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