Why India does not Have Great Woman Artists?

Years back when I met a woman artist friend at her studio she found a good listener in me and unbundled her life before me. Sinking deep into a brown leather sofa and sipping an extra large glass full of salty lemon soda I gave her a patient ear. A story that covers a few north Indian towns and many continents, lonely journeys into the wintry mornings to hostile government institutions, false accusations, attorneys, legal tangles, extreme depression and wrench like grip on optimism would have made into a gripping novel had it been written down without adding an iota of imagination by the writer or it would have made into a great cross over movie. It was the journey of a lonely woman who had found her way to justice not only for her partner and kids but also for her own wronged self. Back in India, she decided to dedicate her life completely for making art; more than making art, she wanted to live the life of an artist. But she was restless. The reason was simple- whatever she painted turned out to be beautiful flowers. She tried again. Flowers made way to vegetations and from there to abstractions. It was then she decided to invite me to her studio to vent her aspirations and frustrations.

By the time the winding narrative culminated into a soulful reunion of the family, I had sunken further deep into the leather sofa and the huge glass was still half full with lemonade. I was at a loss for words as the immensity of her story had fallen on me like an existential weight which wouldn’t be mine even if I tried to emulate her life. I looked at her; she was mumbling something to herself while dragging at her cigarette. “Why my works do not speak anything?” she asked me. The works were already on display along the walls, between book shelves and on the floor in clumsy half opened rolls. Why, I too thought? Either she was avoiding the gruel experiences by painting vegetations and flowers or she was painting what was opposite to her experiences. Whatever be the case, she was not painting her own self. I could see the torment in her face. “If you could paint your life, may be people will understand and the recognition that you have been seeking would come to you easily,” I said. “But I can’t,” she said. “I do not want to reveal those private sufferings on the canvases. I want it to be within me, safe and sedated because I have overcome that trauma. I do not want to relive it,” she went silent for a long time after stating that.

My friend is still struggling with her art. She has not found her solace in art and as she has not found it in art, she is still on a search to find it there itself. Perhaps, her solace is not there in art. Or may be her frustration comes from the fact that she has all solace and comfort on the earth but she remains incomplete without doing art. But when she is at her canvas, she expresses what she is not. Each canvas is a denial and each moment she stands in front of a complete canvas is a trial by fire, never ending. Abstraction comes to her naturally because she wants her inner life to be hoodwinked by abstraction. Abstract art sometimes is a vessel into which one could pour any kind of meaning, mostly transcendental kinds. Or it could be her lack of craft in painting figures due to lack of practice. One wouldn’t accept this view if you prefer to tell an artist so. Ability to craft an object/image by paints or by chisel or by any other medium could be a curse at times because your skill to make it or spoil it would tell the truth to the world; even bad skill needs some sort of consistency to prove its status as a skilled style. Abstraction could be a boon for it could hide not only your inabilities but also your own inner self. What you need to do is to cover it up with transcendental jargon, which comes so cheap in Osho publications.

I did not judge my friend as I was listening to her story and looking at her works. Even today I do not judge her because it is her life and art and she is responsible for both. But I understand that she is not the only one; she is not the only one who refuses to address their own selves. Most of the artists are like that. Talking about the gendered selves in art, female artists suffer from this. They want to speak out and explore their own selves in their works. But they are afraid of the society, the family, husband, children and finally their own selves. Recently I came across a woman artist whose canvases had a lot of images that represent female genitals. I asked her whether she was celebrating her autonomy as a sexual subject. Upon hearing this question she gasped and blatantly refused her intention to create an autonomous subjectivity for herself. When I insisted that I could see female sexual organs in her works, she said it was just accidental formations and she never thought they looked like vulva. That was quite a disclaimer! May be art is in the eyes of the onlooker, one could say. If you are looking for a vagina in a woman’s canvas may be you will see one somewhere. But I was not looking for one. Women artists refuse to acknowledge their bodily autonomy in India due to many reasons including moral perceptions of the society and the replication of patriarchal values.

A few woman artists have acknowledged their physical as well as mental autonomy and by hook or crook, with good skill or without skill at all they all have made it in the market and in the intellectual circuits. If you ask why most of the women artists in India fail to earn a name (even if they earn fame they are temporal and lasting only till the end of the exhibition and page three appearances and a few paid writings here and there) I would say it is because of their fear to express their own minds. They are so worried about their domestic and social roles as daughters, wives and mothers that they want to replicate the patriarchal values that define a good woman. Right from Karwachot fasting to washing and powdering a wife beating husband they want to be perfect social beings first and artists next. And the moment they hit their studios or workspaces, they become rebellious and the rebellion takes the turn of complaint than bold statements through art forms. These complaining selves find the final vent in abstract art because this art language gives them social dignity (because it is sexless), modernity (because abstraction is a pure invention of modernity) and gender parity (because abstract art cannot be seen in gender terms because hardly there is something to identity as gender even if there are vaginal and penile appearances by chance or by design). Complaints also manifest in the form of moral critique on other successful women artists, often doubting their abilities to hop beds.

