Art Market Comes to Full Circle when Art Fair Takes Place in Five Star Hotel Rooms and Loos

 

In a recently concluded art fair in Delhi, I was told, the works of art were displayed in a five-star hotel. What was exceptional in that, I thought. Even the great Indian master artists used to exhibit in five-star hotels where they befriended rich clients to fetch their art. Lobbies, foyers and banquet halls were used for exhibiting works. The trend seems to have never gone out of fashion. Most of the self-taught artists, them being often rich men and women, for reason that are peculiar to them prefer to exhibit in five-star lobbies because they find themselves in their comfort zone, where the haunt otherwise too to have coffee, to meet friends, to attend pool side parties and also to have a quiet sit down dinner with their nearest ones.

 

The fair that had been hailed as the country’s first hotel art fair however was different, as the photographs that I could scroll through revealed. They exhibited the works of art by major artists inside the hotel rooms and suite rooms. Some of pictures showed the works of art hanging from the walls of the toilets. A suite room toilet definitely has a spacious washroom where one could spend a lot of time, reading, napping and even contemplating on larger aspects of life. Sometimes they have paintings bought by the interior decorators working with the architects who in turn engage the so called art consultants who comb the scene for cheap works of art but colorful and enticing from the camp organizers who make some bulk buying deals with the consultants, who they know for sure would sell them for double price before the architect hand over them to the interior designers.

 

If you look at this scenario having an art fair in a posh hotel room is not a bad idea though it is a funny idea; some sort of self-devaluation for higher earning. A posh hotel room, notionally replicates the desires of good life and an aspiration for having the same comforts on a daily basis back at home. So the temporary nature of the hotel room where expensive works of art displayed for sale is emblematic of the permanent desire in the minds of the upper class, affluent class and the aspiring creamy layer of the middle class. When they see a work of art inside a hotel room, they project their own living space to the given space inside a hotel room and see how it would look in their own spaces. Rest is the matter of financial exchange.

 

Private galleries simply re-invent themselves in obliging to participate in a hotel art fair of this kind. The role of a private gallery was exactly the same in the old days. The white cube concept of a private gallery exudes the idea of a neutral space where a work of art would be presented whose intrinsic qualities are not compromised by any chance by the surrounding material conditions. The white space showered with white or yellow lights create a ‘valueless neutral space’ for the art buyers. The space around the work of art is neutralized by the distance given between two works. The neutral space where the art collectors, buyers, investors and art lovers projected their ideas about spatial enjoyment of the displayed items. It gave them space for intellectual and imaginative negotiations with the works of art.

 

When the character of the art market changed thanks to various domestic and international financial and cultural reasons, the white space in the white cube became a thing of past. A gallery space deliberately contrived to make it a twisted space became the fad. Often a large space with a high ceiling is chosen for a gallery. The spatial dimensions also showed how the dimensions of art works had also been changed. This huge space was divided by partitions that made the space within a complex structure. The walls were given different colors, slightly giving away the possibility of them replicating the interiors of the rich homes that went for differently colored and organized interiors. Art moved from the realm of the art viewers to the ones who could afford to own large real estate and bungalows where huge works of art could be displayed against fancy looking backgrounds.

 

Market was changing fast. Just before the pandemic years, the galleries cut down the number of exhibitions or they started showing together on a particular day of the week or month. This was either to cut the cost or to get the rich and the affluent in maximum numbers in one place so that they could be spared from the hassles of travelling to the same district to watch different shows in different times. While that was happening, simultaneously the idea of a viewing room was also forwarded by the gallerists. A viewing room is a cosy room with a comfortable sofa and adequate lighting where the clients could see different works of art before them brought in by the gallery attendant as per the demands of the buyer. It is more like going to a textile shop and asking to show different shirts or sarees from the racks. The owner of the gallery sat with them and entertained them with endearing stories about the art and the artists shown before them.

 

When everything fails and when the rich and affluent refuse to come to see works of art at your gallery what are you going to do? You will take the works of art to the rich and the affluent. On lazy Sundays, upon appointment the gallerists started sending works of art to the buyers’ homes for perusal. Wherever the rich went the art followed; they opened shops in the high-end malls, shopping arcades, airports, lounges, farm house areas, five-star hotel lobbies and so on. With the art fair going to the hotel rooms the art market seems to have come to a full circle. I am not surprised because of that. If the rich could have works of art in their washrooms, why can’t fair organizers have them displayed inside the loos of the rooms?

