Hundred and twelve years back, an Indian artist thought of
making the then contemporary art democratically available to anyone who had liked
to have one at his/her home. Raja Ravi Varma was his name. The story of Ravi
Varma Press may sound so fresh and contemporary even today when we compare the
circumstances within which Ravi Varma had initiated a new ‘popular’ art
movement in India. Though several historians of Ravi Varma’s life say that it
was his ability to give ‘human’ forms to Indian gods and goddesses in the
classical and the neo-classical European style, with draperies added or altered
in the Indian ways that had helped the proliferation of his works amongst the
general public for these ‘works’ satisfied their demand for ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’
in their personal altars, one should not overlook that fact that Ravi Varma had
been led by a perennial urge to see his works in all the households in Indian
subcontinent. True, (Hindu) religion was the binding factor in a culturally
varied geographical formation like India in the late 19th century.
But Ravi Varma’s desire for making his works ‘popular’ was much above his need
for giving ‘form’ to Indian pantheon. Religion was channel that he adopted
insightfully so that he could remain in the good books of the (Hindu) patrons
who had been relieved of their Mughal indebtedness in aesthetics and culture
and was coming strongly under the democratic influences of British colonialism.
In our times when we lament the collapse of an organized art
market and the irresponsible behavior of galleries in offloading their artists,
once again Ravi Varma becomes a beacon and we have definitely got something to
learn from his idea of making art democratic. This is a fascinating story.
There are two Ravi Varmas; one, the Ravi Varma who worked based on the demands
of the patrons and provincial governments. The second Ravi Varma was an artist
in the modern individualistic sense who preferred his private studio to the
atelier given to him by the royal court. Ravi Varma was as much as a civilian
artist as he was a royal court painter. He was more like a travelling painter
who moved from one kingdom to another not in search work but on invitation. Each
time, he established his private studio where he and his brother Raja Raja
Varma (who himself was an accomplished landscape and portrait painter) painted
and chronicled their lives (mostly by the younger Varma) carefully giving a lot
of attention to the business plans, proposals and funds. Had Ravi Varma found
his satisfaction in remaining a court painter, he would not have even thought
of establishing a printing press in 1894. Had he been painter of Hinduism
alone, he would not have chosen a theme like ‘Birth of Shakuntala’ as the first
print from his Pune press. Shakuntala
was not a goddess. She belonged to the literary traditions of India therefore
he was closer to the cultural memory of the populace.
(an Oleograph print from Ravi Varma Press)
The most important thing that Ravi Varma did was going
against the normal logic of the market (that is, tightening the flow of
commodities in the market and thereby increasing price); by making oleograph
prints he decided to flood the market with his works (rather the works done by
him and later multiplied by mechanical agencies). His logic interestingly, was
much akin to the corporate logic of the present world; find the most populated
market places in the world and introduce a new product for the cheapest and
competitive prices. The best example is the mobile phone software and hardware
markets all over the world. While the big corporates of Europe and America
restrict their products in their own limited markets, through global economy
flow, flood the most thickly populated markets like Mexico, India, China,
Brazil and so on with hardware and software for cheaper prices. The more people
consume, though the profit margin is less per consumer the aggregate
consumption brings them mega profits. Consumers get competitive prices when the
number of companies that provide same service in the same market. Ravi Varma,
being the pioneer in making his print works cheaper, did not have to face much
competition from other artists or companies. Varma made the works available and
affordable. The culturally shared thematic in those works encouraged people to
buy them and preserve them, if not worshipping them.
The competitive markets in the present world often use
shared cultural values in order to sell their hardware as well as software. A
product is not sold for its consume-ability but for its ability to satisfy a
cultural need felt by a hollow population. The advertisements created by these
product selling companies always play upon cultural festivals, religion,
nationality, literature, celebrity icons and universally accepted values to pitch
the products into the market. So when we buy a piece of chocolate, we are not
buying a sweet confectionary but an idea of love and sharing. When we choose a telephone service provider
over another one, we choose the idea promoted by the advertisement. Jewelry and
gold are sold on the basis of human emotions. Insurance policies are sold
through sentimental domestic values. A motor car could stand for nationalistic
values for no reason provided the brain behind the advertisement has enough
logic to connect with a four wheeler and an abstract concept called
nationalism. Ravi Varma, as a keen seller of his works knew that a product is
always sold and bought when a value is shared through that. Perhaps, he was the
first businessman in India who did not have to advertise his wares for the
products made cheaper and available were their own advertisement too.