Another debilitating factor that Indian women artists (the majority) suffer from is their perceptions on feminism. As these women artists do not take any pain to understand their art or their lives (maximum what they do is to find a mentor who would be another abstractionist idiot or attending satsang and yoga classes) they view feminism as a marriage breaking ideology. Yes, feminists could break marriages and homes (depending on the emphasis that one gives on the reasons of such breakages) but at the same time we pretend not to see the number of marriages broken by non-feminists. If someone does a stock taking, one could see that maximum home breakings come from non-feminists women and men. Like they understand Communism as a foreign wife snatching ideology (along with land and socio-economic opportunities), feminism is understood by them as a spoiler of their own beliefs. They do not recognize the fact that there are feminisms and the slogan ‘personal is political’ comes from such varied possibilities of feminisms. Though many feminists have misused the ‘personal is political’ slogan for ulterior motives, feminisms is a relevant theoretical tool that has to renew itself at every turning of the annals of contemporary history as events unfold in breakneck pace. But our women artists seem to be absolutely unaware of all these. They are happy with their karwachots and fasting.

If one asks why there are no great Indian woman artists, the answer should be sought in the above cited points. Artists who are not able to take a position in their own art can’t be good or successful artists. It is applicable to both men and women. The histories that we have built around our women artists like Amrita Sherghil, T.K.Padmini, Nasreen Mohammedi and so on are juvenile histories. Amrita Sherghil was a seeker of opportunities. She worked when India’s nationalist struggle was in full swing and her imagination seemed to have untouched by all those struggles. Amrita Shergil did not create a feminine language of her own but what made her important was her European experience and lineage that gave her a larger edge in the art scene than even her male counterparts. T.K.Padmini is an artist who passed away before she could really evolve as an artist. What we have as her oeuvre is the embodiment of her urgency to be at par with the male colleagues of her time. At times, they do not even move beyond stylised illustrations. Nasreen Mohammedi is perhaps an over rated artist for her minimalism which could be read at par with the conceptual works of Sol Lewitt. As history was written from those quarters certain inclusions became imperative and also when there were no woman artists to reckon with, whoever showed the potentialities of becoming a bold artist got a permanent place in the modern art history of India.

India could have great women artists only when they are able to express their own selves freely. Quasi and shy approaches to self will never make a good woman artist. Even if we have a few names in Indian contemporary art scene who have transcended the boundaries to become international artists, their art is basically read and judged by the parameters created by the western art historians, theoreticians, critics and curators. Even in their bold attempts to politicize their stance and art languages one could see a tremendous amount of abstraction, means going from the concrete and particular to the generic which gives them an immediate recognition as ‘international’ art. When one of our woman artists scream it finds its resonances historically in the scream of Yoko Ono. When one artist cuts meat to write words, it becomes a surrogate Abromovic act. We have a few bold woman artists in India but they are not yet been included in the high profile shows. May be it takes a few more years for them to replace the sanitized women artists who do politically correct sanitized art now.  

(all images from net. For illustrative purpose only)

Woman Artists in Language and Scooty Seats that don’t Allow Splitting Legs

An imaginary dialogue between Rabindranath Tagore and Abanindranath Tagore, conceived and presented by R.Sivakumar, the art historian had caught the audience by force. The search for a lost language and the ways that the Tagores had chosen for that search were put across the audience convincingly by the professor. As an appreciation to his presentation, a woman artist from among the audience got up and said that the lives of Tagores should still be an inspiration to the ‘Kalaakaaranmaar’ (artists) of Kerala. I was chairing the session by default as Sadanand Menon, the cultural theorist had to leave for the airport and had invited me to take his seat. The word ‘Kalaakaaranmaar’ used by the lady prompted me to ask her why she used the word Kalaakaaranmaar that connoted male artists when a word ‘Kalaakaarikal’ (female artists) was available in Malayalam. I also asked Sivakumar whether Bengali language had separate words to connote male and female artists.

The lady said that using a gendered word to connote an artist would further alienate a few women who are working in the art scene in Kerala and she preferred the word Kalaakaaranmaar because she thought and felt that it was a gender neutral word. Sivakumar also took more or less the same position as she had, but from within a larger context than forcing it within the Kerala context and opined that new neuter gender words like ‘artist’, ‘actor’, ‘singer’, ‘poet’ etc are in parlance accommodating both male and female persons without really underpinning that ideological differences that a male and female person could fundamentally have on certain issues. Familiar to the middle course of consensus though, I insisted asking him whether the Bengali language had any particular word that differentiated between a male and female artist. ‘Shilpi’ is the common noun used for both the male and female artists, he said. In his vote of thanks, Lalit Kala Academy Secretary, Ponniam Chandran too poked me for raising that question. According to him, choosing/using a different word for woman artists could amount to fundamentalism and he almost intended that gender disparities in art have been erased in Kerala. 

