Ceasing to be Human Artists: Becoming Animal and Plant -Artists

Poetry fails, art fails, dance fails and music fails. When all these fail human beings fail for they are the makers of all those art forms. Once they fail to create them out of fear, out of lethargy and out of a sense of uselessness the world becomes two dimensional. Human beings slowly turn into animals, mute, obedient and remote. They move away from the mainstream society which is formed by a group of people who have lost their art and sensitivity for art. Their failure lies in their inability to see those people who make art and listen to the silent clues that these art forms give. They even have not noticed that the artists, poets, dancers and musicians, and all other creative people have gone away from the crowds. They have gone somewhere else. They have gone to become animals.

Animals, birds and creatures are pure beings. So are the plants. The former ones move and the latter one stay. Whether they move or stay, they teach us a way of living; living without hurting others. Animals do not predate if they are not hungry. They do not hunt for fun. Plants live on inflicting least hurt to others. Both animals and trees intermingle in a beautiful heaven of co-existence. Human beings are also animals; they move and the only problem is that they think. The more they think the more they think about their own well being. So they hunt and they hunt to eat and hunt for fun too. Artists are animals by nature. But slowly they also changed their nature. They became human beings who hunt for fun. 

Artists who want to retain their animal nature somehow have become plants to day. They live silently, drinking sunlight and leaving out the best of things possible for the survival of other beings. They tend not to hurt anything around. Plants that grow in home gardens are not real plants; they live there because they do not want to hurt the people who have brought them there. Those are happy plants that live here and there without any order but keeping an internal rhythm with the nature. Plants and trees that are tended in the nurseries are not real plants yet they are there because they do not have the ability to walk off. They look at the trees around and keep on talking to them. As they do not move, they remain constant companions until they are taken away in cars to the floors that move towards heaven and away from earth.

Animal-artists are the plant artists. They walk silently with a sketch pad, a note book and a flute along the paths the mainstream people have grown tired. The mainstream people have gone to the six lane asphalt roads where carnivals take place, in the night clubs where loud noise, meaningless words, wild gyrations and psychedelic lights make them weirder than they have entered earlier. Animal-artists who have by now become plant natured sit under trees, take out their sketchbooks and draw; poets sit by the side of the river and write, musicians walk into the dark forests and play flutes for the beasts that hide inside, dancers move along the seashores, watching sunsets and sunrises.

Good artists are animals and plants. We have a lot to learn from them. We have to become them. We have to become the other so that the othering process would stop at some point. When everyone tries to become an other, a beast or a plant then there will not be persons with religious identities. When the need to gather diminishes, the need to emphasise identity also recedes. Animals do not tell their names or flaunt their religions, nor do the plants because they do not have banks and profits. They do not run businesses and invest in stock markets. They do not participate in auctions either. They do not sell their ninety per cent of the stocks to foreigners and retain ten percent and still control the aesthetics of a country. Animals do not run galleries. Plants do not collect paintings. But they adore each other. They drink from the same stream and never pollute it before they leave. So it is pertinent to become animal-artists and plant-artists, and go and live in forests and deserted places. To be a mainstream human being is Hell. 

Jeans and Ramdev: The False Idea of Swadeshikaran

(Jeans)

I am not an economist, nor am I a trade pundit. However, I am interested in the business news of certain kind. That’s why a small one column news item in today’s Indian Express page number nine caught my attention. It read: “Patanjali plans to launch ‘Swadeshi’ Jeans”. Patanjali is the business brand of the famous Yoga instructor, Baba Ramdev. Using his personal reach and charisma, Ramdev became one of the major players among the herbal medicine, food and cosmetic producers since 2004. A yoga instructor who doubles up as an entrepreneur and life style guru Ramdev has of late become an unacknowledged spokesperson for the Right Wing government at the centre, especially in the religious and moral matters of Indian political as well as socio-cultural life. The latest move of his to produce ‘Swadeshi’ jeans has to be seen in the right business perspective than the cultural one that the entrepreneur claims.