 

JohnyML

(Image source Net. All images for illustration purpose only) 

Displaced Targets and Soaring Ambitions of Artists

 

There is an interesting scene in ‘Modern Times’, the iconic film by Charlie Chaplin. With no other means left to survive, goaded by his girlfriend, the Tramp, character played by Chaplin becomes a waiter in a restaurant where music and dance presented on special occasions attract many people. New Year comes and the restaurant is filled with merry makers. He is about to serve a person who has ordered some chicken and wine. Suddenly the clock chimes twelve and it is New Year and everyone erupts in celebration. Confetti flies, music blares and the diminutive figure of Chaplin is submerged in the waves of humanity on its feet. He reaches his client with the tray and another wave of people takes him away. The charade raises a lot of laughter among the audience.

 

In the galleries when I stand before the works of art done by young people, proudly displayed in unimaginably ambitious scales, I remember the abovementioned scene from ‘Modern Times’. They are about to reach their destination, a point in aesthetical maturity and confidence, but something else sweeps them away. For an artist, satisfaction comes in two different forms; one, in the form of money and the other, in the form appreciation. Money is blind; it lacks discretion, most often. In art, money floods in the least expected terrains, causing cascades and landslides in the hillsides of morality. Artists are just human beings covered in the garb of idealism. Who doesn’t want a good flooding of money?

 

They are there, some works on the walls indicate. You feel a sense of excitement. You are about to find out a new artist from among the many aspirants who vie for the top position. Then you start imagining about the artist as a highly skilled, highly informed, highly vocal and highly savvy person. You think about him or her as someone who could sustain the level of excitement that he or she has just generated in you. As you move on you see more works that make you believe that you have really got gold on the walls. Your instincts are sharp and your fingers itch to key in some good words about those works. Suddenly something happens; the artist slips and falls in her aesthetics. From consistency she has just moved on to capriciousness. From determination, she has moved to the realm of doubts.

 

Could it be over confidence? That one could create works of art in different styles; some in contemporary flat style, some in impressionistic mode and some other in futuristic and cubistic. Is that the flair of the artist in handling various art styles or the lack of understanding about one’s own integrated intellectual and aesthetical growth that is displayed naked there on the walls? I am not sure. The artist in question looks extremely confident and she doesn’t have an iota of doubt about her varying styles. In one of the recent experiences that I had in a gallery, the artist looked extremely sure about her works done in different styles; a group show created by a solo artist. She is educated in one of the good art schools in London. And it shows in her ambitious paintings. But I just couldn’t understand why suddenly a series of paintings that are absolutely different in style and approach.

 

I knew that I need not look for an explanation from the artist. There were flowery words written about her by other people in her brochure. Besides, there was a statement by herself in words exuding overconfidence. I have seen such artists. They are child prodigies. Unlike Picasso who too was a child prodigy (an autistic person also, also revealed by one of his grandchildren, Marina Picasso), these prodigies are brought up in secured illusions in which they are the numero uno of art. Their proclivity in creating art is all about the skills shown in drawing something life-like. They draw and paint throughout their school days and are taken to various platforms where they come out as winners. This winning spree gives them the confidence to join an art school where their notions of art are shattered beyond recognition. By the time they gather themselves from the shock, they would have finished their graduation.

 

Out there in the world, with a fancy degree in art from an illustrious institution they find themselves in a liminal space where their naturalistic skills refuse to budge but their educational qualifications deny the entry of such skills in their works. So they have to find a midway. They try to do art that partly shows their naturalistic skills and their newly acquired modern and contemporary aesthetics. They remain like oil and water in their art which rest of the world knows but they themselves never acknowledge. Their egos are further boosted up when their works on display are bought by their wealthy relatives and friends. Once such favors are done they are irrevocably lost in the wilderness of misunderstood art. Thanks to their wealth and influence they are often treated as artists in the public domain and you could see their pictures along with the political leaders, corporate bigwigs and art patrons!

 

In another exhibition hall I came across another artist whose art is informed by the theories of feminism. In the wall text I found the artist introducing herself as an architect whose passion lies in making paintings. Somewhere I happened to see someone saying that the artist in her was awakened when the world was locked down during the pandemic years. Many during the pandemic years found out that they had an artistic side and when the world started calling itself a post-pandemic world they left their art behind and thought that the viruses at some point in their lives would give them another chance to be artists. But there were many others, for no reason decided to stick to their newly found self of an artist. Such people could cause more damage than repair when they try to exhibit the artistic side of their personalities.

