The most remarkable aspect of the Kasauli Art Centre was a radical hospitality that it afforded the resident artists, participants and visitors. The workshops marked a shift in the nature of ‘art camps’. Here was a family home, with its rooms and domestic spaces converted into artists studios and living quarters. Families of the invited artists were welcomed. The living and dining room transformed from venues of lectures and slide shows to sites of elaborate dinners, music and dancing that continued through the night. Fancy dress birthday parties for the children featured masks and costumed fashioned by the resident artists. Vivan’s birthday on 28th May was the occasion for memorable barbeques and parties that feature in correspondence through the ‘Kasauli years’, as do the home-made wine and mushrooms that Vivan cultivated at Ivy Lodge. The number and type of beverages consumed were marked against each artist’s name in ‘drink charts’. Artists made caricatures of each other and struck dramatic poses for staged photographs. Even as work developed with a sharing of ideas and intense discussions, birthday parties and extended dinners cooked in the family kitchen incubated an intergenerational kinship. This gallery is dedicated to the special ‘place’ that was the Kasauli Art Centre with a focus on the people and friendships that formed the ethos of the all its activities.