According to Ramdev, the CEO of the Patanjali group he is about to launch more than sixty big and small production units to produce jeans, apparels and foot wear products in order to compete with the multinationals. Also he emphasises that the youth of India ‘has been egging him to give them Swadeshi jeans’. True, when the youth of a country demands the business heads should respond to their needs. That’s why Mukesh Ambani’s Jio claims that it is going to help the 1.25 billion population of India by helping them to use internet data. Ramdev’s Swadeshikaran (nationalisation) is a similar attempt. Neither Mukhesh Ambani nor Ramdev is asked who exactly have asked them for their help in Swadeshikaran. As it is a nebulous population of India or the ‘youth’ of India, we should understand that it is a sort of volunteering of these businessmen holding the people of this country responsible for their business moves.

(Baba Ramdev with his Patanjali products)

Yes, our world has changed. We think that without smart phones and mobile internet data our daily life is not possible at all. The moment ‘net’ goes off we get panic attacks; some start shivering, showing withdrawal symptoms much worse than those shown due to the absence of drugs intake. But nobody seriously asks whether one could survive without mobile data or making telephone calls. If one seriously attempts to live without this ‘connectivity’, life becomes much easier, but we approach this view with a fair amount of cynicism. One could even say, ‘you are writing and posting it in your blog because you have internet connection’. But imagine those times that we lived without all these. Life is possible. If my mother happens to see a television news item that in Delhi it is raining heavily or there was an earthquake last night, she panics and calls me up. It is common with all mothers. But imagine those days when mothers waited for the inland letters or airmail letters. They waited patiently; we too waited patiently. That means, the ‘demand’ is not of the people but of the capitalists. By hook or crook, they need to generate profit and for that, people need to consume.

Swadeshikaran is not a new idea. Gandhiji used it effectively. He changed the lawyers’ club, which the Indian National Congress was (as Ramachandra Guha has pointed out in his latest book, ‘Democrats and Dissenters’)  into a national movement of peasants and rural people. He stood for Swadeshikaran of everything including clothes and language (religion was one way of Swadeshikaran which would eventually yield bad results even Gandhiji had not foreseen in those days). At the same time Gandhiji was closer to the textile families like that of G.D.Birla (once again Ramachandra Guha becomes handy here as he said in an edit pager article last week how the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi approved the use of his image in the Jio advertisement without being corrupt himself but giving bad message to the lower level politicians) and this relationship was the basis of his Swadeshikaran of clothes pitting the populace of India against the Manchester imported clothes. Gandhiji knew that however the Indian population tried making khadi all by themselves using charkha they will have to depend on ‘swadeshi’ mill clothes that would come from the mills of Birla.

 (Mahatma Gandhi)

Hence, a clever entrepreneur like Ramdev using ‘Swadeshikaran’ is just another smart move to cash in on  the existing Hindu ambience of the country that demands more and more ‘swadeshikaran’ in every front including the socio-cultural life in India, ironically forgetting that the government is all for liberal Ex-Im policy and is aggressively promoting FDI (foreign direct investment) in all the possible fields. Ramdev overlooks it not because he does not understand it but because he knows that he would be a mismatch in the avenues where FDI is going to play a large role. Competing with a foreign company in their own quality terms would render Ramdev and his Patanjali a minor player in the given field. That’s why taking the unsubstantiated claim of the Indian youth asking for Swadeshi jeans Ramdev is all set for making Swadeshi jeans. The fact is, production of jeans is more or less an Indian monopoly in the Indian market. If at all there is a competition from outside, that is from China.

Out of the four or five main Denim producers in India (jeans cloth is called denim) Gujarat based companies like Arvind Mills and Nandan Mills are the business leaders. Besides catering to the Indian demands, they make a 20 to 25 per cent of denim export mainly to the Middle East countries. In a country where more than sixty five per cent of the population is below 35, one could imagine the number of the denim product users. To cater to the demands of an average 65 crore people in the country we have only four or five main denim producers. According to the heads of these companies, they feel the growth potential moving forward thanks to the new cultural opening of the country to the international trends. Jeans once was considered to be a working class clothing. But when it came to India during the years of protected economy only the elite could afford to wear it. Within ten years of the liberalization of the Indian economy jeans became a cultural product which could be afforded by a larger population. The market is driven by competitive pricing and the companies like Arvind Mills besides making franchise brands (like Levi Strauss, Wrangler, Lee and so on), it also has introduced affordable Indian brands like Flying Machine, New Port, Ruf and Tuf etc.

