Questions of Originality and DJ-ying Art: In the Context of Confluence III by Roy Thomas

(Artist Roy Thomas with Confluence III at Harvest 2018)

Piracy was the first response of the creative hackers (creators are hackers and hackers are definitely creative) to the idea of copyright protectionism. They took the post-modern articulation of Walter Benjamin from his modern times that any work of art was liable to be reproduced in the age of mechanical reproduction, and took it to a different dimension by turning the very act of reproduction into piracy; copying without license. Benjamin had anticipated the collapse of the original therefore the death of the author which would be articulated later by both Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault in almost same contexts, however he had never thought the reproduction would give birth to a different industry altogether. In the post-digital world of the new millennium there have been demands from various quarters to free copyright altogether and make piracy in a way authorized by the industry as well as the system. To thwart the stringent copyright laws there were movements that heralded the idea of copyleft; it was at once an antonym to copyright and also a left liberal position that gives both the creator and the hacker complete freedom to use images, texts, music, footages, software and so on without fearing punitive actions.

(work by Richard Hamilton)

Copyleft movement has in a way legitimized hacking though such legitimacy has not yet been honored by a society runs on/by profited orient capitalism and its various laws. The term copyleft did not last though the ideas that put forward in the beginning of the new millennium gave a new status to the hacker as a creator and this new found creator could get market legitimacy easily provided he uses not just one source but many and mixes them up to create something absolutely new. In the music industry DJ-ying has been almost a norm since the hip-hop years of 1990s, which grew side by side with the graffiti art and protest art that both vandalized and appropriated existing spaces and images. But that was considered to be at the best another possibility of creativity and at the worst the cases of vandalism. But official copyright free projects, programs, publications and software radicalized the way of creating works of art of various genres. Be it music, cinema, video or visual art, the artist has been given a sort of ‘right’ over the existing sources which he/she could appropriate or manipulate in order to create a new meaning or a new sense of authorship, which constantly denies itself and yet affirms the possibility of it becoming a ‘new’ original.

(Fountain by Duchamp)

This ‘new’ original is an illusionary proposition though inevitable; one cannot overlook their emergence and success in the creative field. This could be called a sort of art DJ-ying which in essence does not reproduce a work of art exactly the way a reproduction machine would do with a text or image. What happens in the Benjaminian mechanical reproduction is the reproduction of something that multiplies the object/event/text/music or whatever thereby denying existence to the original. Mechanical precision, especially made possible by the digital reproduction all the more makes Benjamin an undeniable truth about reproducibility but in the DJ-ying acts what one sees is not the Benjaminian reproduction but a sort of creative vandalism, absolute irreverence to the maker of the original. It is not the denial of the original but cannibalizing of the one. In Benjamin we could see the stopping of the history of an image as its history too gets reproduced with each reproduction, but in the case of DJ-ying acts of creativity it is a simultaneous extension of the history and the production of a new one. The source image or source software has its own history and use and the DJ-ying of it creates a new history of the thus created image and also carries forward the history of the source image.

(Piero Manzoni)

I started thinking of these issues when I was asked by a friend in Delhi after seeing a work of art titled ‘Confluence III’ by artist and my friend, Roy Thomas, exhibited in the ongoing annual exhibition titled ‘Harvest-2018’ about the ‘originality’ of the painting. The artist makes use of three images in this work; one the Les Demoiselles de Avignon, The Damsels of Avignon by Pablo Picasso, Vasanthasena by Raja Ravi Varma and the images of two sharks perhaps by the artist himself. Now the question raised by the young friend is this: If an artist is ‘using’ the images painted by other artists, as the dominant image in his painting, how could it be called an original work of art? Why shouldn’t it be called a clever copy of other established paintings? These questions need a bit elaborate answers. In the following paragraphs I would explain how works like this one by Roy Thomas stands evidence to the contemporary DJ-ying in art. At the outset itself, I want to say that here I am not going to make any value judgment about any works instead I would bring forth some examples from art history and say how DJ-ying is a new form of art and also an inevitability. Do not ask me how long such works of art are going to be in the race and successful in the market. They are questions whose answers should be sought elsewhere.

(Ravi Varma and Atul Dodiya)

When we stand in front of a work of art like ‘Confluence III’, certain words pertaining to creativity come to our minds: originality, plagiarism, paraphrasing, reference, quotation and imitation. Each word has a particular meaning and a contextual meaning. Here in the context of art, originality means nothing but a unique piece of art which has been the result of the mental and physical labor of the artist who is divinely inspired. This is a very disputable argument but for the time being we have to take it as it is. Plagiarism is something when some artist steals an image from another artist or an existing repertoire of images and never mentions the source or author while it is a known fact to other people. Paraphrasing is an act that you create an image that has the same meaning as some established image or object and the moment your image is forwarded the other meaning of the established image comes to the mind of the people. Reference is a sort of acknowledging the visual source while using it fully or partially in the work of art. Quotation is an act of quoting an image from an established work of art or object or event within your own work of art in order to enhance the relevance of your work. Imitation is held as one of the fundamentals of art but in today’s time imitation is considered to be mere charlatanism. One may suddenly think of mediatic realism or photo realism which has all what I have mentioned before. But mediatic realism is not DJ-ying art, but it is an art form that uses an established realist image as proliferated by media in order to create a private mythology or meaning that is relevant to the cultural society or society in general.

(Vasantasena by Ravi Varma)

DJ-ying act in visual art however is not any of the above but still has certain characteristics of the said parameters. It questions originality by bringing in established images or objects. Interestingly there is nothing new in questioning the originality in art or by art. A new art form has emerged by questioning the conceptual or formal authenticity of an existing work of art or a tradition of art making. It is therefore an extension and denial. Marcel Duchamp brought in the industrially made urinal in the gallery and called it ‘Fountain’ with a signature ‘RMutt 1917’ and questioned the very idea of making art. He believed that art was not about originality and originality is a claim and it could be claimed by adding a signature to the ready-made object. Later in 1961, Piero Manzoni signed living human beings and turned them to works of art. It was a critique of the originality or authority of the signature in the post Benjaminian world. There are many plagiarist artists in the world and let us not talk about them. We see a lot of references, quoting and paraphrasing in the contemporary works of art. Reference could be a famous gesture or a silhouette of an image. And quotation may come through the actual reproduction of a work of art partially or fully but not in the original dimensions but still comprising only a minor part of the work at present. DJ-ying Art has all of it and it has been predominantly a new millennium art practice.

