From the kitchen window I could see these bunches of
berries, half pinkish red and half white hanging from high branches of the tree
that grows over a fifteen feet tall boundary wall. Little humming birds hover
around the bell like white flowers, butterflies flit all over, occasionally a
monkey jumps over it never touching the berries that make my eyes widen with
happiness each morning as I enter the kitchen. Children don’t find any devices
around to climb over the wall and pluck the berries. Necessity has made them small
inventors; they tie a little bottle or stone at the end of a kite string and
throw it over the branches. The stone goes over the tree, covers the intended
branch and comes down. Holding both the ends of the string, the kids pull it
down, slowly but meticulously, plucking the sour berries (someone told me about
its taste. If slice it and rub it with salt, chilli powder and a shot of lemon,
it would taste heaven, they say) and make way before the gardener sees the
unnaturally shaking tree, comes rushing and chases away the truant boys.
Looking at these berries I think of their purpose of being
there. They are the making of a wondrous hand. The berries are here to carry
the seed and perpetuate the species of that tree on the earth. But others find
different purposes for it. Some berries are tasty; some are sour and some are
even poisonous. Some cause various kinds of allergies; some are good to look at
but are never to be consumed. Each has a purpose of perpetuating its species.
Rest of their uses are found out by others, including birds and human beings.
Depending on the quality of looks and taste, human beings judge the berries as
edible, poisonous, decorative etc. The meaning of a berry is its berry-ness.
When it is brought to another situation, suddenly it acquires metaphorical
values; some meaning which is not intrinsic but added to it by associations.
Apple is one of the innocent edible fruits in the market but even the staunch
Christians would not think of the original sin when they buy a kilogram of it
for themselves. None laughs at a woman who goes around biting into an apple. Yet,
when the apple is painted on a canvas or displaced from the tree or fruit stall
and placed it in a gallery or museum, suddenly the meaning changes; everyone
suddenly sees the ‘history’ of apple both in mythology/ theology and
aesthetics. People have found out the ways in which they could see purpose of
anything and everything including an apple.
(Subodh Gupta with his Absolut bottle)
When depicted in art objects and subjects come to have
meaning and purposes though such connotations are not the intention of the
artists. Like berries art that comes from the minds of the artists too does not
have any particular purpose. If at all there is a purpose for art that is just
the perpetuation of the artistic abilities of the artist himself/herself. Each
work of art is an intention as well as a decision. The tree has an intention
and decision in producing a bunch of berries. It does not see the birds as
primary consumers. Perhaps, it may be seeing the birds as primary carriers so
that the seeds could be delivered elsewhere. An artist is also like a tree;
he/she has an intention and a decision. Any work of art produced therefore
carries an artistic intention and a decision, both of which do not have
anything to do with its further perpetuation in the minds of the people or in
the market. The intention is often simple; that ‘I want to make a work of art’
or ‘I want to make something out of something’ or ‘I want to make something that
makes me happy’. The decision part is also equally simple: ‘I want to do it in
this way’ or ‘I am doing it in this way’ or ‘this is the way that I do it’ or ‘this
is what I do with it’.
Real artists are those people who create works of art with
pure intention and strong decision. When the intention is adulterated or the
decision is weakened, the resultant work of art would have weaker genes to
survive the times. This statement invites another discussion; one could say
that all the artists have good intentions when they do art and all of them have
stronger decisions too. I am nobody to question their intentions or decisions.
But works of art are such things that once perceived or tasted with heightened
sense of aesthetical understanding, their intentions and decisions are revealed
to the trained eyes. This self revelatory aspect of a work of art often puts
the artists into trouble; those who have done with impure intentions and weaker
decisions are exposed sooner than later. As I said before, artistic intention is
all about a self justification of making a work of art, decision is nothing but
executing it the way one wants it to be. Each artist makes a self justification
for doing a work of art and the way it is done automatically explains the
artistic decision behind it.
This is a dangerous proposition. When we accept that each
artist has an intention, we should also accept that whatever the artist intends
is exposed in the given work of art; what seen is not just the representation
or non-representation and style but it is also the mind of the artist. An
artist who paints the glamour and glitter of an urban space is either
celebrating it or critiquing it. He/she cannot say that urban space is a
metaphor for the celebration of life. This could be a naive argument from the
artist’s side, however that naivety itself is then an intention of the artist.