 (Historian and author, Ramachandra Guha)

That means whatever denim brands that we wear today in India are not imported. They are home produced therefore an argument of swadeshikaran of a mass product which is already home made is almost absurd. But the consumer population would believe Ramdev because his other products have been Indian made and created with a particular cultural ethos behind it. Swadeshikaran is just another slogan which would enhance the profit margin of the Patanjali company. Interestingly, Ramdev is not only aiming at the Indian denim market but also the markets in other Asian and African countries. The irony again is that while saying this Ramdev forgets that there could be possibilities of same nationalist resistances from those countries that would find these products as foreign import. But Ramdev will laugh all the way to bank because as we are not resisting the Chinese products or other imported items only because of competitive pricing, if Ramdev could sell his denim products in competitive prices, then definitely the Asian and African denim markets are going to be his. But Swadeshikaran of denim is a false claim because it is in way already is a Swadeshi product.  

Life Style Wars and Audi Side View Mirror Conscientious Theft

(Audi Side view mirror theft in Delhi, CCTV grab)

If someone wrenches away a part of my car (though I do not have one at present) I would feel bad. Any part of anything that we use is also a part of our own existence; our own body and soul. That’s why breaking ins in locked houses cause a lot of distress to people other than the loss of the valuables. I do not dare to talk about physical violations on both men and women by boors and authorities. It must be scarring people for the lives. However, in this small write up I plan to play the devil’s advocate. My trigger is one of the news items that I happened to read in today’s newspaper.

In South Delhi, within ten minutes seven high end cars lost their side view mirrors. The CCTV grabs show the auto-borne thieves striking within the gap of a few minutes in different places and wrecking havoc on the high cars like Audi, by taking their side view mirrors. A call made to the Audi showroom by one of the owners (of the cars) brought the prices of these mirrors into day light. A pair of it costs Rs.2.5 lakhs. It is a real loss for the owners. South Delhi being the rich part of the capital city often faces vandalism of different sorts. Taking away the car parts is not new to Delhi. Cannibalizing the stolen cars is an acknowledged grey market business and the authorities have not done much towards stopping it. My concern is not that.

 (An Audi Car)

If a pair of side view mirrors (in that case any costly part of the car which cannot be locked away as it constitutes the external functions including the beautification of the car) that costs Rs.2.5 lakhs is stolen then we have to understand that there is a market elsewhere for it. Also commonsense tells us that the consumers of such stolen goods cannot be using low end cars for adding of anything like an Audi’s side view mirror to a low end car or an SUV would suddenly bring the public attention including that of the Police. Hence, we deduce the fact that the end users of these stolen goods are those people who use similar brand cars elsewhere, who in turn have lost their spare parts like side view mirrors.

A thief does not steal a car part just for fun. Yes, when it comes to the stealing of car logos (like the universally identifiable logos of the Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, Ford and so on) it is done at times for the heck of it. Hear the words of Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize winning Turkish Novelist. In his new novel, ‘A Strangeness in My Mind’ as the story progresses, Pamuk makes his protagonist Mevlut talk these words, “You should not park here, the neighbourhood kids will steal the side view mirrors,” said Mevlut. “They’ll even take away the Ford Logo...They sell them to the spare parts dealers up the hill or wear them as necklaces. If it had been a Mercedes, they would have ripped the sign out long ago.” (Page 266).