In 2014, schools in Canada had dropped the words ‘he’ and ‘she’ for ‘Xe’ in an egalitarian approach to include the third gender into the academic parlance. Though the word Xe has not yet been a much preferred pronoun in Indian academies, I have been following the debates regarding the pronouns in both the academic as well as daily speeches and writing. Most of the feminists choose to use ‘she/her’ and the women in general even today use male common nouns to connote artists. As feminism is a multilayered theoretical discourse, insisting on the usage of one form of pronoun could amount to fundamentalism when seen from different contexts. For example, those women who think that the conscious categorization of a pronoun could go against the accepted linguistic practices and it could be capable enough to topple their own safe positions within the domestic and public spheres. Hence, not emphasising on a gender category could be seen as a survival strategy or pure ignorance. On the other hand there are women who take conscious position on using female pronouns to speak generic subjectivities like artists and poets and so on. There are feminists who demand parity in language by bulldozing ideologies down while accepting that the existing structures are hegemonic and by partaking in it would bring them the power they have been seeking.

Language is ideologically driven and ideology ridden. When we see a data that show a mere 3 % of the women participation in the art scene in the Middle East or in the Asian countries, what we apparently understand is the obvious minority of women artists. Such data makers fail to analyse the fact that it is not just in the art but the insignificant percentage is a reflection of the same condition of women in the given society in general. When this 3 % of women connote themselves with a male pronoun we should also understand that within the given context an artistic subjectivity is formed by the male ideas and male identities and women seem to take a very minor role in constructing the artistic subjectivity therefore they are forced to show allegiance with the prevalent language forms for the fear of being considered as intruders by framing their own subjectivities distinctively. Some languages have neuter gender pronouns or such neuter gender originates from the fact that those stipulated fields had been excluding women for a long time (the word ‘doctor’ connotes one such exclusive professional fields in the beginning and till early 20^th century women doctors were not given full doctor-ship and had to be happy with the title mid-wife doctor), where as we have easy female pronouns like seamstress, mistress, seductress and so on.

 (Wangechi Mutu, Kenyan artist)

The English word ‘artist’ is neutral gender like curator or doctor because making art was absolutely a male domain. Even if women had created art, their art was not considered art but hobby or pastime or filling the vacant moments. A much lenient society allowed some artistry to women and it was clearly demarcated within the domestic sphere of good housekeeping; mending, embroidering, crafting, beautifying and so on could be done without being called an artist. Art history as an academic discipline had not brought women artists in its purview for a long time and a practice of such exclusion had made Linda Nochlin to ask this question in her pivotal essay, Why there are no Great Women in Art? There are no great women in art because there are no words to connote great women in art. Nochlin pinpoints the economic structures that held the women down from raising their heads (like a Hydra) and its further analysis would reveal that no connotative word was produced in the language because of its socio-cultural and economic exclusion of women. In such a situation, fighting on a different word for ‘artist’ may sound hair splitting and useless. But if languages anywhere in the world have produced words that could connote women artists, then we should understand that in that linguistic group such women practices were a reality or allowed (by the patriarchal system).

When there is a word for it and even if it has not been in use for the fear of exclusion, the word has to be used by the practitioners of that gender. Parity feminists may not be addressing the underlying ideology of erasure of such words or even the very non-existence of such words. A utensil becomes out of use either when a modern replacement is brought into work or the ‘things’ that could demand the service of that utensil become unavailable or go out of fashion. We have several such things in our own memories. A word too shows such tendencies. A modern replacement can be possible only when an old word is in place. A word could become obsolete when the properties that have formed the word go out of use. In that sense, the world Kalakaarikal (female artists) could go out of use only when either a new word is brought in its place or women artists cease to exist in Kerala. I think women artists in Kerala should use the common noun Kalaakaarikal with pride.

Post script: As you know, every product has an ideology behind it. When the mopeds and scooties came to the market first, there was an objection from the male folk in India. They did not like their women sitting on it with obscenely split legs as men did. Slowly, the scooty design changed. Now look at the scooties; the seat has a slant (the body of the vehicle is designed in that way with a bulky back and a slender front) and none (including men) can sit with split legs on it. The design is done so cleverly that the thighs of the rider have to come close.   

(images source internet)

Burden of the Present

Early in the morning they drop me at the railway station. It is a state car with the emblem. As I get down from the back seat, as the young man who has escorted me to the station takes my bag out from the car's boot, people with their sleep ridden eyes look at me curiously thinking that I am someone from the government with a designated vehicle. This has happened to me before too. I understand each time the intoxication and high that authority could induce in one's mind.

I pick up my bag which has become heavier with the materials and books that the artists have given me, bid goodbye to the driver and the young man, avoid making eye contact with the curious people around and walk straight into the station. On platform number three my train has already arrived. Surprised I lug myself towards the overbridge that for a moment looks unsurmountable with the heavy bag in my hand. Panting and puffing, I climb the flight of stairs and alight at the third platform. Luckily the air conditioned chair car in which they have booked me is right there next to the foot of the bridge.