 

The feminist artist’s lines, colors, images and the whole makeup of the painting betrayed her self-taught status. A little bit of Gaugin here and a little bit of Sher Ghil there. Some Manjit Bawa here and some Arpana Caur there. When none of them is around there were some elements from Gogi Saroj Pal. It happens, I told myself and moved on taking interest in her works. If she tries she could reach her destination, I thought. Then the Chaplin moment came before my eyes. She suddenly presented a Durga and Lion, a Shiv and Parvati and what not from the mythologies! Her secular thoughts seemed to have a sudden confrontation with the mood of the times. If there are no mythological works what would happen to my art, what would people think about me, she must have thought. Result is disastrous.

 

For most of the artists these days Chaplin’s fate in Modern Times seems to be an unavoidable existence. They want to reach their potential clients. But they live in a time of flux. Everyone is up on their feet and making merry. Artists struggle to reach their clients but they are carried away by other concerns externally imposed on them. They move away from the target and hit elsewhere. It is a blind charade where one could stick the tail into the mouth of a donkey. Donkey in the picture doesn’t mind that because he knows his tail had fallen long back. The blind artists try and become a laughing stock before the informed audience.

-JohnyML

(All the images are from the Net and they serve only illustration purpose. They do not have anything to do with the content of the article)

Art Critics as Vendors and Artists as Clients

 

(source internet)

In Mumbai, at the famous Jehangir Art Galleries Tuesdays are busy with exhibition openings. The galleries look like a packed parking lot where car waits bumper to bumper to find a space to squeeze in. One lot of artists bring down their works from the wall (still an easy task as they just need to pluck the threads off the hooks from the wooden channels. Conventional to the core, Jehangir exudes old world charm and nonsense as the authorities do not allow the artists to stick labels on the walls, let alone drilling them on to the walls to give a decent and contemporary looking display) and the other lot goes up; something that has been on for so many decades with an exception of those couple of pandemic years.

In the auditorium hall, often reserved for big scale shows with money bags to back them up, I see this panel text written by one of my old friends for a solo exhibition. I cursorily go through the text and it says a lot about the abstract works in display and at the same time they do not say anything particularly. That is the fate of those blurb writers who want to produce something out of nothing. Later in the evening, while I am at the gallery number one for a young artist’s solo exhibition where I have been invited as a guest of honor, a young lady is introduced to me as a budding writer. I do not know what the interlocutor has told her about me but I am surprised by her first question itself.

“Who writes the texts that accompany the paintings?” she asks.

I look around because I know that there are no texts to go with the works displayed there in the gallery. So I tell her there are no texts here. She throws a glance at the works.

“Not here. I am talking about there, in the Auditorium Gallery,” she says.

I do not want to tell her that I know the person who has written those words.

“Those are flowery words but confusing and I know they are intended to be so,” she continues, “but I want to know who writes such texts.”

I want to take her question in a different way. So tell her that it must be by someone who is well versed in art and art history. He could be an art critic or a curator even. There are writers who specialize in writing about art.

“How do such people get their clients?” she surprises me with the word client.

Now I am cautious. Clients. This lady who is just a new entrant in the art scene, may be an aspiring writer or a cub reporter from one of those rags published from the city, seems to be very confident about her selection of words.

“Good artists know who are the best writers,” I just tell her bluntly. “They don’t need to look for ‘clients’,” I emphasized.

“Oh, that means they must be having good social networking and wonderful PR skills,” she just doesn’t understand my mood.

I tell her that a good art writer never goes after the artists, on the contrary the artists seek them out. “I don’t seek any artists who could be my potential ‘clients’,” I try to be sarcastic.

But I fail to floor her with my sarcasm. She is dead serious about her premature knowledge about art. “I am a writer,” she says. I wish she added ‘budding’ or ‘aspiring’ before the word writer. But she is determined to be within the spell of her own stupidity.

“I want to get clients for my writing,” she goes on. I feel like walking away but in that situation that may look rude because she hasn’t lost politeness in her tone. She seems to have clubbed politeness with confidence in a peculiar way. Irritation creeps slowly within me.

“You may try with the artists,” I tell her.

She looks fuddled even if she has consumed only a cup of tea. As it is Jehangir Art Gallery people keep coming in. They click selfies before the works of art and generally waft through before the paintings. We look at them.

“That means you need to wait for the clients,” she persists.

“Art is not that easy stuff to write about dear lady,” I tell her.

She frowns and walks off. It looks like she wants to retort. Then I see her coming back after a few minutes when I turn my attention to other people.

“Sorry, I did not know about you. They told me that you are a great art critic and historian,” she says apologetically.