(Orhan Pamuk, author)

I need not explain further why thieves take away high end car parts as Pamuk has explained it well in his novel. If it happens in Turkey, definitely it should be happening in any part of the world. I believe it is a fall out of the high end consumerism. As more and more people are taking the risk of buying high end cars in order to live a ‘different’ life, a parallel grey market is also developing along with it. What Arundhati Roy calls as ‘lifestyle war’ is what is making this new art of pilfering a rampant business. Anything that is mechanical has and needs spare parts. And all the mechanical devices are created for enhancing the life styles wars. That means the spare parts thus pilfered become the weapons of the new war and the thieves (they in Delhi are identified as Kaan Thod Gang, the ear severing gang, as they specialize in taking away the side view mirrors) the foot soldiers of the new war fare.

(Arundhati Roy, author and activist)

As I mentioned before, anybody would feel bad if something is stolen from their possession. But a car that worth more than a crore and its functional as well as decorative parts cost Rs.2.5 lakhs (which in fact is more than the price of a car that is offered by certain companies) automatically carries such risks in the public spaces. I am not supporting the theft but what I want to underline is the fact that the life style warfare would create its side characters who would always try to thwart the main focus of the war by creating parallel war zones which could produce profit for them and in a conscientious manner. The gang of thieves stopping a family in the middle of the night in a deserted patch of the road and raping the female members of the family is fundamentally different from the gangs that steal spare parts of the high end cars. The petty thieves who pick pockets or snatch chains are also different from the thieves who strike at the high end cars. They are like parallel operators in a life style war/market, whose acts are eventually legitimized by the grey market operators who further push the same spare parts to those high end car owners who had lost the spare parts in similar operations.

(a bracelet )

This kind of stealing is a conscience game. The thieves know that the owners of the cars are liable to be pilfered because they have excess money that’s why they buy such high end cars. They also know that most of the people who afford these kinds of cars use money earned by illegal means. Hence, the thieves think that stealing them is also a part of their social commitment to redistribute their money or property in a perverted way; by stealing or damaging their property. They find some kind of activism in it. While we say that any kind of stealing is a criminal act, the high end stealing always has a charm that’s why in the popular narratives the diamond thieves are always given the halo of a hero. There is a lot of skill and planning to do such theft; it involves smartness and agility. They are backed up by the invisible conscientious support of the populace that thinks that the owners of the high end cars should be punished in some way.

I will close this small essay by recounting a story told me by an artist friend. A man who was walking along the road stepped on a golden bracelet. He picked it up and looked around. After so much of deliberation this man went to a goldsmith and assessed the value of it. Once he realized that the bracelet was original, he thought of selling it and buying a chain for himself with the money. He did it. After that he kept on asking himself whether he did the right thing or not. He also thought of the person who had lost it and the pain he should be undergoing. So he went to a guru and asked him whether he did the right thing or not. Guru told him that he could wear the golden chain without any prick of conscience because a person who wears a golden bracelet or anklet must be a show off and he definitely must not have any financial liabilities for himself or in his family. So the bracelet was a part of the life style war for the owner of it. Hence, having it accidentally and converting it into a golden chain need not necessarily be an act of theft, the Guru assured. The man went away happily. 

Civilizing Rituals: Guernica Stretcher in MoMA and the Works of Art in Our Cultural Institutions

(MoMA find the Guernica Stretcher from its Storage)

Yesterday I happened to read an article in the MoMA, New York website. It is about an accidental finding of a stretcher which had initially held the legendary work ‘Guernica’ by Picasso. What surprised me was the way in which the topmost museum in the world celebrated the finding of this stretcher from its stock after almost half a century. The article meticulously traces the ‘journey’ of this stretcher and also scientifically proves how this was the original stretcher that held the famous Guernica together in place in the beginning. I am impressed by the efforts of the MoMA to make the very stretcher minus the work of art a thing of relevance itself and I am sure in the absence of the painting this stretcher would attract public attention now onwards. This obvious strategy of capitalist museum practice could make anything and everything into a work of art provided those accidental ‘findings’ once held some important work of art. It could be a plate, a crate, a nail , a rack, a railing, a vault, a wall, a storage, a corner, an attic, a trunk, a chest, a country house, a box or anything of that sort. It is one way to say that the association with a valuable signature could impart value and historical relevance to anything. The day is not far when people visit that particular room/gallery in MoMA where a naked stretcher is exhibited with a note, a headphone, a brochure, a handout qualifying it as the original stretcher of Guernica.