I go inside. I see weary faces of early morning passengers here and there. Just as they are bored they look at me with eyes deprived of sleep and then they go back to their day dreaming or into desperate efforts catch some sleep. I haul my bag and place it on the side racks above my head. I have a very bad cold. To add to my misery the air conditioner in the coach blasts down heavy loads of cold air on my head and neck. I feel sick. Then I do something that I have never done before. I open my bag and pull out a woollen shawl which I had packed when I left Delhi, knowing that by the time I return it would be winter. I cover myself with it and I feel strange. I have never covered myself in Kerala, that too with a woollen shawl.

The shawl and the notebook in my had give me a sort of avuncular look and obviously nobody these days write inside a moving train. If I had seen someone writing down something in a notebook, I would have definitely taken that person either for an old school writer or a member of some legislative body who had to prepare notes, while on the move during a busy schedule. I look absolutely retro. These days nobody uses a notebook and pen. Most of the people prefer to work on their computers, notepads, tabs or smart phones. Going back to a retro mode is deliberate and I cannot insist that everyone does it because as they we cannot set the course of history in reverse. If someone wants he could leave all modern technology behind and live a retro life. But that cannot be advocated; it should remain a personal choice.

Through the large glass window I could see the landscape slowly becoming visible as the first rays of the sun pierce through a reluctant darkness and the fog above the trees. The misty morning looks so alluring that I feel like walking into it. However, I warn myself: anything seen through a tinted glass will be  far removed from the reality. But I know the quality of the landscape on either side of the railway tracks. There are hardly any houses; what you see is the large expanse of lush green in different forms. Some run horizontally and melt into the horizon line. Trees with different contours look like individuals with different characters, standing sternly at their places, ignoring the people inside the passing trains. It is an ancient land. If you hark patiently you could hear the voices spoken by the trees. As if to transmit their secret whisperings to the winds, beyond one could see transmission towers of telephone service providers jutting out of the foliages, as anachronism of modernity.

The train passes over a small culvert with a clear brook running beneath. A white crane stands still. Up there along the electricity lines birds of different sorts sit and debate the course of the day.

Nature muted by a running carriage overwhelms me.I take out my phone and skim through it; mails, WhatsApp and Facebook. I take a selfie. Dissatisfied by my looks, I consign the picture to the delete box. In Facebook, people have posted so many things and a majority of it looks like latin to me as I am not tuned to the daily routine of sporadic updates by so many people who I hardly know. Then I look at some pages of certain journalists. Birds of a feather flock together, they say. In those pages I see the birds of the same species. I find them burdened by the Present. Whatever they have posted, though seems to have clear thoughts behind it, are apparently too close to our times and look shallow. They are debating very crucial issues. But all of them took a voyage on a paper-boat in a shallow sea. I fail to see the glimpses of historical depths.

For many of those who post those opinions and those who comment on them, it is a question of life and death. In their engagement, they look serious and sincere. They are so close to the issues that I wonder if they would ever be able to detach from those issues. Their innocence and verve makes me think of them as children in role play games; they pretend as their parents, teachers, shop owners, politicians, lawmakers, historians, scientists, and so on. This brings a smile to my lips. I look at the names and find most of the familiar. Soon they transform in front of my eyes and they become strange people with strange opinions and strange behaviour. I suddenly understand that they are simply doing what they are expected to do. They are just following their calling and path. I am the one who has been wandering in the woods of history, often lost or distracted.

Inside the train coach, I realise that I can never agree with the world around me. When he world is right, I am definitely wrong. If I am right, then he world should be wrong. How could I bring about the alignment with the world? The world is so fast and I am too slow to catch up with it. Ironically, I don feel the need to catch up with the world. Yet I feel pain when I see disparities among people abound around. I feel miserable when people connect even with the nature with the aid of technology. A scenery is no longer a scenery until it turns out to be a digital image which could be zoomed in and zoomed out. A reality is a reality only when it is debated in the social media. We have only mediatized realities now. The nature out there looks so close yet distant from this railway coach.


(Images courtesy Internet)

Art Review Survey and the Erasure of Philosophers

Art Review publishes 'Power 100' in the art scene. Another art magazine artsy.net breaks down the list of these powerful 100 people in the art world and has come up with some interesting findings. It is not surprising that the global art scene is still dominated by the white male. (68% male, 32% female). When it comes to race, 70% are whites, 16 % are Asian, 7% Latino, 5%Black and 3% Middle eastern. If we go by the place of origin track, we get to see 51% hailing from Europe, 22% from the US, 13% from Asia, 8% from Central and South America, 3% from Africa and 3% from Middle East. While the Professional field is dominated by 35% of Gallery / Dealer, 23% artists, 22% curator / museum administrator, 14% collector, 3% Fair Director, 2% School Administrator, and 1% Philosopher.