It is raining outside. I go to watch the Mumbai Monsoon that refuses to whimper away. Standing there I ruminate. Things have not changed yet. I remember the early days of my career as an art critic. I had gone to Delhi to become a fulltime art critic. Visiting galleries, artists’ studios, spending long hours with them, looking at them working in their studios, engaging with fellow writers, taking feedback from the readers, getting rubbished by the elders, gaining access to the younger lot etc. were part of growing up.

There were a lot of involvement. There was no reluctance to engage with art or artists. We never called the artists clients and artists never called us the same in turn. Artists and art critics never looked at the art buyers and collectors as potential clients. Everyone was a part of the general ecosystem of art.

What has brought all the difference, I thought?

Is it money market? Money is a reality and so is the market. They are interlinked. However, that couldn’t be the sole reason for this change in attitude of the youngsters. Somewhere down the line, devaluation of the artistic/creative engagement between the artists and writers has happened, I realize. Now they belong to different continents. Artists talk to artists; there too successful artists talk to successful artists and the struggling ones talk to their counterparts. If at all the financially successful artists talk to the still struggling ones they patronize them immensely.

Art critics also have lost their integrity, boldness and patience. They all want to be in the bandwagon and make money. True, everyone needs money in an environment where money speaks. But there is no direct connection between art, aesthetics and money. The monetary part comes when the work of art enters the market. Till a work enters the market and attract buyers for its intrinsic values, it is just a canvas with some colors (or any other medium). Medium is message, said Marshall MacLuhan. Now medium is massage also. Many artists make use of the intrinsic quality of the medium a virtue and eke meaning out of it.

There is no problem in it either. Art critics somehow fails to see it. They want to say good things about the artist and leave art behind or aside. Most often, if you look at the reports on art, it is more about the artist than the art in question. Somewhere even the art writers and critics have compromised. So they could talk about artists as clients.

May be the lady who talked to me was more truthful than the pretentious art critics. She, for the lack of other words talked about the artists as clients. But art critics, even after having all those words at their disposal, still call their clients artists!

-JohnyML

What do you Think When you Think of Writing About Art

 

(Pic courtesy: Google. Representational Purpose only)

I get invitation to attend art exhibition openings. They come through various mediums including personal phone calls. I hardly attend exhibition openings these days. I ask myself why have I grown so disinterested in attending the art dos. They are the platforms to do socializing and networking. And ironically, whenever I curate a show I expect people to come in hoards to attend the opening. If they too grow cold towards the openings what would be the result. Deserted galleries and lackluster inaugural functions. No artist would like it. No gallerist would like to see her gallery echoing her own sighs on the opening day.

Recently, a senior art critic asked me why I did not do the blog entries anymore. Writer’s block? she asked. I hadn’t thought about such a scenario. I had gone through such phases when words stood aloof. I don’t find myself in that situation now. I need a white page, a Microsoft Word page so that I could key in my thoughts without a break. There is no arrogance in saying this. My daily training has helped me achieve this. Yet, I do not write that much these days. Some kind of lethargy? Don’t I feel anymore the need to purge myself of my winding thoughts?

I want my writings to be clear and lucid. A reader should have easy access not only to the text but also to the content. Someone should not stand before my writing as if he was standing before a thick and tall concrete wall infested with graffiti and rhetoric. Easy access is a much mistaken concept. Most of the people think that accessible things are less valuable. You make something so complex that the very inaccessibility makes people look at it in awe. Words and ideas become like celebrities and VIPs locked up in fortresses made up of concrete and security measures. They come out once in a while to wave at the hapless admirers who scream at a single glace, the spreading of hands and the dimpled smile.

(Pic courtesy: Google. Representational Purpose only)

I do not write these days because I do not see good art that often. I could ramble around any subject for a long time but when art is before me, writing about it becomes the most pleasurable thing in the world. Artists who come up with pedestrian ideas and childish logic and done to death styles one cannot say much about their art. So I keep quite. I walk in front of the galleries even avoiding to look at their facades. They look like silent stupidity parked at turn unattended and left to rust. One should avert the eyes from such depressing sights.

Whenever I see the names of artists printed on the invitation cards they look strange and unfamiliar. True, I do not know most of them. I wistfully remember those times when I took pains to travel to different places and studios to see young artists working. That time has gone and the concerns that ruled artists in those times are also have become a thing of past. Today the concerns of the artists are different. They want to be a part of major exhibitions and international fairs. They want to be in international residencies and art camps. They want to be in a different world with their works. What do they address in their art, I ask myself and find no answer. I have heard from places that the youngsters too address the issues like migration, environmental crises, wars, poverty, human suffering and injustice. They are not different from our generation in that sense.