(Damsels of Avignon by Picasso)

While Indian modernists like MF Husain paraphrased works of art like Guernica and so many other photo realists artists literally copied the established images, the actual DJ-ying in art was started more or less by Atul Dodiya in the new millennium. Though he has been showing the tendencies of visually quoting other artists and referring to photographs like other mediatic realists, in the body of works that he exhibited in a solo exhibition titled ‘Experiment with Truth’ Dodiya goes full on in DJ-ying art. He paints the works of other artists like Raja Ravi Varma, Marchel Duchamp, Gerard Richter, Pablo Picasso and so on and at times without adding any other element to generate a new meaning. At other times, he adds a silhouette or a shadow just to give a hint that it is not simply a copy of the existing work but a work that could carry forward the elements of the existing work fully or partially. When it comes to his work Gangavataran, Dodiya directly mixes up two artists namely Raja Ravi Varma (an oleograph of the same theme) and Marcel Duchamp’s ‘the Nude Descending the Staircase’. Descending of Ganga is replaced by the descending nude making two cultures meet, two styles mingle, two attitudes co-habit in the same ‘production’ and yet create a meaning/harmony (in traditional terms). Salman Rushdie in his latest novel, ‘The Golden House’ too lavishly uses such a technique where he uses the classical film sequences instead of narrating the story that we have been following since the beginning. He even uses a Duchampian title, ‘The Bride Stripped off by Her Bachelors’.

(Confluence III by Roy Thomas)

Roy Thomas, his work Confluence III too does a similar act. He quotes Damsels of Avignon fully but with the sides reversed. And almost hiding the two central figures in Picasso’s work, Roy Thomas places the Vasanthasena of Raja Ravi Varma. Here is a mutual referencing; Picasso uses sex workers for his Damsels and here in Ravi Varma, Vasantasena too is a courtesan in the Sanskrit play Mruchakhatika by Bhasa. So the artist in a way does not cancel out any women from the ‘original’ painting. Without obliterating he simply hides one with the other; let me say one style with another, one time with another, one frame of reference with another. And we also have to understand that the Damsels works is simply an evocation but never the Damsels painting by Picasso. Hence it is a sort of paraphrasing but keeping close to the heels of the referent. It is never the original. So is the case with Vasantasena of Ravi Varma by Roy Thomas. She is just an evocation of the original and the evocation also could be the evocation of many Vasantasenas by many other calendar artists in the market. Seen in this context, Roy Thomas’ work is neither an imitation of Picasso nor that of a Ravi Varma. It is an original! That is the possibility of DJ-ying Art. One could take two elements and force them into a new context and create a new meaning. The presence of the sharks gives us a feeling that these referent images are inside an aquarium. What does that non-existent aquarium mean? It means nothing but an exaggeration of the back ground; that’s what happens in an aquarium. What if Roy Thomas was not really focusing on the images from Picasso or from Ravi Varma, and his focus was simply on the sharks? That’s how DJ-ying works. They may not be giving much attention to the instrumentals but to the scratching sound created in the console. All the thrill lies in there.  

Meaning Meets an Unfamiliar Word: TK Harindran’s Movie ‘Bay Image Now’

(from TK Harindran's Movie)

Images stand free yet are not frozen. They are called painterly or photographic images. Mental images can be frozen and still but as mind does not stand still they always show the possibility of a motional picture. Images that do not stand still or frozen are called cinematic images. And interestingly a moving image always anticipates a moment of stillness; a chance to be frozen beyond all its intrinsic nature to move. Today, we have mechanical devices that could freeze a moving image and technology has also developed devices that could move frozen images. In both there is a sense of logic defying anxiety and for a creative person this anxiety is always a part of his/her creativity. Hence a moving image stopped in motion abruptly resulting into an awkward stillness engenders a new reality often beyond the conception of a logical mind. It defies at once form and objectivity; it dissolves shapes and colours. The real (image) changes into a sort of unreal or surreal. Same is the possibility when a still image is forced into action; the mechanical intervention functions against the image and the human mind that often likes to see still as stillness for deeper perception and contemplation. Stillness is that human minds always seeking for but it is the same that evades its perpetual pursuit.

(artist and filmmaker TK Harindran)

When a still image is made to move without challenging its stillness but let it float and flow through time and merge it with other images without resorting to montages, it leaves a small lacunae between the two images, unperceivable and intangible yet unavoidable. Technological precision perhaps could diminish the gap between the merging of one still image and the emergence of the other without juxtapositions but still it exists asking for the viewer to delve into it and to ask what lies between them and what makes them appear without conflicts or a seeming continuity without disruption. This is not just in the case of an image going into another one, asserting its progression or underlining a painful transition from one moment to another or a much awaited escape into another frame but it happens between two words uttered with or without the intention to make sense; like a gap between a kiss and the parting of lips. It is as tender as well as terrifying like two disparate words making a bearable or unbearable meaning. When we fail to see these minutest gaps we live with a sense of security; for us the world remains the same as the scenes before our eyes remain the same. We do not notice how one scene becomes another. Terror changes nor just the physical landscape, it changes the mental scape too.

(from Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera)

When TK Harindran, the artist who has been doing art for the last thirty five years make a ‘movie’ titled ‘’Bay Image Now Part I’, I feel he does nothing but capturing this ‘terror’ that hides between two still images. It need not necessarily be terror always; it could be tenderness, it could be a resolution, a parting and a rejection. Through these evolves history and as an artist Harindran takes notice of this transition; this silent whispering between two images. Harindran travels from the bay of Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal and captures the images of his liking with his analogue camera. When he clicks a picture, he does not know what comes next. Unlike the digital camera, one cannot be trigger happy when one uses a film camera. There is always a sense of optimising the limited number of frames. But as one knows that any kind of optimism means the proper use of twenty six frames or twenty nine (whatever be the number) that itself poses the maximum limitation. It puts the photographer into an unprecedented predicament; to click or not to click. One clicks freely only when one knows that if clicked once there is always an image registered however faulty or grainy it could be. That is a surety that experimental photography artists happily use; they like the chance findings; a blur, a shaky feel, an over exposure and so on (I am reminded of Pablo Bartholomew developing his fungus infested negatives and coming out with a magical world of images). Harindran too does that to certain extent but as parsimonious as he is with the films, paints and food, each frame for him is a commitment made to the republic of art.

(from MF Husain's Through the Eyes of a Painter)

These photographs were taken, as I mentioned elsewhere during a trip and they were lying in his personal archives till he decided to make this thirty seven minutes long movie. The cynics of the scene could maximum say that it is/could be a slideshow with a sound track. But the intelligent one would see the ruptures and reconciliations, the transition of images and their terrors and intoxications. Harindran is extremely conscious about the ways in which two images are separated from the other. They are not supposed to make a narrative exactly the way a set of paintings is not supposed to make a continuous narrative. But together they are supposed to make sense. The images in the ‘’Bay Image Now’ are not done to make a continuous narrative. They are supposed to protect their autonomy but that moment of transition, that moment of merging and emerging, that moment of transition without montage makes the viewer to look for continuity that only could give him/her the solace of watching. Seeing is a solution as well as a resolution. Anything that breaks both could be bringing violence into the act of viewing. Harindran contains the violence of singular images within this transition gaps that are non-palpable. The sombre sound track leads the viewer from one scene to the other. One could at times ask whether the artist could have increased the pace of this transition in order to minimize the tension or decreased the pace considerably so that it no longer looked like a movie.