If you ask me, I am not surprised. The data cannot be more revealing. But something really surprised me, the still not fading one percent of philosophers or to see from a different perspective, the pathetic representation of philosophers in the global art scene. It could be further broken down using certain other sociological and economic tools The diminishing numbers of philosophers within the tribes that constitute the global art scene directly says that the art no longer runs on grand philosophies. It could also be seen as a certain time in the history of the world when art happens without any philosophy. I do not know yet whether it is a good symptom or a bad one. A work of art which has no philosophy or that resists philosophical interventions in reading maybe a sort of hollow art that does not hurt, therefore finds easy routes to the hands of the art collectors and investors.

This particular data analysis gets curiouser and curiouser  when we come to know that a work of art which does not have any philosophical anchor could be custom made for the market. The whole data tells us where the art scene stands today. It is not at a crossroad as popularly believed. It does not have any hesitation to move further to the already personified white male dominated route. That means the supremacy of art market is still in the hands of the white world. The not so impressive representation of the other parts of the world in this list shows the either they are included because of the growing markets in those regions or they are represented because of their exchange, both aesthetical and financial with the white world.

Coming back to the issue of the almost nil representation of the philosophers in the list, a closer look would reveal that it does not underline the drastic and unceremonious removal of the philosophers from the art scene, but emphasises without any room for doubt that the other actants including curators, artists, and galleries don the mantle of the philosophers; and they do it convincingly. By treating philosophers as a separate constituency, these players have extracted a great purpose of ideation and engagement meant for sublime from the works of art.

Reduction of the presence of philosophers from the art scene also heralds an era of art without historical continuities.When the art field players decide for themselves that because of the complete triumph of capitalism, history is no longer relevant to the case of art. the fallacy that they do not understand or refuse to recognise is pertaining to the very experience of history in various forms creating further fields for historical as well as ideological engagements with a larger world. That means discounting the philosophers from the art scene more or less reflects its own bankruptcy, that too in an urgent race for making profit.

Yet another view on this would be the lack of market value that the philosophers could generate for the uses and perpetuation of the art market. Ironically, the findings of the philosophers from the world over are used in the generation of art literature with or without acknowledgement. When the curators and art administrators double up as philosophers too, the automatic ejection/ rejection of the philosophers takes place in the art scene.

The question then arises is this: Can the art world exist without the philosopher? As of now the market driven art world has proven that it could exist without their presence, assistance and contributions. However, in the long run it would not be the same case. Any work of art produced without a philosophical content as recognised by the artists and the other players in the field of art would start looking like hollow shells signifying nothing.  Philosophies are always not expected to please. They at times make incisive critiques on the existing situations and conditions within which aesthetics is produced; this is currently not palatable to the art world.

'Centre fails to hold' is the dictum of the modern world. When the centre fails to hold the peripheries, perhaps the peripheries start deciding the nature of the centre. This engenders a new philosophy which could move in opposition to the existing philosophies. But the market's ability to subsume the new peripheries, and make it a part of the centre could collapse the emerging philosophies. To find a way to resist the allure of the market, thereby parting way for the philosophies to tread  more steadily and safely without feeling the threat of immediate erasure.

Maybe the survey, and lists published by the economic interests do not matter much to many artists and the other art world players. However, such lists show how cruelly the balance of the art world has been tilted by the white western world. The data that the percentage of participations of various entities including gender and region need not necessarily be a finality as it is purely based on the economic positioning of the considered people in the lists. This could change as the human presence and success are always not determined by economics alone. It is one of the factors that ultimately decides the artistic worth of the people in different parts of the world. When economic factors pretend  that they could bleep out the sociological, political and cultural factors that determine the presence or absence of many, these kinds of lists and surveys would enthral the unsuspecting artists in the world.



(Images Courtesy: Internet)

Thoughts on Mediatic Realism and Art Trends

Trendy Art

Do trends affect the creative output of the artists? Trends of any kind are such markers or indicators that tell the interested ones where the world is heading to. In the case of art, trends are often seen in the exhibition seasons, choice of the artists for international awards, general displays in art fairs, curatorial subjects, choice of curators, articles featured in the magazines, their covers, buying and selling of works of art and so on. Trends are also such things that are ill-fated to become obsolete before they become a cult. Some trends prolong their tenure with help of certain interests involved in the art market and some other trends die out sooner than they come. To see it in the right perspective, we could always say that trends are the market indicators deliberately designed for making certain profits in their transactions. Where success of anything is determined by the money that it rakes in the market, it is not surprising to see many artists getting carried away by such trends.

Photorealistic art in the US

Five seasons back in Indian art scene, we had seen the swan song of a comparatively prolonged trend of Mediatic Realism. For almost fifteen years, mediatic realism in painting ruled the galleries and markets till it collapsed with the expected bursting of a ballooned market.  Mediatic realism as an aesthetical trend was not an invention of the Indian artists. The origins of which have to be sought within two clear trends in the West, interestingly one in the pre-second World War Soviet Union and two, in the post-war United States of America. The artists of the Soviet Union who complied with the diktats of Stalin and the Community party that he had led not only created art for the mediatic purpose, but also reused it for furthering the cultural climate through constant visual reminding. Media in that sense became an intermediary between art and media and vice versa. The commitment of this kind of mediatic reaction was to a predetermined social cause of a proletarian government.