Where do they differ and how do they differ then? I do not have any clear answer here. Those young artists who are lauded by the private establishments that almost monopolize the art scene in India and elsewhere project themselves as the new age messiahs with a new language and approach. They use new materials and contemporary technologies. May be I am too old to understand the technology in a practical sense but I do understand their impacts in the contemporary human life and their influence in understanding the past and shaping the future. What I do not understand is the language that they use. They are wafer-thin and stand only because that there are armatures and scaffolds of words around them. They prop them up like dilapidated houses restructured by a whimsical architecture who excels in disuse of spaces.

(Pic courtesy: Google. Representational Purpose only)

I am a stranger to that. Like the international professional art critics, I could gush over the works that are shallow by digging them deep. I could post them regularly at the Instagram and amass followers. There is no problem in having more followers in social media platforms and making an influencer of sorts out of oneself. But when I think of it a sense of meaninglessness engulfs me. Why should I see those things that are not there? Why should I over-read things when they do not deserve reading at all? May be reading a visual text would give you some sort of high but all the highs are not good for health. You turn a liar, slowly and steadily.

Once I went to an all women art camp. I went through the works that were done hastily because it was a single day camp. Most of them had generated images that didn’t throw up any surprises. Same vaginas, wombs, blood, bird’s nest, eggs, splayed legs, kitchen utensils and so on. I thought, why didn’t they have any other self-image other than the stereotypical ones. Lynda Nochlin and other feminist theoreticians of her ilk had talked about reclaiming the female body from the clutches of the male desires and possessiveness. That was almost sixty years ago. The world has changed since then. How long are you going to make the same thing, ululating the female vulva, blood and tears?

I ask this question unto myself. What’s the point in saying the same thing in new mediums and materials? Can’t there be a different lens, a different ken and a different scale to see and measure oneself? If I say thing, I will be called a misogynist and a chauvinist. It is not just about the female artists, it is about every other artist. When you say the truth, they call you names. Better keep quiet.

 

-JohnyML

Forbidden Truths of Nidhivan: Shine Shivan’s New Works

  (Work by Shine Shivan)

Reverence could be a way to irreverence and vice versa. Deep seated devotion and observation could lead to a sense of critical viewing of the given and also scant respect for something in the long run could change into blind devotion. But there is something in between, a transient zone where playfulness takes over and erases both reverence and irreverence. Then it becomes pure play, a sort of innocent play, a skillful re-enactment of the known and unknown alike without considering the consequences. In transience happens the flashes of innocence pregnant with the possibilities of subversion of the dominant narratives, which only trained eyes could catch.

Wide eyed Krishna figures multiplies in the matrix of common mythology when Shine Shivan, the artist who masquerades himself in curious guises, breezes through the historically and culturally marked out locations where mythology indistinguishably manifests in the daily rituals of the common people. Nidhivan, the forest of Tulsi in Vrindavan, famed to be the place of Krishna’s eternal erotic dances with innumerable consorts becomes Shine Shivan’s point of departure for the body of works comes under the common title, Nidhivan.

When the devotee becomes one with the object of devotion both of them assume the same bhava, nature, expression and trait, and this oneness is a trope that the artist has used in building up a set of narratives that is culturally shared and has become the collective unconscious of the people. Krishna and the characters around him therefore assume the stylized facial expression of the artist or the artist adopts the generic facial traits of Krishna as depicted in various traditional art forms including Nathdwara paintings and Indian miniatures. The cumulative aesthetical outcome in making these Krishna figures is an unforgettable ensemble of self portraits involved in a homo-erotic or narcissistic game.

The works in Nidhivan, for those people who hover around the surficial aesthetical appeal may not look subversive and critical of anything. However, the mild game of subversion shows up when the works are seen against heterosexual and permissible dalliance hailed in the popular mythological and devotional narratives. The emergence of this surreptitious critique is totally depended on the critical views that one can afford regarding the allowance of homo erotic interpretations within the dominant cultural fabric. In a crude political scenario where populist religious monoliths suppresses all the possible lateral readings and understanding, the artistic interventions become tricky and dangerous.