(from Tyeb Mehta's Koodal)

TK Haridran, who would be known in history as TKH may not clear such apprehensions of the viewer. But the viewer him/herself could virtually or imaginatively increase or decrease the pace of the transition; suddenly he/she comes to know that the increased or decreased speed of the images would not make any sense at all. The increased pace would have made the transition feel like a spin and the reduced pace a drag. The three or three and half second existence of images before the eyes, suddenly we realize that is the basic tolerance s/pace of any human being when it comes to a single note of a sound or a single image. If one has to look at something more than three seconds there should be a movement in that image or rather the image should show the possibility of a movement. That is the logic of a movie. One may suddenly be reminded of the many hours long dragging movies of Andy Warhol. There, the image does not move but the people move when knocked out of their tolerance level. Harindran does not play a Warhol here for many have played it already. The subjective position that often a camera holding person asserts (directly or indirectly) is almost nil here because these could be images culled from elsewhere too. When such a possibility is always there, Harindran decides to be literally an absent presence than a present absence.

(Andy Warhol's Sleep in a Gallery)

Moving with a still or movie camera has fascinated many a creative person in the world. In 1929 Dziga Vertov, the Russian experimental film maker made a movie named ‘Man with a Movie Camera’. This movie shows a man moving around with a camera and following made up and natural events, at times presenting himself within the frame in difficult angles, even putting himself into dangerous positions. This film had made a benchmark in documentary making; a sort of non-intrusive or non-judgemental registering, which later in the last century had given birth to movie styles like Camera Verite which could be akin to Art Povera in fine arts. A sort of stark realism that almost reduces art from an art work. M.F.Husain when worked on his movie titled ‘Through the Eyes of a Painter’(1967), I am sure he must have been familiar with Vertov’s path breaking movie. What makes Husain different is his preoccupation (feverishly romantic preoccupation) with the moving images that he captures with his camera. Just after three years Tyeb Mehta does his documentary of images ‘Koodal where too we find his preoccupation with non-narrative images though they are culled from the possible narrative actual events.

(Baraka film poster)

Harindran stands closer to the American film maker Ron Fricke who had done his fantastic movie of images titled ‘Baraka’. Baraka is a visual treat as if it were a touristic feast but Harindran’s Bay Image Now is not a visual feast. He places the images exactly the way he would look at them in an album. For the artist, the images are ‘image possibilities’ also; he could convert them into painterly images. But they are not just painterly images either; they are the disjointed alphabets of a language that still seeks the rest of it strewn elsewhere by fate or by history. They are alphabets of different languages seeking to become one language. It is a Babel, an unfinished project, showing human perseverance and plight. It is a language that has lost its meaning but still had a meaning at some point of time remote. For Harindran these images are the meanings that have not yet found their language. Bay Image Now could be a meeting point where meaning of another word meets an absolutely strange word. A must watch movie it is.  

Work of Art as a Text and the Viewer as a Reader: The Dilemma of Young Artists and Critics

(Shoes by Vincent Vangogh)

Here comes another interesting question from the same young writer and curator, Bhasha Mewar. She says that she relies too much on text when she comes face to face with a work of art. The image is replaced with the textual understanding. When an artist asks her to respond and comment on a work of art she finds herself at a loss for words. Mewar says that it would be interesting to have a class named ‘Reading a Work’. The question is then how to read a work of art or how to interpret a work of art. Can an interpretation of a work of art possible without the help of a critical text or a theoretical template? Considering the number of art writing around us till date it should be natural for us to think that with textual help or not we have been reading works of art in one or the other way. If we have not been reading it, art historians, critics, art writers, gallerists, dealers, journalists and catalogue writers have been doing it for us for many of years. Hence, it is not advisable to say that ‘reading a work of art’ is an entirely new thing for us. Still the question remains: how to read a work of art? Or, in other words how to respond to a work of art?

In our life there are so many things that do not need a user’s manual for effectively executing those particular tasks and one of which is finding the breast of the mother. The child with some innate organic understanding reaches out to the breast and starts sucking. This could be happening because of the organic intelligence or the bodily intelligence. So is the case of sex; one really does not need a user’s manual though practice makes things perfect over a period of time as in any other case. Unlike suckling and making love, there are other bodily functions that the human beings have detached from the physical consciousness to the mental awareness. This happens with a lot of enculturation of mind and body. For example, we do not drink water from any gutter. We need clean water to quench our thirst. But at the same time, because we are scientifically aware of our thirst and the properties of water, we do not analyze our thirst and the scientific composition of water the moment we see a glass of water. We respond to the glass of water with our bodily intelligence (satisfying the need) and mental awareness (checking whether it is clean water or not).

(Call it a 'beautiful' picture)

Most of the people can enjoy a song or the sight of a flower or in that case anything that goes as ‘beautiful’. Though beauty lies ‘in the eyes of the beholder’ as the very beholding is a conditioned act of perceiving, the moment you add ‘artistically’ or ‘aesthetically’ to the word beauty people become a bit self-conscious. They have been conditioned in such a way that they feel that anything artistic that has been approved by the academics and scholars is beyond their comprehensive faculties and understanding. This is not because that the scholars have created an iron curtain between the work of art and its abilities to impart beauty or meaning to the perceiver but because the very idea that the work of art has a special purpose and mission, as in helping the people to sublimate their baser instincts, to make them better human beings and people with finer sensibilities and so on, they just cringe away from the given works of art. They freely enjoy those works of art that are mediated via popular media and are enjoyed by all alike. Mostly they find superficial symbolism more appealing than the hidden, scholastic and extremely private and esoteric symbolisms that a work of art supposedly carry within them.

As the structural linguists have pointed out and the post structuralists have taken it much ahead, anything and everything could be a sign and at once not a sign. A sign could signify the same thing only within a compatible visual/linguistic culture and it could mean another thing or nothing in another incompatible culture. As a sign has lost its divinity and finality, the text which is an ensemble of signs also as lost it final authority, precariously opening itself up for further interpretations and manipulations in different cultures in different times. A text in that way could create many subtexts that could show their allegiance to the original text or could exist far away from it. A visual sign also therefore has singular as well as varying functions in varying times and places. Hence, a work of art produced during the 15^th century need not necessarily be understood today exactly the way it was understood then. While the meaning of the visual text of the 15^th century remains the same within the image as well as the history of its visual nature including the histories of its maker and his times, it also opens itself for further interpretations and evaluations.