Social Realist art in the USSR

However for the Americans, it was the other way round; they did not have much to direct or educate the society as the society was already saturated by both the print and television media. For the artists, who gravitated around the styles propounded by Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, Jasper Johns and so on, the market place and the media presence of 'things' itself was a raw material and a stagnating philosophy and splurging in it helped these artists to be a part of the ephemera that the social life of the US bracketed and could remotely forward certain kind of critique of it without hurting anybody. Interestingly, the socialist reaction of the Soviet Union and the pop-art style of the US had captivated the artists of the world as they could set the trends of the time in pre and post cold war era. Through close scrutiny we understood that the former intended to present the social issues in a pre-configured and state authorised formalism and it remained so for a long time without much change. But in the case of the latter, it was purely a formal exercise. For the pop-artists went on experimenting with the formal aspects of the mediatized images and excised meaning out of them to repackage  their visual presence as an art language. That's why we see the pop formalism varies from artist to artist, opening a wide range of styles within the rubric of pop-art.

Work by Andy Warhol

It took many more years for the mediatized images to make a re-entry with less emphasis on technique and formal stylising and become vehicles of more intense subjective mediations and meditations. The we see in Gerard Richter, Edward Hopper and artists of their ilk. In China mediatic realism had already taken a different route to re-emerge as political realism amply loaded with irreverence and satire, at times verging on sad-masochist tendencies and self-annihilation. Perhaps in India the artists found this international trend more appealing to make enquiries into their own selves and the societies in which they lived. India was experiencing the pangs of a changing economy and its socio-cultural impact was quite unsettling. Those artists who made their early entry into mediatic realism, however, did not address the changing scion-economic and politico-cultural climates directly or they did not even show any urgency to do so. Instead they took to the imaginary as well as historical junctures in which the social narrative had changed violently and at times latently.

Work by Edward Hopper

This enquiry was 'realistic' but not mediatic at the outset. The imageries were grim reminders of violent times of change in history. Unlike the Chinese and Euro-American artists, Indian artists did not depend too much on the realism of the Soviet kind or the realism of the pop-art in the US. Indian artists did not even look at their Chinese counterparts, but zeroed in on the realism which as perhaps naturally adopted by any artist of any place to have a re-look at history. There was no particular methodology for it but the persistence of that realism heavy with history was somehow appealing to many and certain art critics wrongly identified it as Mediatic Realism. However, such critics were soon to be justified as the artists in India sooner than later would depend upon mediatized images for their aesthetical as well as critical purposes. Hand in hand with their adoption of mediatic realism by the Indian artists, there developed a trend that became more and more formal, reflecting other socio-political trends mediatized visually, investing lot on the skill of the artists (and their more skilful  assistants). While a majority went by the trend making their work 'photorealistic', a few of them added abstract values to it, enabling them to become the vehicles to transport rather internationally appealing social commentaries. A positive fall out of this was seen int he abandoning of the language by the early exponents of mediatic realism in India, and then becoming more like savant painters and artists , exploring the land and nature, emphasising a lot on the natural virtuosity of artistic skills and visionary qualities.

Work by Shibu Natesan

Today the world of art seems to be lacking in influential trends. In fact, trends are complementary to market forces and as they feed on each other, the absence of one automatically decides the absence of the other. Hence the temporary (hopefully) diminishing of market for the contemporary art, has prevented the influential trends from emerging. This has created some  kind of confusion in the Indian art scene. In my view, this confusion (whether palpable or not) is good for artists to focus on their innate talents and those who don't have it would perish for good. Looking at the international art magazines, I have noticed the West is desperate to introduce certain art trends. What stops it from importing it to the world is the absence of a trans-national market.


(images courtesy : Internet)

Folly of getting the Local Communities into Art

Of late I have been meeting gallerists who are intensely worried about the local communities that are not taking any interest in art and culture. They say that people don't get to see art at all in the public and private spaces so much that they have developed some sort of an aversion for art. Is there a remedy to it? I ask them. They have got some quick fix ideas to make people aware of art and its role in their lives. First and foremost the local communities should be brought to the zones where art activities take place or art activities should go to their locations and make them do some art for themselves, to put it in other words, make everyone an artist. Secondly, fill up the environments with a lot of works of art so that people get an idea of visual art and its relevance in public spaces; that means encouraging 'Street Art and Public Art'.

Such suggestions ad  intentions apparently look innocent and well meaning. But the suggestions and solutions, critically speaking are ridden with a lot of problems. Let me analyse the issue pertaining to these suggestions one by one The complaint that the people lack art awareness is itself a faulty one, to begin with. When a galleries says that people from local communities take no interest in art, he or she does not qualify the local communities talked about or the kind of art that he or she expects them to see. Does he or she mean that the local communities should be excited by the art in general or the art created by the visual artists or the art exhibited in his/her gallery? If he/ she is talking about the art in general, saying that people are not taking interest in art is a biased opinion, not reality. People in fact, take a lot of interest in various kinds of art forms including visual art, music, films, theatre, television programs and so on.If the complaint is that they are not keen on the kind of visual art produced in our country, then we have to ask whether the kinds of visual art produced in our country is 'given' to them in all possible means or not. If it is about them not seeing the kind of art exhibited in his or her gallery, the question should be re-directed to him / her and asked whether they invite the local communities to their premises?