Resorting to allegorical presentations of the popular stories or retelling of the mythologies in an absolutely non-provocative manner could provide a safe interface for subversive narratives. In his works Shine Shivan makes these cute and endearing images as operative tools so that the viewers fall into the set trap of the familiar and the strange allurement of the presentation to the point of buying them even for worshipping. Its from this point of identification of the devotee with Shine Shivan’s works that the flap doors of subversion get activated, may be through an interpretative literature like this one.

Why do Krishna, his consorts, friends and other male and female characters resemble one another? Why do they keep the same facial expression? These questions should find echoes in the very act of looking and seeing. But they remain unasked because Shine Shivan through his painterly and graphic skills keeps the images closer to the traditional renditions of such figures. Their beauty and erotic drive are not compromised and there is always a constant reminder that they are true to the traditional narratives. Even the colors that the artist has deliberately chosen, reds, different shades of saffron and brown, black and blue, are all seen in the textual detailing of Krishna and his consorts  in the popular literature. Even the flora and fauna are depicted the way they should be.

The authenticity of these renderings is further accentuated when one sees the statement that explains how the artist had stayed in the Nidhivan region and studied the local presentations of the Krishna Katha. This adherence to the source adds to the allurement of the trapdoor, of tradition and convention. Each story of Krishna’s games from the local lore is chosen to give his paintings the desired authenticity. The artistic cleverness, however conveys the visual intentions when he sheds the textual baggage one by one and brings the protagonists to a pair in embrace. The multiplicity of the heterosexual orgy becomes a homoerotic intimacy, love and care for each other that subverts the normative and affirms the critique in the subtextual level.

The choice of Kaliya Daman and Govardhanodharan, two popular stories related to Krishna from the Nidhivan region is important in Shine Shivan’s works. They are two strong metaphors for homo erotic arousal and its ultimate relieving after a prolonged play. Krishna lifts the lofty hill on the tip of his small finger. And Kaliya is a vicious serpent that needs enough thrashing so that it could eject Halahal, the strongest poison. In both the cases Krishna does the act of lifting and thrashing; perhaps an extremely suggestive presentation of not only homoeroticism but also autoeroticism.

There is no direct provocation but a poetic nudge so that the dreamy viewers who have fallen for the mischievousness of Krishna could be shaken out of the mythology to face something crucial to the current socio-cultural discourse regarding gender relationships in the country. Shine Shivan does not go in the line of Bhupen Khakkar or Balbir Kishan. Direct touch of Bhupen and the agonized entanglement of Balbir using male bodies as the trope is not used in Shine Shivan’s works. Like the veils over the deities before they are revealed for actual worship, tradition and convention cover Krishnas’ bodies in Shine Shivan’s works. Critical eyes are needed to pull the veil of this tradition down and see the artist’s interpretations. Allegory and retelling work quite effectively in Nidhivan. It becomes more meaningful when we come to know that Nidhivan is a place in Vrindavan where the people still believe that the erotic of plays of Krishna still take place therefore people are forbidden to go there at night!

 

-JohnyML

 

 

 

 

 

Probing the Definitional Biases: Latheesh Lakshman’s New Works

  

(Latheesh Lakshman, artist)

Great visual communicators are masters of minimalism. For them silence is eloquence. Music makes use of silence but for visual arts silence is constituted by lines and colors. Like the movie makers create palpable inky darkness with a streak of light penetrating from nowhere into the space, visual artists use lines and colors minimally to convey ideas. The graphic quality of this minimalism is suitable to the artists who have worked in advertisement where painterly lavishness and madness are reined in by parsimony and method. Latheesh Lakshman, a Kochi based artist has all these qualities, including his solid experience in advertising.

Art cannot perpetuate itself in time without compelling stories built around it. Seeing is experiential but also it is physical and carnal, together they make a yarn; a story woven around experience and an experience felt around the physicality of seeing and viewing. Narrativizing the experience is not just restricted to the narrative paintings or deep spiritual abstract art. Minimal and graphical art also tend and tempt to tell stories. Latheesh Lakshman is aware of this and one of his latest works is about the possible narratives around a work of art.

(Name me and Make my Story by Latheesh Lakshman)

Visual art, when it is two dimensional and without joysticks, mouses or touchscreens to play with, remains static and allows only ocular forays into its space which necessitates story telling an integral part of its understanding. Latheesh Lakshman says that the very act of looking at his work of art would make it interactive because the moment one looks at the work titled ‘Name Me Make My Story’ a story starts taking shape in the mind. A visual puzzle, the visual image asks for a definition, an appellation and according to the artist, the definition and the following story around it are not a beginning but an end in itself.