Should one be militantly against such capitalist art practices? What I mean by capitalist art practice is some art activity or art related activity that could produce excessive profit and false histories around it. Exhibiting or celebrating a stretcher could, in the long create a precedence of sorts and we could in future have a museum of stretchers and crates, where we could queue up to see what once held the great works of art. In the absence of the original great works of art, today the semblances do the job; either the originals are permanently missing but the acknowledgement of missing it by the authorities would cause a great rupture not only in the historical discourse but also in the economic discourse generated around the said works of art or they are kept in safe custody for the fear of depletion due to climatic exposures as well as for the fear of theft. Hence, we could say such dummy practices could eventually create a situation where people would see only the copies and never the originals. Though Walter Benjamin had said it in a different context, we could read it in the renewed context of seeing copies in the museums saying that while consuming a cultural product which already has got an approved history, it becomes less pertinent whether we are seeing/consuming the original or the copy. This could also be applicable in the case of a future museum of stretchers and storage materials of the works of art.

 (Guernica by Pablo Picasso)

Carol Duncan in her ruminations on museum practices (Civilizing Rituals) has tangentially pointed out how revealing of findings could collapse the existing museum discourses that includes as I said before both historical discourses and economic discourses. Hence, the obfuscation of historical findings is a way to maintain status quo or reiteration of the false histories which have been already built around the works of art. It is time to read Duncan in a reverse format; we need to say that the new findings could also become a part of the new display without affecting the already existing histories and could become a point of comparison if not simple wonderment. What makes an eleven feet stretcher important is its original association with an illustrious painting, Guernica by Picasso. While MoMA creates its own provenance using historical, documentary and scientific evidences, there could be a parallel practice sparking off its journey; so many stretchers and containers would be found sooner than later.

This would lead to a situation what Guy Debord had emphasised in his essay the ‘Society of Spectacle’. In the process of spectacularization of anything and everything, the objects create meanings and values in their relationships with other objects rather than creating a meaning intrinsic to it. For example, a mango will be remembered when someone drinks a mango juice with its packaging saying clearly that no fruit pulp is involved in the making of it and it contains only artificial flavours. What stands between a mango and the fruit juice minus fruit pulp is a model like Katrina Kaif who drinks the juice as if she were having an orgasm. These three disparate images generate the idea of an original mango fruit and all our childhood memories associated with eating a ripe mango. Translating the very idea into the museum practice, we could say in the spectacularization process we no longer see a Picasso, a Ravi Varma,  a Tagore, a Nandlal Bose, a Shergil, a Baij or a Souza but the crates and stretchers that once held their works. We would happy to have a museum of such auxiliary artefacts.

 (Civilizing Rituals by Carol Duncan)

If MoMA is too strict in verifying the veracity of a stretcher, we Indians are too callous about it. I remember an experience I had when I got the opportunity to visit, flip through and assess the three to four thousand works in the storage of the Central Lalit Kala Academy a few years back. Stored in a damp and dark underground floor, the authorities did not even have proper lights to show me the works of art. One of the persons who accompanied me to the storage switched his die hard Nokia phone on, which had a good beam of white light. I need not say that I was witnessing the works of the doyen of Indian modern art rotting there, with their stretchers coming off and canvases folded, eaten by moths and termites and so on. This is where, despite all the theoretical positioning of us against the MoMA’s practice of celebrating a stretcher, we have to appreciate how respectful, strategic and proud they are about their works of art, their collection, their national pride and their national modern heritage.

We are a country that claims a cultural history of more five thousand years. The United States of America does not even have a history of five hundred years. Our cultural issues have been reduced to who eats what and who wears what. We have quick fix solutions come from the top leadership; it goes like this- we should not eat beef, the country will be alright. The visiting foreign girls should not wear skirts, if they do, they could be raped. Our cultural issues have been reduced to the protection of our geographical boundaries, it has been reduced to the digging of cricket pitches or preventing noted singers and professionals performing on Indian soil. Our biggest cultural issues have become cleaning up of Ganga, Kumbha Mela, Maha Aartis, Ganesh Festivals and all such religious practices. We as a people with a cultural heritage have become so callous that we do not even bother whether our Lalit Kala Academy is functioning or not.