(People in rural Maharashtra still cherish old oleographs from Ravi Varma Press- pic courtesy IE)
When art develops value in the market, because the movers
and shakers of the economy know where what product should be idolized, it is
natural that the common logic makes the sellers to make some products rare and
unavailable in order to increase price, therefore we see the price of the
contemporary art going high a few years back. When supply could not match
demand, a lot of sub-standard look alikes started appearing in the market and
those were also able eke out a price. Rawest of fruits could be sold as ripe
ones with yellow packaging in a market blinded by profit making. In art too it
happened. Instead of lowering the prices of the works of art, citing less
availability of the quality works, the prices were hiked up to the skies. Raja
Ravi Varma, in his time had done the opposite. In fact, there is no
anthropological evidence to show that people were really waiting for Varma’s
works to appear in the market. They were happy with crude idols, paintings done
by artists from Kalighat, Batala prints of Kolkata, souvenirs of different
kinds etc. Varma saw the market and he provided them with what they wanted but
did not know it existed. This was a very clever marketing of one’s work through
very democratic means. Varma moved vertically and horizontally in the market. The
vertical movement helped him rise in stature and wealth amongst the patrons
while the horizontal movement helped him to evolve the businessman in him and
also gain appreciation from the larger audience, which he definitely had craved
for.
Artists of any time need applause and public recognition.
Indian art market and art market elsewhere made artists and art works rare and
also facilitated their exclusion from the larger societies. Today with social
networks, an artist could have a minimum five hundred followers from different
parts of the world. But this scattered constituency of admirers never takes the
form of real recognition in a tangible society within which the artist
operates. Today’s artists are made through exclusion. But Varma became a
celebrity by taking an inclusive approach. He, by making his works cheaper and
available, worked in a corporate way, involving a lot of agencies and middlemen
who too reaped wealth through commissions. In that sense Ravi Varma was not
just an artist but a businessman at large. He was also functioning as a large
museum operator whose approach was different than a conventional museum operator.
While the latter asked the people to come towards the museums, the former took
his wares among the people and made them buy, keep and look at them with
reverence. If someone expects to meditate in the Rothko Museum, what does a
person do when he looks at a Ravi Varma oleograph and goes into a deep prayer
or meditation? Varma knew the answer.
(Ravi Varma press preserved)
That answer is still inaccessible or incomprehensible for
many of the contemporary artists who still believe that they could sell their
works for exorbitant prices either by select selling or by making their works
rare. In whichever case, this situation gives birth to various cartels that
handle works of art and its market, which would remain exclusive and
undemocratic. After the collapse of the contemporary art market, we have
several mid-career artists now selling their works from studios for finding
funds to run their families, studios and other activities. They short sell
their works compared to their prices in the boom market. Instead of balancing
and correcting the market follies, this situation has further aggravated
imbalanced situation though it is not seen in that light. Provided, if an art
market boom happens again exactly the way it had happened a few years back,
definitely the works that have been sold from the studios of the artists are
going to coming back to the secondary market, collapsing the primary market. That
means, we have to accept the fact that there will not be a primary market,
which is a supreme market with right economic practices, in the future. Primary
market will be replaced by art consultants, artists, curators and other
middlemen. The secondary market will take the role of the primary market.
Though it would prove a difficult scenario for many, this
future possibility would allow the artists much more autonomous than being the
contracted slaves of the primary galleries, which has been the case till now. The
same autonomy will come to the critical and historical authority of the
critics, historians, consultants, connoisseurs and so on provided they could
engage in the ethical practices in the newly evolving art market. The
difference of such market from the existing market would be that this will not
run on the profit making business model. While the artist and the
consultant/curator could sell the work and divide their economic profits (not
in the real profit of market logic), the dividend for the investor (if that
concept remains in the evolving market) will be based on auction houses and
other secondary market activities. In this scenario, artists will not be forced
to do more works or less works. Internet could make them visible and the
freelancing critics, curators and other operators could assess the works for
the direct buyer. In the worst case scenario, the former gallerists could fall
from grace and become ‘consultants’ without a gallery spaces to ‘show’ the
works to the public and do community reach out programs! I do not know how many
of them would come down to that! Intelligent galleries would control the price
today and now.