And the way he has painted, sculpted, photographed, videoed and so on shows the
decision of the artist vis-a-vis the medium, the perspective, the time and the
positioning of him/herself within or without the work of art. That means, a
work of art which is produced by an artist often gives away the artistic
intention and decision. Art history says that most of the Renaissance and
Pre-Renaissance artists hid a lot of secret meanings, scientific findings,
agnostic scepticism and so on in their works without offending the patrons. One
needs a deep understanding of the history, theology, sociology and political
make up of the times to understand those works in the right perspective. However,
what comes to fore is that those complicated works too revealed artistic
intentions and decisions at some stage of historical analysis.
Compared to those days, today we live in much shallower
times with short attention spans and peripheral understanding of things.
Artists too have fallen to the follies of our times. Instant fame, name and
riches have come to define artistic success in our contemporary times. Fame and
fortune also could come via being different and creating complicated art
deliberately. But surprisingly, if complexity is the hallmark of a particular
work of art today, then we also understand that it is not the complexity of the
minds of the artists but their intention to make the work of art complicated
than lucid. It is an intention as well as a decision. I do not want to say that
whether it is right or wrong. But I would say that it gives away the ways in
which an artist tries to make his/her work complex and comprehensive. The
decisions within those works are crystal clear. Only way to deflect artistic
intentions and decisions is to attribute metaphorical values to these images
and objects. But unfortunately we live in such times that everything is either
a metaphor or a self revealing platitude. The metaphorical lack of our times
has made the job of an art critic much tougher for only he could rely on his
deeper or shallow understanding about the world and nature in order to dredge
out meanings as well as befitting metaphors. The self revealing nature of the
images is because of the over exposed ways of our lives these days. We even
know the background score of our wrist watch. When we consume anything we know everything
about it via advertisements. So the consumption is a sort of sharing the
experience that one already has known virtually; consumption of it is a
reaffirmation of the same experience in the real time. This renders the works
of art and experiences/decisions revealed/expressed in there an underlining
rather than an exciting first time experience.
(work by Jan Van Kessel, 1659)
The question then is what could be the right kind of art
that protects the intention and the decision of the artists? In my opinion
contemporary art has been overtly depending upon the immediate incidents and experiences,
memories, images, texts related to them. Over identification with/of the
experiential quotes within the art or as art has reduced the artistic intention
to some sort of cleverness of cajoling the viewer to a turn of surprise
exposition/s. The decision is already visible because the styles that the
artists have chosen are self revelatory and resonate with what the viewers have
already seen around them. The political intentions and decisions of the artists
are too palpable to be real or serious because they flit around the berries and
flowers like butterflies, moving from one flower to other at a time but around
a variety of flowers and berries over a period of time. So we see artists
working on migration at one point of time and in the coming season we see them
celebrating nationalism confined within the geographical boundaries. At times
we see them working against the fascistic political ideologies and other times
hailing militaristic moves as paramount gestures of patriotism. Such works of
art are passing fancies, like the moths that come to die in the light of the
truth and simplicity.
Can art do anything to change the society if that is the
case? Art, being one of the ultimate expressions of human potential, it has the
ability to create empathetic responses amongst the viewers/listeners. It comes
as a natural a spontaneous thing for both the artist and the viewer. It is not
necessary that we would like to go out and change the world the moment we see a
work of art. A work of art does not ask us to change the world or society. It
fundamentally asks one to change oneself. A good piece of music is the right
intentions and decision of a musician so is a good work of art is that of a
painter or sculptor or any other fine artist. It moves the viewer not to change
the world but towards the innards of one’s own self. Today, a propagandist work
of art could ‘inform’ people of political turns and twists in a country but it
can never change the people who view it. Had it been so, India should have been
without religious conflicts or without garbage everywhere for we see a lot of
propaganda for keeping the society clean of religious conflict as well as
littering. A work of art stands for the artist’s expression of the simple
truths that he finds around him/her. A proper reading of it would reveal
his/her intention and decision too. Once those are understood, people would
marvel at the work of art and would move towards the sublime zone of existence.
One need not necessarily be dealing with the social realities or political realities
of the time directly. The secret is lies in the capturing of simple truths of
life which are capable enough to turn potential metaphors and could reveal not
only the artistic intentions and decisions but also many things more provided
if one has the eyes to see simple truths and their abilities to expand and
contain the times and beyond.
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