(John Berger)

Many believe that creating of a subtext out of a work of art or rather the reading of a work of art is completely a theoretical job which does not have anything to do with the human agency. This argument of reading a work of art purely in a mechanical fashion gives birth to a set pattern of understanding it as per the given ideological or theoretical template that is employed for decoding and interpreting the work of art. However, this reading also is done by a human being or a set of human beings sitting in one place or functioning from different places. Even if an Indian Marxist uses Marxian critical parameters to understand or to read a work of art it would be different from a London based Marxist reading the same work of art. It would be different not just because one Marxist has got advantage over the other by virtue of being in an advanced country but because the very intellectual and emotional make of one Marxist would be fundamentally different from the other Marxist. While the theory remains the same the ways in which it is employed in reading a work of art could be different; for example, the Marxian interpretations of the Renaissance and the post Renaissance art by John Berger remains different even if an Indian Marxist would employ the same methodology for interpreting the same works or the works back at home. Hence, it is not the theoretical frame work that differs much in the hands of each critic but the ways in which the very theoretical fame work is understood and employed. This, one would say, could be close to the Zeitgeist theory, which means the environments determining the birth of a work of art.

(an MRI Scanner)

I always give this example of an MRI Scanner results that the machine produces during the scanning of a human body. Some insiders in the industry say that the MRI Scanning machines do not make the ‘picture’ of the given part of the body which is pushed into the scanner, instead it selects the most appropriate ‘feed’ which is already fed into the memory of the machine. That means reading is a sort of selection process and this results into the selection of the closest approximate. There could be disputes regarding the veracity of this statement regarding the MRI Scanning machines as there are people who have already rejected the ‘feed’ theory. But in the case of reading a work of art, this feed theory could be applicable because a work of art, however intrinsic its meanings are or whatever intrinsic meanings that it has, there is no mechanism to leave these meanings out to the viewer apart from the clues and symbolisms that are part of the collective unconscious of the people who witness these works of art. These cultural symbolisms would lead to the unraveling of the those precepts attached to those symbols and also its history and the ways in which such symbolisms have evolved, shaped and even reshaped themselves in the process. That means like the structural and the post structural linguists say this symbolism shouldn’t be the undisputed one; it could function only within a given cultural context even that could be global at certain levels. When such symbolisms are resistant to meaning making therefore remain opaque jeopardizing the possibilities of making subtexts out of it, it is not what the intrinsic meaning of the work of art that is conveyed to the viewer but what the viewer reads into the work of art as its meaning. This could be a reading based purely on the ideas that are already been imbibed by the viewer/critic/writer, which in turn becomes the ‘closest approximate’ than the actual ‘picture/meaning’ of the work. This kind of reading is prone to making errors; but at the same time, despite this possibility of committing errors, it opens up a possibility of getting ‘closer’ to a work of art.

To put it in simple terms, I would say, reading of a work of art or creating subtexts out of the visual texts or even interpreting works intrinsic meanings is a sort of readerly/viewerly projection than discerning what is given as the authorial text. While one cannot deny the existence of the authorial text/s however transparent or opaque it may be, the ‘knowledge/feed’ of the viewer makes it viable to ‘reading/interpretations’. This takes us to a zone where as readers of the works of art we are expected to make some efforts to gain some kind of ‘pre-knowledge’ about the possible symbolisms that could actually inspire artists to make their own private symbolisms. The idea of original therefore is denied actively here and each ‘original’ work of art that comes to us carries some sort of the pre-existing models in its own forms or in its altered versions; one needs good eyes to discern the possible symbolisms behind the seemingly ‘original’ works of art. This knowledge is prerequisite in reading a work of art and that is why people who are not inclined to gain this knowledge prefer to avoid ‘art’ or revel in the works of art whose symbolisms are known to all without much mediation. But the story does not end there.

(Chakde India poster)

Even when the popular symbolisms are enjoyed by people, the possibilities of them getting further interpreted are rampant as far as a critic who is well versed in popular symbolisms and their influence in socio-political and economic conditioning in general. I could take any popular film poster to explain this. Let us take the poster of one of the contemporary mainstream movies like Chak De India. The posters have various permutations and combinations of the young actresses from different regions of India who play the roles of hockey players in the Indian Women’s Hockey Team. We have the picture of Shah Rukh Khan as the coach of the team. The symbolism does not need any mediation for the people to enjoy the meaning of those posters. They understand Shah Rukh Khan and as they read, hear and see about the movie in magazines, newspapers, television and radio they understand the story line too. They understand how the girls are related to the man and how the man is related to his country and so on. But in the hands of a film critic/art critic who employs an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary critical practice to ‘read’ the film/posters could come up with different ‘readings’; for example one could interpret as the emblem of patriarchy and the critique of it. One could read it as the Muslim’s dilemma in order to prove his loyalty to his country; yet another one could see it as a feminist movie. One could watch it as a thriller. One could look for the editing and camera work. Another one could explain how a sports item is interpreted as a sort of war and aggression, and survival against all odds and so on. Perhaps, these are not intended by the poster maker (often they do) and nor are understood by the general public. The critic goes to it with a million of knowledge feeds and it becomes easier for him to read the film/poster in different ways.

(a painting by TK Harindran)

With a small exercise I would conclude this essay. Here is a small one foot by one foot painting, acrylic on canvas by Delhi based senior artist, TK Harindran. This untitled work comes from a series of works in the same style. Let us consider that we do not know anything about the artist and also we do not know anything about the context of the works of art. How do we read this work? As there is no preexisting literature regarding the work, we can only rely on the style. So we start by saying the following thing: It is not a figurative work. As it is not a figurative work, it is an abstract work. But suddenly you see the chance of looking at it and finding out some images. So you immediately correct yourself saying that it could be semi-abstract work. Then you keep looking at, you see there is a fish with an open mouth. Or is it a bird with an open beak? It all depends on your authority to exert and place the image in one place. But soon you find that it is a golden zigzag (a reversed sigma symbol?) placed in a vast area. Or could it be a landscape with a golden river winding through it? Or could it be a vast ocean where one could see golden symbol floating? It could be. Then you see the horizon. It looks like a horizon because you have already seen the surface as either land or see. Then what could be the yellow round with an orange spot in the middle which was earlier looking like the eye of a fish or the bird? This is the evening sun which is not seen in the frame reflecting on the water. This is the breast of a lady standing partially hidden. Is this stylized form of a genuflecting man? Does the artist have anything to do with the expressions of Rabindranath Tagore? See, a one foot by one foot work could generate three hundred words in me. Now if I was placing the work as a part of a series of work, don’t you think that I would have come up with around three thousand words in an effort to read this particular work of art?

Conflict of Theory and Practice Faced by Young Critics and Curators

Baroda based young curator and art writer (why I say art writer because even if one has a degree in art history and criticism he/she becomes an art historian or critic only when practices the discipline serious for some years and gains considerable authority in the process) Bhasha Mewar asks me this pivotal question: “It is hard to assimilate theory, modernism, structuralism, postmodern or any critical works with actual praxis. I would love to be more than just a descriptive writer and curator and really work on things that feel meaningful, although I am still quite a formalist (loving Raza and Rothko). So should I stick to my aesthetic predispositions or should I scratch the surface more?