This is a very old problem. However the idea of taking art to the places where the people live or to the community centres is burdened by a sense of patronising. First of all one has to define the local communities. 'Local Communities' is not a monolith. It has various levels and hierarchies based on economy, education, inheritance and now political affiliation and religion. The affluent classes generally do not entertain patronising efforts taken up by somebody in order to initiate them into art and culture, because they have already got their initiation in art and have also got a stake in it. That means, the local communities are constituted by a willing minority of middle class and a dispassionate minority of the lower middle class and the lower income groups. Somehow we are not ready to accept the fact that when we talk about taking art to the people we are envisioning a pre-defined community of underprivileged people who perhaps would accept the art enforced using them for the time being by participating enthusiastically.  Ironically in this effort we fail to ask whether they have something of their art to show us; they may have abut in our mission we fail to recognise  their art.

Equally fallacious is the conclusion that the lower income groups do not understand or appreciate art. A set of people living in underprivileged areas in a city or rural areas in fact are closely in touch with various kinds of art forms, ritualistic, performative and meditative in their own contexts. Enriched by the images and sounds of the popular and street cultures, these sets of people are more receptive to works of art than the people above who show a lot of discretion in choosing their art form, which often are no better than sentimental expressions. Seen in this context, both the layers of the local communities need a different sort of sensitisation via both pedagogic and participatory methods.

The well meaning people who intend to do these sensitising acts, unfortunately want everyone to be an artist through participation. Becoming an artist or making an artist out of a disinterested person seems to be important for these missionaries. Anybody could be an artist, provided that person does anything aesthetically, involving rhythm and harmony. However, believing too much in this dictum is injurious to the general health of art. In an attempt to make everyone an artist, these missionaries miss a point, which is, if everyone is an artist how would they be seen in the society. And naturally too, everyone is not equipped to do creative works even if they have latent potentialities in them to do creative works. We have enough artists in this country and each year more of them are added to the struggling congregations. What we need urgently is creating a society which is tolerant to artists and their works. If we could help a majority of people to turn into art lovers and appreciators of the artistic abilities, we would achieve fifty percent success in our efforts.

Where does this other fifty percent lie? It lies in creating a climate of visual art and also the houses of visual arts. That means we need to create more and more museums for traditional, modern and contemporary art. Once the people are initiated into the appreciation of art, they should be provided with places where they could see 'living art'. this is possible only when more museums are created in our country. Galleries cannot do this and they should not even attempt it. Galleries are fundamentally business showrooms and expect only the buyers and insiders  of the art community. Most of the galleries in India are okay with people not crossing their doors. Many gallerists maintain that they expect only the buyers. In this scenario, only the public museums could pitch into save the situation.

A museum cannot purely be a private initiative for it would definitely end up showing what the funder of it likes or prefers to showcase. In the case of a public museum we see in our country, the displayed artefacts slowly decay due to lack of maintenance and are never upgraded and updated due to bureaucratic interference. What makes sense then is the establishment of public-private initiative where finders leave the power of discretion to able professionals. Such museums would be the places which welcome those who have been craving for aesthetic experiences thanks to their recent initiation into art.

The gallerists who selflessly support the Street Art projects to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the neighbourhoods as well as the artistic inclinations of the local communities miss yet another point; they are not supporting the Street art. All art done on the streets is not Street arts are aesthetical interventions based on the critique of the complacent mainstream society. This amounts to vandalism and defacement of public and private property. Such art would not like to be patronised by the galleries or by the governments. Hence what we see today in the name of Street art is a kind of art meant for beautifying the cities, which is a form of conformist art. These works could create aesthetical backdrops for the mundane life but ironically most of it is missed by the people in the closest neighbourhood doe to their added proximity. Hence the major consumers of such art are the people who live in the vantage points; the rich and the powerful.

It is also pertinent to notice that such kind of graffiti or street art is not allowed in those neighbourhoods where the affluent ones live. Therefore, taking art to the local communities with a patronising zeal would eventually turn futile. Instead there should be a more egalitarian approach to create adequate cultural climates so that the people get naturalised with art.

(Images courtesy: Internet)

Bliss of Impersonating : Arundhati Nag

Arundhati Nag 

 (courtesy the Hindu)

At the age of fifteen she fell in love with theatre. Forty five years down the line she could just get up and say that her identity and love for the country are intact without being a member of the RSS. She is Arundhati Nag, the noted theatre and film personality, and director of Rang Shankara, an exclusive platform for modern and contemporary theatre in India, at the L V Prasad Eye Institute Auditorium in Hyderabad, delivering the third Ramkinkar Baij memorial lecture, organised by the Musui Foundation in strategic collaboration with Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad. Arundhati Nag is not an academic, but an actress, an art administrator and a silent practitioner of frugal living. Born in Delhi and brought up in Mumbai, Arundhati, at an early age itself became a juggler of languages which she says, has helped in developing her theatre persona.