 (Central Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi)

When someone like me writes about these issues, they say that there is an element of ‘rant’ in it.  Rant, according to the dictionary is an angry speech (which is not a hate speech). If it is not said in derogatory fashion (which often is), I am happy to be accused of being a rant because someone has to say these things. The national institutions like the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Lalit Kala Academy, the National Museum, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts and so on have been spending money to collect works of art or procure works for a long time (for around five decades to be precise). Except for what has been exhibited none knows what happened to all those collections in these institutions. Nobody know whether they are rotting or in good conditions. It is pertinent for these institutions to bring their collections for public perusal and create catalogues and documents so that we could understand what has been our modern visual cultural heritage or what has been the collecting parameters of these institutions. There will be a question then. If these works turn out to be trash and do not add grace to our cultural heritage, what could be done with them? I would say, we could discard them including the stretchers. But unfortunately, the important works of important artists too are rotting in these institutions, including the stretchers. Yes, we have a lot to learn from MoMA, how to do things in a museum and also how not to do things in a museum.

Who Killed Indian Art History and Critical Writings?

(Art India Magazine)

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. 

A Wild Wish

If I die

Bury me or burn me at the nearest

Cremation ground abandoned

Let there be no epitaphs

Condolence meetings

And obits by the undeserving

For I have been a soul

Unbridled by the pettiness

That marks the contours

Of average human behaviour.

I feasted on history

And the fuel that it imparted

Fired me to go miles

In the paths of righteousness

And mostly was all alone.

I broke my fasting

Each dawn on truths

Drinking its sourness

In the cups of Socretean

Determination.

I lunched on pity

That the loving craftsmen

Placed before me

In the platters of love,

I supped in the taverns

Of loneliness where

Similar souls sat

In corners dark

Contemplating on life

Before marking them

In their weary diaries.

I slept on cold benches

Of experiences

All alone with aching joints

But thinking of all those

Who had fared so in jails

My aches lessen like

Wild fire, slowly but steadily.

I dreamt the dreams

Where everyone in the world

Sang, danced, painted, sculpted

Wrote their live in all sincerity

And gifted each other

To be displayed in their hearths and hearts.

The day will come

When my dreams

All would live their lives

In reality; here and now.

In those days my posterity

Will see both states and religions

Wither away slowly

Leaving ugly stains on the pavements

Like on a rainy day

But all those will also fade away

Leaving the world green and blue

With all the colours of rainbows.

Hence when I die

Bury me in the nearest

Cremation ground or burn me

Leaving no trace

For the youngsters to wonder

Why such people lived

Who kept worrying about

The growing discontent

Of the world due to religions

And power.

In a world where

They find no stain of religion

That marks and brands people

Even my memories could be

An anachronism.

Let me be the last one to breath

The stale air of religion

And bruised by the barbed wires

Of boundaries abundant.

My grave should be obscure

Like any other hapless mounds

On the last souls’ fields.

A future should flourish

Where none hates none

For the reason of religion and power. 

How Vivan Sundaram and Company Killed Indian Art

(Somehow I feel I am welcomed with a mid finger when I see this at the International Airport in Delhi)

If your mind allows you to take your attention off from your own temporary glory of walking along the carpeted corridors of the international airports in Delhi or Mumbai, within that transitory zone you would come across the works of art done by Indian artists carefully culled and artistically displayed there in conspicuous and inconspicuous walls and corners. However, I haven’t yet seen people taking selfies before these works of art. Instead, they go to the generic yet spectacular gestures and physical movements captured in fibreglass sculptures and take selfies. Let me tell you, this is not done by uninitiated folks alone. I have seen reputed gallerists posing before these sculptural atrocities, taking selfies and posting them instantly in their social media pages to tell the world that they are on the move! I do not take pictures in airports. However, these works of art displayed in various joints at the airports, for me, underline the presence of the invisible middlemen/women who have ‘arranged’ the procurement of these works. I have felt this invisible presence of the so called art consultants when I walk through the hotel lobbies and hospital aisles. I see well known names but sub standard works. Something has gone terribly wrong in our country.