Bhasha Mewar is no ordinary art writer; besides holding an art history degree she has a clinical psychology background as well as expertise in French pedagogical streams. A question of the above mentioned sort coming from this young curator/art writer amuses me a lot because she should have by this found out an answer to her own doubts as she is better equipped to answer those questions than anybody else. However, as this question is put to me, let me make an attempt to see what have been the reasons for this young professional’s ethical and existential troubles. I understand her question in the following manner: Mewar finds a considerable amount of disparity between theory and practice. She just doesn’t want another writer who ‘describes’ works. But she loves formalism. Should she be making an effort to go beyond what her heart tells?

Hoping that this is what Mewar has meant by her question I would say this is a rupture/division/break that has been present in most of the young professionals in the formative years. They find a lot of discrepancies between what has been learned and what they are supposed to practice or to see as practiced by people around. This, to begin with I would say is an occupational hazard. It is not just an art critic’s dilemma, it is the dilemma of many a professional. Compare the heartburn/break of a doctor who is trained to do some exceptional works finding him/herself caught in the typical bureaucratic conundrum that kills not only the spirit of the artist but also renders the expertise of the doctor obsolete. But eventually the doctor has to find a way; instead of complaining, she has to approach the situation with a new perspective. It is not by appeasing the corrupt system but by finding avenues where the system itself could be done away with and could establish a new system of/to practice.

The schism between theory and practice has this perennial and primordial philosophical question to back it up sufficiently. Some believe that theory is derived out of practice and some hold that practice is an offshoot of theory. Both are right in many ways. Sometimes theories are developed out of hypothetical projections based on the inferences made out of the existing knowledge or experience. At other times theories are made out of specific practices. Seen from a practitioners’ perspective, theories presupposes practice and only by observing a considerable set of practices one could come up with theories. That means both theory and practice exists in an indispensible mutuality. That also means one presupposes the other and the possibilities of canceling out each other are remote in their existence. This also makes us to consider the fact that both theory and practice maintain their autonomy giving birth to a situation where they could give an impression that they could mutually discard and carry on with their independent existence. This autonomy of theory as well as practice had taken away the organic relationship they had with each and almost become stencil format which could be applied to any situation so that fancy derivations could have been done. In practice it becomes style and in theory it becomes a school.

The danger of such autonomy could bring forth a situation where theory could develop a sort of practice independent of a practice which has its basis in skill, aesthetics, craft and general world and cultural views. The autonomy of practice could bring forth such jaded expressions that do not have any grounding in theoretical premises so that the practice could make contributions in the advancement of culture or cultural practices. The arrogance of mutual exclusion of theory and practice has been the hallmark of postmodern liberals they have shown some kind of charlatanism. This trickery makes theory so complicated and unachievable as well as inaccessible which in turn imparts it with some sort of authority, gravity, respectability and exclusivity. That’s why we see some people who are theoretically auto-reproducing types and are happy about their replication sans coitus pleasure and general aesthetics accompanies it. The same trickery makes art also exclusive as such kind of art pretends that it is overloaded with theory or the art is made out of theory. The same trickery could be seen in the case of autonomous art, again showing prowess in self-reproducibility so that more than coitus pleasure imparts the sense of a hatchery via incubation process. So on the one side we have Raqs Media Collective and on the other we have a whole of Buddha and other generic spiritual painters.

Seeing this diversity, it is quite natural for a young practitioner of criticism and curatorial practice to come to a conclusion that he/she is neither for the one nor for the other. Or he/she has all the chances to think that while one pursues theory for the sake of it, he/she inadvertently abandons the first love; that is art, which is, the formal values of art and aesthetics. And on the other hand when one follows art while throwing the bundle of theories into dust bin and goes around like a naïve and divinely inspired artist, one feels the amount of injustice one inflicts upon the society in the name of art. And possibilities are there these parties feeling this eerie sensation of earth moving under their feet. And what happens such feeling of instability occurs in one’s creative/professional life. It would cause a sense of schism/ a rupture/ a break. One starts feeling that he/she is two different beings while the former loves theory the latter actively rejects the same and vice versa.

This is caused by a tremendous sense of indigestion. One lives a divided life when it comes to the life of a critic or curator, which shouldn’t be the case with a real professional. In the case of a critic or a curator neither theory nor practice should take an upper hand as Shakespeare had put it ‘would lose both’. What does one do to overcome such a situation? My answer is that one should stop being two at a time. The schism caused by the over-determining nature of either theory or practice should be done away with first of all and the person should be able to see oneself as a wholesome being who does feel that theory too is art and art too is theory. And in the professional critic or curator this should not be working from two different faculties of his/her personality. The person in his waking hours and sleep as well should remain a wholesome personality who uses both theory and practice in understanding the premises within which a work of art is created and is understood, interpreted and disseminated. Once that oneness is achieved then art and theory wouldn’t look like two different entities.

In India and elsewhere the false notion of a theoretical art and non-theoretical art has been spread in such a rampant fashion that many students and young practitioners feel themselves terribly inadequate to practice both. Many artists have become hugely pretentious by employing half baked theories in their practices and many theorists have become terribly boring by employing much misunderstood art to explain their theories. They have created a coterie all over the world and via this they have created a new Brahminism; Brahminism that prevents people from understanding knowledge and aesthetics. Ignorance of the general public (or the public made ignorant by such art and theoretical practices) prevents them from asking questions. When questions are not asked, the arrogance of authority (of art and practice) could be exerted and a niche market economy could be developed around it. Keeping masses out of the practices is one way the capitalists employ in making them consumers. The consumers are never given either the ingredients or the technical know-how (otherwise every household would be making coco cola and pepsi).

Art critics and curators of the young kind should have faith in themselves. If they are theoretically sound they should use the knowledge to discard the chaff and save the grain. They should not make their knowledge to pass of chaff as grain as many do today. If they love aesthetical expressions devoid of theoretical burden, they should be using their theoretical understanding to historicize such aesthetics so that it could be put back to the social parlance of aesthetics rather than leaving them as unattended creations. Once the unity of personality that does not find theory and practicing mutually conflicting entities but as contributory streams, is achieved, the curators and critics could enjoy both theory and practice because in theory there is practice and in practice there is theory. May be the artist just doesn’t know that but the difference is the curator or critic knows it.

(all pics for representational purpose only. source net)

Women Seen and Remembered: the KG Subramanyan Erotica

K.G.Subramanyan painted women but never exuded sanguine personality a la Pablo Picasso. The latter’s paintings and drawings were filled images of women who were either sleeping or astonished by the presence of a ‘real’ minotaur (a surrogate of the artist himself) or the artist’s mesmerising gaze. They are more or less like animals caught in the headlights of a huge vehicle; troubled, frozen, immobile and dazed. But KGS’ women are not like those of Picasso’s. KGS in comparison with Picasso is more benevolent and less aggressive in his approach to women but I should add that is not less in his erotic verve compared to the 20^th century prolific genius. These initial thoughts came to me when I was standing before the works of KGS presented by the Art Heritage, New Delhi in collaboration with the Seagull Foundation, Kolkata. The show is titled ‘Women as Seen and Remembered’. The present ensemble consists of drawings by KGS done between 1953 and 2016. Before going further, let me say that it is a commendable show with curatorial precision though a curator’s name is not particularly mentioned and has a pleasant display strategy in place. Spread out in three spaces this show is a must watch one and is expected to run throughout the month of September 2018.