Arundhati Nag knows that her acquaintance with the life and works of Ramkinkar Baij is not as deep as that of an art historian or an artist. But what she has learnt from Ramkinkar Baij is the passion of pursuing the enigmatic call of unbridled creativity and his perseverance of frugal life. As a creative artist what Ramkinkar wanted was a platform to do his art povera. Baij celebrated life in its naturalness and created works from what was available, maximising their mediator qualities despite their minimal stature in life. Putting the humble components of nature together, Baij created a galaxy on earth of which the stars like Santhal Family, Mill Call, Harvester, Sujata and so on still shine with their original glitter. Arundhati coming from a different creative circuit has found her soulmate in Ramkinkar when she visited Santiniketan a few years ago and accidentally confronted the imposing presence of Ramkinkar's sculptures in the campus.

Girish Karnad giving instruction to Arundhati in Ranga Shankara's landmark production 'Bikhare Bimb'

"I did not know anything about Ramkinkar then. But the monumental sculpture - Santhal Family took me by force. The rawness of their contours, the blissfulness on their faces and the curiosity in their eyes; their balance and poise, everything attracted me. The theatricality of his sculpture was just real, never falling into the gorge of sentimentalism. I understood the drama in it. Since then I have been an ardent admirer of Ramkinkar " says Arundhati.

" If human beings are moving sculptures then sculptures are frozen drama theatre" Arundhati had said a day before the formal memorial lecture. She uttered these inedible words when she stood enthralled before the sculpture of Ramkinkar's disciple K S Radhakrishnan. " Theatre gives the great high of impersonating a character which is not you. An actress is someone who hosts  another personality in her body keeping the objectivity intact without ever falling into the trap of the character. Sculptures also have that quality one being the other without subjecting the artist to its demands. There is a relationship and there is a high, but it is that of impersonating" says Arundhati in her lecture.

In Paa with Amitabh Bachchan

Ramkinkar had thrown all societal and artistic conventions to the wind. He did not care for others' views. As K G Subramanyan had once put it, 'Baij was in pursuit of happiness in the simplest things in nature". Arundhati also had thrown conventions to the wind. But as a young girl of fifteen it was easier said than done. She was fascinated by the IPTA, Indian People's Theatre Association, which had established in Mumbai and had stalwarts like Balraj Sahni, AK Hangal, Kaifi Azmi, Shaukat Azmi as its actors and ideologues. There was a strong resistance from Arundhati's family and she was given permission only when her mother got the assurance from the IPTA elders that there would be someone who is socially accepted to escort the young, vibrant, dreamy and aspiring Arundhati from and to home for and after rehearsals.

Receiving Padmashree from the then President Smt Pratibha Patil

The idea of impersonation came to Arundhati as a  revelation because the first role she was offered was that of a young widow who was forced to marry her dead husband's brother. The play was Rajeender Singh Bedi's 'Ek Chadar Maili si'. Arundhati was not sixteen then. She did not know all what went into the making of a marriage, family, death, remarriage and so on. Encouraged by the elders of IPTA, Arundhati learned the ropes of acting only to land up with similarly passionate people like Jennifer Kapoor under whose care and vision, the Prithvi theatre came up and changed the theatre scenario in Mumbai. Arundhati carried the seeds of Prithvi theatre within her and relentlessly worked for establishing Ranga Shankara in Bangalore, where any theatre group with a decent production could present their play for just Rs 2500 a day. Three hundred and sixty five days a year, Ranga Shankara presents around four hundred performances including her own productions.

Arundhati with Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar

Like painting and sculpting have inherent differences in conceiving and executing, theatre acting and film acting are different, says Arundhati. Even if she gets many offers to act in films (yet another mother role), she declines most of them because she knows well that her acting style is for theatre. " My gestures, emoting, voice modulations and all should be meant for a live audience including the ones who are sitting in the last row. In film, you are performing for a camera and the performance is limited to a part where the camera is focussing. Cinema is the medium of fragmentations; it is an art of fragmenting and putting together. For me theatre is a bodily experience which makes the actress happy, devoid of any ruptures in my personality" says Arundhati.

Arundhati with Sanjana Kapoor

Indian theatre is definitely facing a lot of challenges from new media and television. But experience tells her that if there is a provision for good theatre, people will come back to it. Arundhati extolls Naseeruddin Shah for delivering good theatre without fail. "Paresh Rawal is a good actor but he delivers bad theatre. Anupam Kher's theatre is a no no to me personally" says Arundhati. Citing once again Ramkinkar Baij, Arundhati reiterates that she still in search of an Indian theatre, which she knowns cannot exist for India's  cultural diversity. But the search and the show must go on.



(Images courtesy: Internet)