The art of Antje Weber is profoundly German. It takes the day to day things of life and raises them to the level of objects of contemplation and aesthetic appreciation. I have purposely not used the word ?pleasure? or ?enjoyment? for art is not an ice-cream. And when an ice-cream cone becomes art, it is not longer an object to be enjoyed.
That is why the gilded lily leaves, the delicate stalks of reeds and blades of grass, and the cows lurking between planes of colour on the canvas are no longer what they are in life. On canvas, they are no more than pigment, texture and forms, something that was never there before?and in the case of a good artist will never be there again.
Ms Weber is also a versatile artist, using three-dimensional viking boats, found objects and odds and ends to create magical dioramas and assemblages that grow out of their spaces into the world around them. True art is that which does not mimic life. It creates it.
But Ms Weber, like all those who create life, roots it in place and time. Her present works exhibited at the Arpana Gallery in Siri Fort, Delhi, are rooted in India today, with its rubber sandals, tea cups, rivers and ponds, shoes, textiles and stray cattle. They are all there as art.
And yet her art is profoundly German. It is not the art of the loud-mouthed Wagner nor of that mountebank of death, Adolf Hitler. It is the Germany of Karl
Marx, who could predict the revolt of 1857 and the eventual fall of the British Raj, who could extol the importance of the unity of India and see the threat to India?s future from the evils of caste and religious fanaticism, never once having visited the country.
It is this cosmopolitan Germany that we hope to see once the fracture imposed by the victors of World War II has healed. This Germany is visible through the soft light of Ms Weber?s art. That is why a visit to her exhibition gives one the feeling of having regained a lost world. The show is well worth a visit.