This show tells the viewer one thing; as believed by many, behind the scholastic veil and a sagacious appearance, hidden by the philosopher’s detachment and hoodwinked by the Spartan sartorial choices, there used to be a man who had been passionately at the opposite sex/the fairer sex/stronger sex and was depicting them in all the possible permutations and combinations. The first oil portrait of a woman is in the display and there more than capturing the cold posture of the sitter, KGS’ focus is more on the distribution of the subdued flesh brown and pink and the steady but hesitant brush strokes. From there KGS becomes a mature artist who could conjure up women in many moods through his lines and brush strokes. The initial hesitation or a sort of calculated approach towards the female form should be attributed to the political ideology that KGS was pursuing in those formative years. It is a well known fact that KGS was a leftist to begin with and ended up as a Gandhian. During his leftist days, I assume that KGS might have been restraining himself from looking at women as objects and viewing them as comrades in arms. That explains why KGS draws them with some sort of precision though characteristic details are more or less schematized so that the particularity of an individual is consumed by the generality of independent women.

Gandhian thoughts that came naturally through the educational ethos that was dominated by the doyens like Nandlal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ram Kinkar Baij must have confused KGS initially for the schematic representation of women the works of Bose and Mukherjee, especially their later works and the full bodied expressions of Baij both in his sculptures and paintings. The resolution in KGS came in such way that he could move away from schematic nature of representation and at the same time keep the sympathetic approach Baij always had for women, which in fact was devoid of male gaze, which I would say remains exceptionally unchallenged by any other Indian male modernist, especially we see Baij’s works against the expressionist and erotic orgy that the Progressives who came to the scene after the heydays of Baij. KGS did not fall into the Progressive rut (they remained there for long till they found their own visual styles that even turned into pure abstractions) but could maintain the sympathy for women and a kind of scientific sense pervaded those drawings done in 1960s and early 70s. R.Sivakumar, art historian who has studied KGS in depth observes that at this stage KGS approached the female body clinically and he knew where the joints were and where the sinews and muscles where. From the joints KGS let the rest of the limbs move like ‘puppets’ adding to stylisation and movement.

It was KGS’ forays into the studies of Indian folk and traditional art that helped him to liberate his notions about female form. The interim abstract period by late 1970s and 1980s which oscillated between schematic abstraction and schematic figuration, seemed to be the launching pad for KGS to go dynamically into the firmament of no bars hold sort of eroticism. In 1980s KGS achieves tremendous sense of freedom both in form and content. His graphic skills become fluid and he reaches to a stage where he could turn anything into a female form. Sivakumar once again observes that KGS has drawn more female forms than male forms when it comes to taking a curious census of it but he has counterbalanced it by drawing and painting male figures and so many male animal and monkey figures. With a tongue in cheek fashion but keeping his characteristic calm Sivakumar says that ‘thus he compensates the absence of male figures’ in his other works.

A ‘closet erotician’, if I could call KGS taking a lot of liberty with English language, KGS like Bhupen Khakar made it explicit that the official eroticism is a thing of suspension; there is nothing apprehensive or ambivalent about it. “I am an erotically driven artist,” KGS could have said but he never said so because he wanted his viewers to find some ambivalence in their own understanding and reading of his art rather than creating an apprehension about his own works. In that sense KGS was standing half of his body out of the closet and half of the body inside it. From the threshold and the liminal space of sagacity he could almost lampoon the middle class that looked at his works. In fact when he comes to flourish with his reverse paintings and later on his canvas paintings, this middle class space becomes all the more important in his works where he places all his women characters who are in various stages of auto-eroticism, enticing the absent, letting their body to be gazed at, involving in scandalous gestures almost imitating the terrific joy of fallacio. KGS scandalized the whole middle class existence and liberated its women from the clutches of the social mores. One may wonder then why KGS was never ostracised or censored for his works. I would say he could camouflage himself with his sagacity in appearance exactly the way Gandhi had managed his sexual experiments without getting into trouble with the public. The later revelations almost sixty years after his death must have tarnished the saintly side of Gandhi but as there wouldn’t be many who could come forward to play witness against KGS regarding his erotic endeavours.

When I say this readers may be slightly scandalized as they could think whether I am trying to implicate KGS of any sexual misconduct. Let me clear the air once and for all the time to come. I do not have any such aims and I do not have anything to hold against KGS’ art. KGS mercilessly looked at the hypocrisy of the middle class society and opened up the desires in an expressionist fashion. People needed to stay back and look at the works of KGS to understand the scathing critique that he had forwarded. He was a non-narrativist among the narrative artists of Baroda. The Baroda Narrative artists transcended the space but kept the narrative more or less ‘realistic’ (remember not naturalistic). Their approach to the space was unconventional but KGS’ approach to both space and narrative was absolutely unconventional. Following his tryst with the abstract expressionism of the 1950s and 60s and the encounters with artists like David Hockney KGS flattened his pictorial space and spread his characters out there almost treating them like cotton puppets, devoid of three dimensionality. As he progresses in age we could see how he gives more defined existence to the feminine characters and their extremely voluptuous and provocative postures.

There is a fair amount of emblematic approach in KGS’ rendition of women characters in his works. It is not always necessary that he narrates something within the pictorial format. There are many places where one image gives birth to another one and thereby creating an intrinsic logic of existence and there are times when KGS starts a mythological character and develops additional sub-deities around it. Dominated by the Devi cult of Bengal, many of his imageries have the Goddess Durga and her spoil, the Mahishasura. But in several of them they are in an erotic encounter, or in a playful banter. The Devi becomes quite an ordinary woman in a very normal space and an ordinary woman becomes a very special devi in a reified space; both could be seen in his works. KGS takes off from quotidian life and goes into the realm of mythology which could be remotely connected to the canonical but often remains a personal one. At other times KGS takes image references from the Kalighat paintings, Pata Chitras, murals, Ganjifas, playing cards, ivory medallions, colonial souvenirs and so on. It is not necessary for KGS to be always stuck to the folk and tribal art. A closer would reveal that KGS had gone through all the said sources and visual resources, which has earned him the qualification of being an eclectic. Interestingly, eclecticism is one word that KGS refers many times in his collection of essays and speeches titled ‘Creative Circuits’.

