and read a dictionary of the meaning and then you go and write a poem. So you are in other words synthesizing your thoughts in the form of a poem in someone else’s language. There you go, you are actually in short copying someone else’s thoughts or at least they have written down the meanings so it would just be unproductive to go reinvent everything. We just use a lot of those things and we put together to the best of our knowledge. Back to the question ‘would I Judge Jackson Pollock?’; art had been recycled many times over with genres like Art Deco and Art Nouveau. We had genres where we had Impressionism, Cubism, and so on. But each time you see the genre each person is trying to make it into their own unique style and is doing their best to put his or her own spin on it. But there has already been a pre-established foundation of other old masters that have done this job so well.”
