A young artist friend asks me who could be the right
documenters or right carriers of the new art that would come out as a result of
finding a fine balance between craft and concept or rather skill and idea. In
different contexts I have answered this question previously, however let me
approach the issue afresh. Recently in the Indian Express daily, I happened to
read a piece of art promotional writing based on an exhibition which is currently
on in one of the Laddo Sarai galleries in Delhi. What struck me was the theme
of the exhibition: Partition of Indian sub-continent in 1947. There is private
joke among us, a few friends that in North India artists are still hung up with
partition blues. In South, which is comparatively unaffected by the woes of partition
artists fall back to the Second World War and dig up some distant connection
that their family members had with the notorious war. In East, especially in
Bengal, it is all about colonialism. The contemporary artists there, like
termites just hit the family albums and yarn stories out of those fading black
and white pictures. In Mumbai, it’s all about the retrieval of land from the
seven islands and the kinds of riots and natural calamities that the city has
survived. To put it in nutshell, Mumbai artists’ works are Hemingway-esque; the
perennial struggle of man and his ultimate victory. Unfortunately, the artists
who came from Jammu a couple of years back to the mainland due to the flash
floods that disrupted human life in the state, somehow displayed their extreme
desire to discard anything historical and traditional and indulged in heavy
duty performance art. This is an interesting aspect to be studied in detail
taking the psychological impact of the prolonged political, social, cultural
and religious unrest in the state on the young artists, who by default become
the unacknowledged legislators of their own human constituencies. But alas, we
do not have enough art critics or historians who share such angst.
Before we go into the question that my young friend has
raised, let me continue with the Laddo Sarai artist story. The insistence of
the young woman artist on partition issues made me curious to read further. In
one of the earlier paragraphs the artist claims that her parents migrated to
India from the newly formed Pakistan (obviously in 1947). I just got into a
simple calculation. If the parents of the artist were ten years old then they
must be 80 years old now. The artist is 31 years old. The average age of the
parents whose kids are now in their thirties must be maximum 60. If they are
sixty or even 70 now, they must have been either one year old or must not have
even taken birth. I felt that the artist was telling lies or making up a story
to create some effect. Definitely, her parents might have come from Pakistan
but they were not her parents then. And I doubt someone who is born in mid
1980s and grew up mostly in 1990s is deeply disturbed by the partition issues.
Partition, unfortunately has become a part of the cultural industry today. In
the last India Art Fair (January 2016), I found a booth where people were
invited to speak about partition in camera. I too was invited and I refused to
contribute to the project because my experiences of partition are minimal and
if at all I have any they are cultural in nature imparted to me by the works of
various films, documentaries, writers and historians including Sadat Hasan Manto,
Khushwant Singh, Ajeet Caur and lately Saeed Naqvi. Hence, if a young artist
with all her democratic rights to pursue any subject of her interest anywhere
in the world still pursues partition as an issue in her art, I cannot
technically question it. But I would say that it is the creation of false
history/histories, which is superficial and sentimental to certain extent.
(Partition blues)
Why such falsities are circulated in the visual cultural scene
of India, which otherwise has a very vibrant cultural scene? Often it is said
that we do not have the right kind of art critics and historians in our country
who could create an adequate discourse on visual culture in India. Partly it is
true. We heavily depend on the journalists and art writers for knowing about
art. In fact, we cannot and should not blame the art journalists and art
writers for percolating bad ideas or wrong ideas about art. Most of the
journalists write what they are told to write. With a variety of subjects that
they have to handle on a daily basis (in art itself) they do not get enough
time to research or understand what they are dealing with. That does not mean
that they do not do their homework. Journalists before meeting the artists,
definitely do certain homework including running a Google search before they
meet the artist and his/her show. However, journalists are those people who
look for a ‘story idea’ or an ‘interesting angle’ or ‘something that captures
the readers’ mind’. Hence, unless there is something politically important in
the subject, they quiz the artists to eke out ‘stories’ and we should know that
artists are also full of stories. Out of the many ‘stories’ that the artist
gives to the journalist, he/she picks up one and pegs the whole exhibition
narrative in it. The report then remains ‘true’ as far as the artist is
concerned but ‘false’ in the case of the real intention of the art works or the
show itself. When it comes to the mainstream artists whose histories and
stories are already in the public domain, journalists focus more on the present
body of works and details them by giving ample amount of first person narrative
by the artist himself/herself. Art writers in various magazines too do the same
but as they are magazine writers, they give personal twists and turns to the
work of art depending on their imaginative prowess.
