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