Naming is a need for categorization and claiming control over the named. Most of the names in the world are given than self-generated. A name is always attached to a bias. It stands vis-à-vis a historical continuity and carries the burdens that it has accrued along. Opposed to fluidity, the idea of naming marks territories and character traits. Though there is an authorial demand on the viewer regarding the naming of the image, it evokes the subjective understanding of the traits that one tends to perceive in the manifested image before him.

(Aara, Evidunnaa, Engottaa by Latheesh Lakshman)

In fact, Latheesh Lakshman’s image is composite and fluid, cancelling the specificities and emphasizing its kaleidoscopic complexities. But the viewers, goaded by the command/demand enter the narrativizing space and come up with definitive stereotypes, limiting the possibilities of their expansion and containing them within the subjective predictabilities. Perhaps, it is a critique of human narratives that aims at expanding the existential scope but falls into the making of palatable narratives. Also, the critique is directed at the idea of advertising that despite its fluid and unconventional narratives how it contains the narrative within the boundaries of the conventional.

In Latheesh Lakshman’s work there is also a relational field of subjectivities where one acts as the author of the story and the other the subject of it. The faces that come forth in each looking make the viewer an author who is authorized by the self to generate a narrative around the other and hold him within the limits of containment zone. The authorial position of the viewer always gives him this fancy feeling of giving the other full freedom in his narrative but intrinsic censorial acts stop all the possible freedoms the other could take. That’s why the artist says that the narrativizing is not about a beginning but about ending it.

(Aara? Who are You?)

Another interesting set of works by Latheesh Lakshman also probes the relational field of subjectivities in the given territorial limits. There are these curious questions, who are you, where are you coming from and where are you going, always originate in a person or a social group or territorial beings when they come across the others who are deemed to be newcomers or intruders. Strangeness of the other is not defined by his or her strange features but there is something that cuts beyond the familiar human features that give birth to those questions. Seen as ways of befriending and mitigating the fear for the other these questions at once place the other in an ambivalent space, making him not only define himself but also defend his right to be there. Hence, the attempts to befriend create a sense of rivalry that makes even the future relationship with them tendentious.

(Evidunnaa? Where are you from?)

These questions in Latheesh Lakshman’s works take the shape of the other, a cartoonish vision of the other in the eyes of the questioner and also it becomes a mirror reflection of the other in question, together making a sense of absurdity. The inability of these questions to exceed their physicality appears to be comical when we compare similar questions philosophically raised within the field of visual arts. The lines that make the figures in them become the calligraphic representations of the questions in the artist’s mother tongue Malayalam, aaraa (who are you), evidunnaa (where are you from) and engottaa (where are you going).

This comic effect becomes intense when seen against the mural sized painting by Paul Gauguin titled ‘Where do we come from? Who we are? Where are we going?’ Gauguin did this painting in 1897 when he was going through severe depression and personal losses. He was even contemplating suicide. In such a situation one could probe into the very meaning of human existence. One could wonder at this phenomenon called life. The questions raised by Gauguin are not territorial and xenophobic but ridden with the mysteries of life.

(Engottaa? Where are you Going?)

Latheesh Lakshman tells us how we have become lesser beings in our lesser pursuits and how we have become just territorial animals living in constant fear of the other. His lines run against the flat and flashy colors like a line of ink wandering along a field of poppies and tulips. These are the questions held by the artist against each one of the onlookers for telling one or two hard facts about them.

-JohnyML

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Factory without Alienation: Waswo’s Karkhana: A Rajasthan Studio

  

(Waswo with his Karkhana People)

In ‘Karkhana: A Studio in Rajasthan’, the latest book by artist Waswo x Waswo one could see/feel the spirit of a Ruskin Bond narrative. Bond loves his Mussoorie and Waswo loves his Udaipur. Bond had made India his home in 1960s itself; a sojourn in London was suffocating for him. Waswo spent his youthful days in Milwaukee and hit the road when the rural borders were closing in on his mind. Interestingly, in India he had his first professional exhibition at the Kashi Art Gallery, Fort Kochi in 2002. He fondly remembers late Anoop Skaria and Dorrie Younger who had recognized his ‘genre-less’ works, when the Indian art market was undergoing the labor pain. Since then Waswo never had to look back. Though the artistic journey was partly on bumpy roads he has finally settled down in Udaipur, Rajasthan, which he could easily claim as his home now.