KGS has an Iyer’s laughter; the smirk of a cynic, the understatement of a black humorist, the overstatement of a satirist and also the godliness of a creator for he never makes any self lampooning efforts. The male figure which could be a surrogate of the artist is often seen as the one male who gazes from some part of the pictorial plane but hardly one finds even remotest self portrait in his works. KGS is not a chameleon, which many artists are in their works, but he becomes the  singular voyeur and commentator of the narratives as well as non-narratives in his works. Coming back to the male gaze part of his works; in these works where women are seen and remembered, he employs tremendous amount of male gaze and this gaze is not that of a sagacious person at all. KGS has dissected the human activities with a satirist’s eyes and one cannot say that he made fun of women rather he liberated them from their social clutches. From Christian mythologies to the Hindu ones, from the world folklores to the middle class stories, KGS surfed through many scenes and could get away without hurting too many sentiments. Lucky that he was not a Muslim and he had his pedigree to back him up so that his fallen angels and goddesses and middle class house wives in heat could stay and stare back as they do now. I do not think any woman however would like to be remembered the way KGS would make them up but definitely it is an exhibition that shows ‘women seen and drawn’ by a trickster eroticist.

Delhi Contemporary Art Week: Art is the Last thing in their Minds

(Begum Tyeba Lipi work presented at the DCAW)

Delhi Contemporary Art Week (DCAW) is in its second edition. Held at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre Visual Arts Gallery, this four day affair is a mini-fair with tall claims that include ‘art education’ and a resistance to the ‘sidelining’ of contemporary art in the bigger art platforms and with a declared aim of promoting the young artists and their works. One of the senior art gallerists in Delhi says, ‘people buy art for art’s sake.’

Let me put this into perspective: nobody cares for contemporary art and it is our last ditch attempt to salvage the situation.  The high sounding claims are simply euphemisms that hide the quotidian nature of soliciting clients in the art market. India has an art market driven mostly by three or four names starting with Souza and ending with Raza. The lone contemporary warrior in this gladiators’ ring is Subodh Gupta. That does not mean that those other well known contemporary artists are already out of the race. They are there but they are not really minting gold for the art market. Solution: find new and fresh talents who could be sold for smaller amounts. That is where I would tie these two claims of ‘education’ and ‘buying art for art’s sake’.

(from DCAW)

If you just look back to our art scene, it was not too far that the galleries in India (the elephants among the ants, if you permit me to reverse Sujata Gidla’s title) that said they did not want the public to walk in but they want the buyers to knock. The cultural responsibility of the art sellers (which a seller of any product would show in the market) had even gone on vacation in those days. These galleries wanted only the buyers to walk in thereby almost turning the gallery spaces into exclusive viewing rooms. If you compare the experience of catching up with glamorous openings in the suburban museums and corporate houses of the steel companies that lay far away from the city centres you would know why and how art has become an exclusive affair. But I should say they have not completely turned misanthropes; they arrange one bus for the plebeian artists and art lovers to be ferried to and fro, who basically make the viewers and the rest is guests.

So the statement, ‘at least buy art for art sake’ is not a statement that is for helping the art scene in any manner. It is a plea before the final rolling down of the shutters of the small scale art establishments which are already feeling the heat of the auction houses, private museums and the big time dealers. The interesting thing is that the biggest art dealers in India (as they deal with the biggest contemporary artists), Nature Morte also take part in this exercise called ‘DCAW’. By making art an exclusive and highly sophisticated property these are the same agencies now joining hands with the low end galleries to create this ‘cultural’ plea that the young and rich should come forward to buy the young and talented ‘new’ contemporaries.

(work by Mahibur Rahiman? from DCAW)

When we talk about art for art sake, we should also ask, where was this art for art’s sake argument till last season where art was all about social responsibility (socially responsive art) and being political. So today we have DCAW presenting that kind of art that is sold for the sake of selling. Am I wrong here? What happens in this? In the process, the artists who are supposedly politically inclined are either completely removed from the scene or are wrongly represented. You may not see a Riyas Komu; and the reason is clear. They don’t need political art. But you see an Atul Dodiya; that means they present him after removing the political fangs and claws. I am not going to argue with the people who come forward to ask me whether Atul Dodiya is political or not at all. Same is the case with Shilpa Gupta, Anju Dodiya, Zarina Hashmi, Nalini Malani, Begum Tyeba Lipi, Mahbur Rahiman, oh yes, Raques Media Collective and so on. Till the last season they were political artists but in DCAW we see them as devoid of any political edge; or at least they are presented so.

Coming to the educational claim; how do you educate the society through such expositions? So the pertinent question is this: Who are you trying to educate about art? Anyway it is not the public because the public is not going to be buy art. Nor does the public really keen on what these artists are trying to say as our country is currently going through a very tough situation. So they are trying to reach out to a section of the public that is affluent and care less about the socio-political on goings in the country. But to make them invest in the newbies they have to have some interest in the presented artists. That means, they are either going to buy the already known ones from the exhibits or they are going to pick up a few fresh ones in a dirt cheap price. There would be so many lucrative offers from the galleries including a buy back policy, part payment mode or even EMIs.

(from DCAW)

This experience is not new at all. During the end of the 1990s when the Indian economy was showing positive signs of growth and the global players were investing in the Indian market, a new generation of rich middle class came up who had some dispensable money which they wanted to invest positively. Art was projected as an investment area and many were coaxed and cajoled in investing in the art market, which responding to the international art market trends showed the signs of surging. This prevailed for around five years and by 2004 a huge haul was there in the art market where the investors started feeling high confidence and hopes. So the low end works were put away and big scale, big bucks works were brought into the scene. That explains the spectacular works done by even the crappiest of artists in the past decade. Today we are back to square one.

We are back to square one because we (means the galleries) are telling the world that ‘please buy art for the sake of art.’ Forget the politics, culture and all what you attach with art. And what is unsaid is simply this: you buy now and get the profit in the coming years. The elections are coming and I am sure that there will not be many who would pump in money to buy art at this precarious market situation. Besides, the art that the DCAW shows in the whole affair (a majority of them by the new artists) do not have anything to do with the present Indian realities or socio-political climate. They are all custom made products that look like sharing an international sensibility. And international sensibility is the sensibility that irons out all the differences and the ability for political dissent. Perhaps the gallerist is right, they are all art for art’s sake, not for anything else.

One of the gallerists says that the contemporary art gets sidelined in the large scale expos. I think that was a self delusional statement for the India Art Fair is all about contemporary art and all those world famous art fairs and biennales are all about contemporary art. Only in the auction houses the contemporary art gets sidelined. What you see in the DCAW is a replica of the India Art Fair. I could read that IAF is a strategic partner to this affair. I am sure that IAF is not self delusional. This is an effort to see whether these galleries could undercut the dominance of the IAF which is no longer an Indian affair. I would say this is the last ditch effort of the metro galleries to stay afloat against the onslaught of the private museums, auction houses and dealers and the ideologically misguiding government art establishments. Art is the last thing in their minds.