                                                                              

It is said each public building should invest seven per cent of its total cost in procuring art as a part of promoting culture in the country. And they do spend this money on art. But the kind of art that we happen to come across in the public buildings makes our skin cringe in shame. But there is a huge danger than the general embarrassment caused by these works of art. The people from abroad, with a cultural outlook, a museum culture that has shaped their sensibilities etc., upon seeing these works of art in the airports and public buildings, could think that this is the kind of art that we still produce. My readers must remember that it was a couple of months back a British art critic had rubbished Bhupen Khakar’s show in Tate saying that Khakar’s paintings were as good as the mediocre artists in London in 1980s. The foreigners who see Indian art in public buildings and airports would definitely have the same feeling. They could think that we Indians are still producing some kind of art that they had already discarded decades back.

(Going with times- manual for Suryanamaskara in IGIA Delhi)

What has gone wrong with our art? Is it because India lacks in good art; I mean good paintings, sculptures, prints, photography and so on? Our Prime Minister recently had initiated a ‘Skill India’ campaign. This campaign comes from the fact that as Indians we have been lacking in the required skill sets to be at par with the world. The illusionary jump in the job market, especially in the IT field is purely based on supplementary skills or auxiliary skills than the primary skills. We are always the supporting staff. Hence, even if I do not agree with the political policies of the present Prime Minister of India, I would definitely say that skill development in India is one of the core areas that needs urgent attention including in the field of fine arts. Knowingly or unknowingly the Prime Minister has touched upon the crucial problem that the British education had created in India and later on by careful strategizing of the western cultural industry aided by their handpicked Indian artists and intelligentsia in order finish off Indian skills. Without understanding the kind of trap that they have been walking into, these artists and intelligentsia worked as stooges for the western cultural interests and almost killed the fine arts skills of India.

When Lord Macaulay introduced the educational policy for the colonial subjects in India in 19^th century, his aim was clear. He knew for sure that it was difficult to break the backbone of Indian culture by destroying its innate skills and concepts. The best way was not only to create ‘Indian looking and British thinking’ subjects to keep accounts and audits of the Empire in India and serve it ideologically through education but also to destroy the confidence of the Indians by making them feel that anything that was native including language was inferior to whatever English was. More than creating clerks and administrative staff (the way call centres are created today by the imperial corporate houses), the British were successful in creating Indians who felt themselves ugly and less skilled compared to the technical efficiency that the British people displayed. Our art schools were conceived as technical education centres where draftsmen were trained to work for various British departments. Students from the traditional artisanal families were culled and mentally castrated by inducing them with the western scientific skills in drawing as well as in conceptualizing. The traditional skills which had been polished in various schools and gharanas since the Mughal period and their hybrid varieties both in the fiefdoms and bazaars were in fact creating a larger climate for the proliferation of visual art which the British had carefully killed. By making our art and art practices inferior to the western art, they created a new history in which Indian artists always looked derivatives of the western masters.

 (Inside the Louvre Museum in Paris)

It took many years for our artists aided by the nationalistic thoughts and later by individualistic pursuits in order to create Indian art outside the clutches of the western art knowledge and skills. It was not an exclusionary and parochial practice. On the contrary it was political and at the same time it was the basic search for human dignity and identity with which an artist could stand at par with anybody in the world irrespective of the kind of art education he or she had gained. Depending on the skill sets that the Indian artists had, and also polishing it for the contemporary purposes in the light of the imported skills enabled the Indian artists to develop their art. After Independence there was a surge in Indian art and there had been various enquiries to find indigenous art expressions, styles and identities from various parts of India. Under the doyens like K.G.Subramanyan, KCS Panicker, J.Swaminathan and so on, Indian artists were looking for a cosmopolitan, egalitarian and dignified Indian art. It was not simply a fight for identity; it was a sort of reinvesting the faith in Indian traditions, which was dominantly secular. This high thrust in the field of art, had the momentum been maintained would have pushed Indian art into the world scenario and the international cultural attention would have naturally fallen on India. It would have created huge tourism possibilities and thereby economic prosperity even if Indian economy was natioanlized and protectionist in nature then.