(Sri Chithra Art Gallery Trivandrum, Kerala, where Ravi Varma's paintings are housed)
Raja Ravi Varma again shows the way. Varma was the first one
to gain autonomy not only as an artist but also as a business man. He had to go
through several trials and tribulations before he could really establish as a printing
press owner who produced the prints of his works and pumped them into the
market. The agents played smart and natural calamities forced him out of work. However,
he could collaborate with visiting British artists to improve the quality of
his prints. Varma was moving towards establishing his own gallery; rather a
private museum of sorts so that the ordinary public could walk into the gallery
and see his works. Despite the criticism that the succeeding generation of the Bengal
school artists leveled against him that he was an artist who copied western naturalism,
Ravi Varma was the first Indian artist who wanted his gallery/museum. The government
of Travancore got into a contract with him in the late 19th century that
he would make two paintings each per year for the government and against which
he would be rewarded by a museum in Thiruvananthapuram. The government did not
honor its word and an angry Varma wrote a strong letter to the Diwan and
severed his contract after six years. Though the Chitralayam (Art Gallery) in
the name of Ravi Varma came much later, Varma was the first one to fight with
the establishment for his autonomy.
Our contemporary artists could a lot from Ravi Varma. First
of all they could develop a dual system of working; in the first one, they
could work for their patrons or sell works to the patrons and get their wealth
for sustenance and furthering their art activities. In the second system, they
could produce works for the consumption of the masses in dirt cheap price. If we
go by the Varma example, only a common philosophical or cultural thread would
make every Indian citizen an art collector. And the work of art should come in
cheap prices. We do not live in Ravi Varma’s times. Technology and outreach
have changed, so are the modes of consumption. To find a common thread like
Hinduism would be politically incorrect in these days. During the post
globalization scenario with high level of economic disparities, it is extremely
difficult to integrate people in terms of politics or religion. Even
nationalism would not do though a majoritarian political scenario is possible
through that. So what could be the common factor?
(A signed serigraph by MF Husain)
The most logical answer would be this: art and artist are
the common factors that would integrate a country aesthetically. How is that
possible? To make this possible, the artist and art works should become a part
and parcel of our finer cultural senses. May be hundred per cent proliferation
cannot be achieved in this sense. But a majority could be inclined to art and
aesthetics. This is possible only when artists are given due space in the
society. Also art works should be given in cheaper prices. Again the question
is how. It is possible if the artists become much responsible than statesmen.
They should grow to the level of visionaries within the world of visual
aesthetics. They should be constantly finding avenues of expressing their
individualities as well as integrating the craft and folk traditions within
their scheme of their works. Larger concerns of ecology and humanism should
activate them to do their works rather than the amassing of wealth. Once the artists
become those special creatures of nature, a country as a whole would take heed
of them. This needs a larger sense of vision, madness, individuality as well as
inclusionary thinking. Artists should become sages of their own merit and
right. Once that status is achieved everyone in the country would feel like
keeping a work by any one of the artists or a few artists of their choices.
It is possible only when a work of art is sold in cheap
prices and could be made available in places where one would buy finer things
to embellish their lives. We have innumerable printing devices and technologies
today. Artists could make limited or unlimited edition prints and with the
artists’ signature agencies could sell them. To sell a print, the maker of the
work of art needs a wonderful life to be wondered at by everyone and the
aesthetic presented in the work should be exceptional. There cannot be
monolithic parameters in setting the aesthetic tone of a country which has one
and half billion population. Our galleries have tried selling signed prints by
famous artists. But such attempts have always failed or have not taken up the
way they should have been, mainly because the artists’ as well as art’s
constituency is limited and none prefers to buy a signed print when he/she
could afford an original. Art could be saved only by people. When people take
up art as mediums of sublimation in/of their own lives, art would become a part
of their lives and then they would need more art objects to see constantly. Now
its place is taken by screen savers, wall papers, cheap calendars and other
innumerable visual materials. We need them to be supplemented with a little bit
of art (we cannot replace the wall papers and ever changing screen savers
completely).
(Why dont you have a work of art at home?)
Again, I would say, it is possible. If literature of the
world masters could be sold for hundred
rupees in the traffic junctions and in Columbia (when Marquez was alive), his
book releases were also celebrated in the streets by road side vendors of his
books, then an artist work also could be lauded by the mass provided if they
are made available cheap. Cheap does not mean cheapness. Affordable does not
mean that replaceable. They mean works of art that could be bought at will by
anyone without thinking twice about the monthly household budget. Wouldn’t it
be possible? In my view, it is possible. The poor folk of Indian subcontinent
in the late 19th and early 20th century parted with a few
annas to buy their Ravi Varmas. If so, the people who would spend a couple of
thousand rupees for a Sunday meal would definitely think of skipping it for
buying an interesting piece of art. And we have printing technology and also we
have print making artists who make original works of art in an affordable
medium. If there is a will there is way. If Ravi Varma could dream of a country
where every house having a print of his work, then definitely we could too….A
home, a print, if not an original piece of art.
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