Da Vinci/Davinchi Suresh: Limitations and Possibilities of a Populist Sculptor

(Davinchi Suresh with his popular sculpture on Flood)

Flood affected Kerala has finally brought its artists out there in the city centres to do some affordable art so that people could buy it for Rs.1000/- to Rs.1500/-, and the money thus raised could go to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. Sensing the enthusiasm and the people’s participation in creating affordable art for the ‘flood victims’, the Kerala Lalitha Kala Academy has come forward to conduct similar exercise in all the district headquarters. How such enthusiasm translates into financial aid is yet to be known. But there is one artist in Kerala who responds to social issues immediately than any other artists could even think of it. With quick wit and sharp design sense artist Da Vinci Suresh makes art that often finds headlines and eyeballs, footfalls, viral exchange and of course some money.

Da Vinci Suresh is spelt as Davinchi Suresh, which is typical Malayali spelling and most of those Malayalis who incorporate international names are unapologetic about the spellings that they follow or employ. Media too pick it up with the same flair and verve and it sticks. Malayalis in general, may be because of their high literacy, know who Leonardo Da Vinci was. Hence, the prefix, Davinchi comes as a natural qualification for anyone who is too good at art. Malayalis love superlatives though some hopeless chap in the so called national media call them ‘shameless’. From the safety of the newsrooms anybody could call any ethnicity certain derogatory names. Ignore that ignoramus journalist for the time being. This superlative qualification fits well on the sleeves of Suresh, who hails from Kodungalloor in Thrissur, Kerala.

(the sculpture by Davinchi Suresh dedicated to the flood victims)

Davinchi Suresh was the first artist in Kerala to respond to the flood situation. Perhaps, many would have done it in their private studios; or rather they were too shocked to do some art at the harrowing moments of a deluge that levelled the castes, religions and creeds for a few days in the relief camps and shared whatsapp videos. (I should say Avdhesh Bajpai and Avinash Karn were two artists from North India to have responded visually and quickly to the South Indian flood situation). Davinchi Suresh did a sculpture in golden colour with a hemisphere as a base with an inscription August 2018. We are more tuned to hearing 9/11, 23/11 and so on. Hence it should have been 8/18. But Suresh is no Krishnamachari Bose who would fancifully time the KMB 12/12/12. The sculpture is dedicated to the flood victims and the soldiers of all kinds (including the civilian ones) who went into the rescue operation and salvaged a Kerala mauled by the furious claws of water.

The sculpture depicts a boat, a few people in it, the topographical shape of Kerala being propped up on it like rudder and sails, a man giving his back as a footboard for the weaker sex to climb into the boat and up above in the sky an Airforce/Navy Helicopter hovering while rescuing people. It is primarily a symbolic sculpture therefore all what we see are not realistic rendition of events but the rendition of events happened in reality but extracted and made into emblematic of the flood events by the artists. When everything failed the fishermen in Kerala came like Ocean’s Many in their motorboats and rescued thousands of people from the all consuming muddy waters. The Chief Minister of Kerala hailed them as the ‘Army of Kerala’. Some woman was bleeding and a fisherman named Jaison genuflected inside the water exposing his broad back to climb on and it was not just she who did it but many able bodied women too. Jaison came under trolls as well as laurels but for Davinchi Suresh it was something that people of Kerala would never forget therefore an image worth translatable into sculpture.

(late Kalabhavan Mani by Davinchi Suresh)

This sculpture by Davinchi Suresh should be called a mediatised sculpture. It is mediatised on two counts. First of all, the images that are sculpturally strewn in the ensemble are already mediatised therefore extremely familiar to the people in Kerala. Secondly, the sculpture itself went viral/mediatised the very moment it was posted in the facebook by the artist himself, which is his usual practice. Davinchi Suresh plays with the obvious and the obvious symbolism that he often chooses for his sculpture makes him a populist sculptor. Populism is a way of playing for the gallery. There are many poets who use familiar imageries in their poetry. There are poets who create an image out of the familiar but a few shades hiding it from over-familiarity. Davinchi Suresh is like the former poets. He has a niche audience that is comprised of the people who watch news for entertainment and take news as entertainment.

Beyond the obvious realism that we see in this sculpture and the kind of popularity that the artist has amassed not only by this sculpture but by his earlier ventures, this work perhaps wouldn’t stay for its artistic merit but it would definitely stay as a populist emblem of the historical flood in the state. One may never know that at some point the Government of Kerala would commission Davinchi Suresh to do a larger sculpture in the same vein at some city square or circle as a permanent artistic reminder of the deluge. But such a government is yet to come in the state; one can always hope for some philosopher-artist-king wielding the reigns of the state government. Davinchi Suresh in a way squanders his genius in things which are obvious. Populist sculptures are like Mickey Mouse sculptures. Everyone knows it and everyone understands it. But it does not worth more than a selfie. But creative sculptures make people delve deep into the nuances of a work of art. Work of art needs some enigma; otherwise it becomes illustration.

(Madhu by Davinchi Suresh)

Davinchi Suresh has done it before also. In February 2018, a Adivasi young man was lynched by a literate mob in Kerala. The victim’s name was Madhu and the crime that he did was this; he stole food and the post-mortem reports said that he had only a piece of banana in his intestines. Davinchi Suresh registered his protest by making a one and half feet clay sculpture capturing the fear, anxiety, surprise, perplexity felt by that young man who was dazed by hunger, thrashing and aggressive interrogation by the young men who while beating him up kept taking selfies. This sculpture was not realistic nor was it emblematic. It had a wry realism; no embellishments, no symbolism just that confused expression. That became the enigma and it pushed the sculpture to the realm of art. Perhaps, this was one sculpture that gave rise to many similar sculptures and paintings than the photograph that had been used for modelling the sculpture. Had Kerala had any perceptive museum it would have made the sculpture into museum souvenirs of pain and the state’s high level civility and literacy!

(sculpture and the model by Davinchi Suresh)

This artist has a lot of possibility. What Davinchi Suresh needs is proper direction. He calls his works socially relevant and socially protesting art. In fact, all over the world, these two phrases are in vogue these days. But Suresh wouldn’t find his name in the hall of fame there because what he makes are some populist sculptures. One may see the statue of Kalabhavan Mani, an actor died prematurely, the mobile sculptures of Mohan Lal and a portrait of Mohanlal made out of utensils. Davinchi needs curatorial direction for he has tremendous skill and the power to execute. But his imagination is like that of a calendar artist; one who plays with the sentiments of the people, but not with the real emotions and intellect. Davinchi Suresh is famous but his fame dies with the death of the events that cause his works. Hope he would heed to the views expressed in this article. There may be many to oppose my views for they think that the fame itself is a proof of his artistic genius. But fame is never a proof of artistic genius. Many artists are ‘discovered’ posthumously. Today’s heroes could be tomorrow’s embarrassment. An artist can choose to become a hero but he should be taking very special care NOT to become tomorrow’s embarrassment.