In such a scenario we cannot depend on newspaper writing for
historical or critical assessment of the works. They at the most serve the
purpose of provenance creation for the future market. For a historian or a
critic, these newspaper writings could serve only the purpose of partial
documentation; either they take the time and place of the exhibition and a
little of first person narratives. I have never heard in the recent times that
a historian or a critic ever quoting a journalist while writing about an
artist. When it comes to the art magazines, especially in the Indian art scene,
we have different standards for different magazines. Let me take two prominent
art magazines in India; Art India Magazine and Take on Art. There used to be a
time when getting noticed by the Art India Magazine was considered to be some
sort of national and international recognition for the artist. But the Art
India Magazine degenerated on two counts; one, it set a benchmark for the
Brahminical practice in Indian art. It vertically and horizontally divided the
Indian art scene into culturally elite and low brow art and catered both in
different terms, by giving intellectual prominence to the former and business
presence to the latter. Two, it standardised the critical language into a sort
of whispering and assumed a sort of Victorian Puritanism. Art India Magazine
played a psychological war with the Indian art scene by introducing international
writers with long list of credentials (may be Art India Magazine found out that
India does not have such writers with white skin and long list of credentials)
but with partial understanding of Indian contemporary art. But their half baked
ideas set the benchmark for Indian art writing, which has been heavily followed
by the late entrant Take on Art Magazine. Take on Art Magazine, in the long run
may be considered to be one of the strangely mutated cultural products in the
world because of its lack of direction. Apparently, Take on Art Magazine brings
out curated/thematic issues depending on where it gets released but the
unfortunate thing is that this magazine has absolutely failed to create any
cultural discourse in India. In this mutual admiration club, Take on Art
magazine plays a second fiddle to Art India Magazine. The condition of the
other magazines like Art and Deal, Creative Minds and the Mumbai Art Journal are
further pathetic as they cater to anything and everything.
(Take on Art)
When we discuss art writing and documentation, we need to
look at a couple of other avenues where we could see intelligent writing or art
documentation. At present I could say that only the Asia Art Archives is doing
a diligent job by documenting and categorizing historical as well as critical writing
on Indian art and most importantly leaving it as an open source. Critical
Collective is another avenue came up recently but unfortunately it is a
business venture than an art historical support structure in India. Though the
people behind the Critical Collective make sincere attempts to gather critical
and historical writings from various sources, by making it a closed source and
open only against an annual subscription, it has moved against the spirit of
our times where services of various kinds are offered freely in the market. Art
history cannot be a closed source.
Noted film maker Karan Johar in the recently held Express
Adda opined that the film writers should be paid at par with the directors and
other technicians involved. The same view could be applied to the Indian art
scene. There is a complaint that most of the Indian art history and criticism
graduates look for better jobs in galleries or museums or similar institutions
elsewhere mainly because being independent art historian or critic does not pay
enough to make a decent living. It is true to certain extent. Art history does
not pay nor does art criticism. If people are not reading art criticism and history
the reason is it is not a glamorous field. People would read art history and
criticism when art has something interesting to say and the historians and
critics have something interesting talk about it. There should be more avenues
and there should be enough money from some sources so that the art historians
and critics could write about the newer forms of art which balance both skills
and ideas and craft and concept. In the present scenario, I do not think that
the galleries and museums would ever support art history or critical writing.
When that is the case, there should be volunteering efforts from the art
history and criticism graduates to embark on a very difficult journey. They
should take up their interest areas and start documenting on their own for the
larger good of art and also the larger culture of our country. If they are
making their money to lead a decent life from elsewhere, they need not please
anybody and they could write their minds in the avenues that they themselves
could create. If artists could initiate their own art works, why shouldn’t the
art critics and historians initiate their own kinds of art history and
criticism? It is a creative job and it has its own risks.
(Karan Johar)
Before concluding this essay, I would like to flag out one
more issue that I have noticed in the field of cultural writing in India. We
have excellent poets, novelists, political historians, musicians, filmmakers
and geniuses in all other fields. They all interact well with their works and
make critical assessments on each other. But these stalwarts, when they talk
about visual arts (fine arts) they go by the standard views on it. Even the
best feminists would celebrate the worst of feminist art when they turn their eyes
to the visual scenario. The best of poets and writers would blindly speak good
of the most retrogressive kinds of art. Those who take up cudgels against
imperialism in other fields go and toast for the imperialist art. This also should
change. The interdisciplinary approach in culture should be more discerning and
decisive than casual praising and mutual embracing. We live in a time of
degeneration in art and culture. It is high time that people wake up and write
their own histories and criticisms.
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