(Karghana Book Cover)
 

Waswo works with a team of local artists and the book tells their story. Seen through the eyes of the narrator these local artists come across as legendry characters from the yellowing annals of a local gazette. The word Karkhana literally translates as a factory and the word factory brings in the mind a picture of assembly line works. This is where Marx had found alienation as the splitting factor that separated the worker from the product. In that sense, Karkhana has a different meaning altogether, perhaps a contrary one. Karkhana is an atelier led by a master artist where skillful assistants work on parts but still have an idea about the final outcome. Assistants could earn their own status either by choosing an independent course or by finding a patron and initiating a different karhana. Traditionally, artists/assistants in a Karkhana do not part ways with the master/s not only because the patronage was far and wide but also because their existence was based more on trust and style.

 

(Work by Waswo and his Karkhana)

Trust is something that cannot be fixed always in a signed bond. A written document may be legally binding for the parties but the unwritten trust between people who operate within a society is more reliable. Waswo was and is lucky to find a few artists in due course of time as he settled in Udaipur. He was in the right place at the right time and had the right attitude to make friends with the local artists and artisans. The growth was mutual as the local artists could extricate themselves from the demands of the tourist bazaar for making cheap and mechanical and lifeless reproductions of the stock images that defined ‘Rajasthan’ as a place and culture frozen in time, and in the meanwhile Waswo could negotiate with the problematic position/ing of his own artistic self as a ‘white westerner’ both in his mundane and creative existence. He started off as an ‘Evil Orientalist’ only to shed the honorific soon to become a benevolent collaborator and director of many selves in the creative process.

(Waswo and team)

 

The book tells the story of the collaborators; Rakesh aka R.Vijay, the miniature artist, Rajesh Soni, the hand colorist on black and white photographs, Shankar and Chirag Kumawat, the father-son duo who paint intricate borders on wasli papers, Dalpat and Banti Jingar brothers, who could paint backdrops and could faithfully reproduce exquisitely painted palace interiors in many frames without fault, Ganpat Mali and Jay Prakash who are multi-purpose studio hands who add a lot of value to the Karkhana process created by Waswo. There are many other side characters who come and go , and even at times pose for the photographs that eventually become full-fledged works of art as they pass through the hands of the above mentioned artists under the watchful direction of the mastermind, Waswo himself.

 

(Work by Waswo made by Karkhana)

Though the book is titled as Karkhana, the structure is that of a journey, sometimes on an Enfield Bullet and other times in a multi-utility van, driven by Ganpat Mali and Waswo on the pillion. The time is spread over a few years but the narrative is arranged in such a way that the reader feels that the whole thing happened on a hectic day; from early morning to night. The narrative unfolds in a reverse order. We see the border makers first and then the backdrop painters who make the broader decorative strokes in the works of Waswo. Then we go to the master artist, R.Vijay who, faithful to the miniature tradition of Rajasthan, recreates it for a modern aesthetic purpose with a sense of irony and a lot of personal touch. Today, R.Vijay is Waswo or vice versa. Each time, with the riders we too get down from the motorbike and walk into the artists’ homes or work places and what come alive are the little precious gems of their biographies.

 (Waswo and R.Vijay)

Waswo has written this book during the lockdown days. Udaipur streets are no longer abuzz with touristic activities. But the local life goes on. And in Waswo’s narrative one could feel the heat, dust and loneliness of the pandemic hit streets. However, the jovial nature of the collaborators is never gone as Waswo keeps their pay roll on with bonuses. R.Vijay underplays the hardships of the times by painting an abandoned surgical mask and a bisleri bottle, the iconographic details of the fedora man, the former evil orientalist. The book ends up in a party at the Varda studio and the night followed by that. In a way that chapter is a stock taking shot in a movie where the cast and crew gather for a party, a movie within a movie, a narrative within the narrative with the characters becoming living men and a few women in long shot or in fade out.

(Waswo x Waswo) 

Karkhana is a collective biography or rather a collective autobiography written by one person. Their lives are now intricately mixed up and positively the symbiotic relationship is not collapsed by surreptitious offers or breach of trusts. May be because Waswo remains the master mind and the glue that holds all together; without them, may be they are just border painters, backdrop makers, miniature artists and photo colorists. I do think that even mentioning such a dissection of roles is rude. The book, beyond its literature part also functions as a documentation of the works that they have so far collaborated, especially during the last few years including the pandemic ones. But without the literature, it is just another book of Waswo’s works. In creating that literature, Waswo has generated a post-colonial and truly global documentation on decentralized collaboration (not of the sweatshop version of the corporate like works of art) of artists where each one is acknowledged without fudge. One cannot complain about alienation here anymore. A must read for the art lovers.

-JohnyML