The Artful Life of R. Vijay :
A conversation with Waswo X. Waswo

Premjish Achari

Premjish Achari: Is the book The Artful Life of R. Vijay about your collaboration with each other…or…

Waswo X Waswo: My publisher Shane Suvikapakornkul at Serindia Contemporary, who published Men of Rajasthan, had wanted to put out a book about the miniature paintings that I’ve done with R. Vijay. There were several authors that we considered to write the book, but Annapurna Garimella came back with the most unique proposal. She wanted to write about the collaboration from Rakesh’s perspective. Her great interest is vernacular Indian art, so rather than approaching the work in the usual manner, i.e., how I worked with Rakesh, or how we worked in tandem, she approached it from the standpoint of how this Indian bazaar painter adapted to working with an American who shifted his focus from the traditional to the contemporary. The first thing Annapurna told me was that if she wrote the book it would be titled “The Artful Life of R. Vijay”. My name would not be on the cover. It took a few days for me to accept this, but soon I realized it was the perfect idea, and the one that would make the book particularly interesting.