India would have grown with this attitude; a home, a Bajaj Scooter and a work of art at home. Had India kept the momentum on the production of art the way it was in 1970s and 1980s it would have been possible. The western cultural industry knew the dangers of it. With the advent of 1990s and also with the opening of global market in India and vice versa, the western cultural Tsars strategically declared that painting was dead. They started promoting conceptual art and impermanent installation art. Their materialistic and philosophical circumstances were conducive to propagate that idea. But they knew for sure that their museums, which were the backbones of their natural cultural industries and economies, were filled with paintings and traditional kinds of art. They also knew that if India becomes the hub of art making, then the international tourism would turn its attention to India and Indian artists would rule the world. It was then they acknowledged and approved certain artists like Vivan Sundaram and literally projected them as the right kind of artists for India. Vivan Sundarm single handedly worked for the western interests. He became the proponent of the installation and conceptual art and encouraged a lot of young artists to abandon traditional skills and get into the making of impermanent art. In 1990s, he like a fervent missionary did this ‘service’ for the western world. Geeta Kapur, the art critic created an adequate obscure theoretical atmosphere so that the artists who practiced traditional skills felt inferior within that climate. Their agenda was later on picked up by Khoj International and then by the Arts and Aesthetic Department at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

 (1.25 billion people in India. These two people decided what their 'good' art should be. Vivan Sundaram and Geeta Kapur)

When the Indian art market opened up, the western world did a U-turn which both Vivan Sundaram and Geeta Kapur could not handle. The western cultural industry declared (not in literal terms) that painting was no longer dead. It was resurrected. Paintings that depicted the glittering world of money and power and superficiality of contemporary life were given philosophical justifications. Everyone painted. Everyone sculpted. Everyone photographed. Everyone did videos. Everyone did digital works. Everyone did anything that involved skills. ‘Skill’ was the mantra of the time. Vivan Sundam fell behind because he was no skill man. But unfortunately, those artists who believed in Vivan Sundaram and his conceptual practice groped left and right to gain some foothold in the burgeoning art market of that time. Artists who studied in various colleges, but unfortunately with less aggression and a lot skill became assistants to the artists including none other than Vivan Sundaram. Sundaram even went on to the extent of making works of art based on Ram Kinkar Baij, absolutely deserting those new converts along the way. He brought out two volumes on the works of his aunt, Amrita Sherghil, who was definitely not an installation artist.

I do not believe in conspiracy theories. But I cannot reject the fact that Vivan Sundarm knew that art with no skill would not last long. If you remember there was a frantic situation created by Geeta Kapur, Ranjit Hoskote, Nancy Adajania and their junior versions in the art scene. They were quoting European critics and philosophers to justify Indian impermanent art. Without Foucault, Derrida, Agamben, Danto, Guittari and Deleuze Indian art sounded incomplete. But I demand an answer from the abovementioned people why they justified Indian art with those philosophical tools that even the west itself has rejected in due course of time. Indian art is suffering because of these people. It has to change. India has to find its skills and concepts. India should be filled with art. Each household in India should have a work of art. And it is possible, I believe. If the general cultural climate is vibrant with various kinds of art practices, then I am sure none could be away from that flow. ‘How good and pleasant it could be before god’ and artist you have a work of art in your bed room, study room, drawing room and love it the way you love your beloved. It is possible. It is possible because that is the only way to save India from the redundancy of visual culture created by Vivan Sundaram and his ilk, and also from the bigots who create the climate of ‘we’ and ‘they’. Let’s be the Renaissance people, finding the genius, vouching for them, taking pride in them and celebrating them. Yes, we do not discard installation art because that too needs skills and concepts, but definitely not of deliberate obscurantism .