Art History - Pedagogy - Vision : Conversing with Prof Shivaji Panniker

 "To be frank I am not fascinated by media itself, what are you communicating through the media is more important, so I am not much over bowled by mediumistic things. I am more eager about ground level collaborations, artists going to the people…and that have been happening since sometime. It is not like new media is going to revolutionize the society; Internet is not going to give you food…right?"

Rahul Bhattacharya (R.B) interviews Prof Shivaji Panniker (S.P): art critic/historian and the H.O.D Department of art History, MS University of Baroda- Early 2007 

 R.B- About two years ago the M.A (Art Criticism) specialization has been dissolved, but for over two decades it was the only specialization of its kind in India, can you map out the students from this department who has gone out to fully function as art critics.

S.P- The division between art history and art criticism is artificial and that is why we decided to do away with them. I think art criticism as a course started from an urge some to have art history closer to contemporary practice. Yes of course students would be having a greater exposure to pre- modern art, but in terms of real practice, no one expected any mean difference between students specializing in art history, or criticism.

                See one can drop names; there is no doubt that this department has been very important to many people who are in the field today, but personally I feel to claim each of them as a product of our department….; a department provides a platform, if you want names well one can site Chaitanya, Anshuman, Sanjay Mallick, Sisla, to Suresh Jayram ….names are all around, Preeta Nair, she may not be doing art criticism, but very seriously involved inn art history.

R.B.- I was trying to focus on criticism in particular.

S.P - See Roobina (Karode) for instance, when she was in the department, she was more into pre- modern art, so her interest in art criticism developed outside the department.  Then somebody like Chaitanya, claiming Chaitanya for the department will be unfair. He had a very close association with Gulam Sheik, and that is the platform from where he began his involvement ; this the department cannot claim.  His association with Gulam Sheik,s family was very important which got him involved with people like Vivan Sundaram and Gita Kapur, and to many others in the field. Something like this probably (at that time) the department could not provide. Then he was in Bombay, there he was an important art critic, then he went abroad and now he is curating large shows. Also take example like Georgina Madox who has been writing regularly on art, she is our B.A graduate and then also there is Vidya Sivadas.

                But then you can’t actually demand work from people, you can only lend certain possibilities. Moreover in the last five six years the department has been an important resource center for various foreign students researching on contemporary Indian art.

R.B - The reason why I asked you that question is, is as someone who has just started off being an art critic as his bread and butter occupation, when I looked around and tried to locate in the batches who have passed out of the department in the last five years or so, I cant find anyone who is currently functioning and working as an full time art critic.

S.P - Which are the known names in the field of art criticism…apart from Gita Kapur, who else will you name?

R.B - Roobina Karode is there, Nancy Adajania is there, Ranjit Hoskote is there.

S.P - Yes these are important names, but there are so many others who are writing. Sanjay Mallick is writing for the Delhi Art Gallery, Ashrafi Bhagat has just done her PhD, she is writing in Chennai, then there is Chitrabhanu who is also writing, they are all students from here na?

                They may not be such big names like Gita Kapur or something like that.  Then there is also each individual’s tendency to guard himself or herself from doing too much. However Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adajania seem to have an urge to do more and more work.  Then there is also Martha Jakimowicz; I think a lot of it has to be left to the individual. It is not necessary that Baroda art history department has to have everything, I don’t know whether there are people exploring all the possibilities and where are the avenues. Say Art India Magazine…where has it generated space for new writers? Although one has to admit that a large platform exists there, it is also difficult to push oneself, moreover how much can one generate, you may repeat a bit, but it is not good to repeat all the time.

                A student who passes out, they have to start their career somewhere or the other, there is nothing like a perfect choice, they might even be unsure as to whether they want to be in academics or an art critic or something like that. It is only Chaitanya, or Georgina or Vidya who went directly into art criticism; other had some kind of a job or the other.

                People are not very productive, they are hesitant to articulate their ideas, many students have shown promises to come out as important art critics, and they have done good dissertations on contemporary art then somehow they get lost. Then they also know that that they have to cope up with looking after the interests of the artists, the gallery or even the publisher, and they don’t want to give a sold out feeling about themselves. But then we also have people like Nirali Lal who is working with Saffron and have been writing on artists. I think the department serves the purpose of providing fine professionals to the art industry and I don’t think there is an onus of producing art critics only.

                                                                                                                           

R.B - With Bodhi coming to the department and doing something almost like a campus recruitment, I remember some years ago the within the department there was a proposal for a specialization in Art Management, you think there is space within the department for training students about the commercial aspects of art? There is no pedagogical input on this aspect of the industry.

S.P - No, there is an art management elective it has just been introduced. The specialization idea was introduced before my headship and it seems that it has fallen through somewhere in the clearance stage. It’s a good idea definitely, but somehow I do not feel I am equipped to take it up. You need a lot of resource people to run a course like that, in India they are still hard to find. And also I am not sure that we should concentrate on producing art administrators, I think that should be part of management institutions. I am not looking down on the management people, we would accommodate them where ever it is possible, if some body approaches us for our assistance and help like the Bodhi Art Gallery, but I don’t think we are specialized enough to have a course on art management, we just don’t have the management expertise. Moreover our interest is not to produce managers, our interest is academic. Of course we do not stop anybody who wants to take up a dissertation topic or undertake research on these lines.

R.B - There is another question and it pertains to the medium of writing, primarily the department trains students to write in mediums like articles/research papers and books, which are published on paper and related media. However there are now new mediums of writing like blogs, or web based writing in particular, the change in media demands significant changes in the structuring of language, and even understanding the size of an article. These changes are demanded by how the medium governs how people read and what is the resultant attention span and things like that, like it is not good to give an article, which is an infinite vertical scroll. As technological shifts take over the students after passing out will be confronting this new medium more and more. Do you think there is a need for a pedagogical intervention?

S.P - The thing is that we have to be very clear that there is no given format, whatever be the kinds of writing assignments given to the students, it is entirely up to the student concerned how to conceive it, how to write it. We just need a head and tail, we need a point, it is not that anything will go, we do insist on some kind of coherence, some kind of structure, sub-headings and things like that. We are not training for a specific requirement of website writing, feature writing, etc. in the process the students should be equipped, that is my belief. As a professional one should learn how to function within restrictions. Even if I am writing for any art journal, I will be given a word limit, and I have to confine myself within that.  I think that it is better if people should learn to write to the point.

R.B - This question comes from my discussion with Himanshu (Desai) regarding the paper he presented in this years seminar. What I understood to be the core of this paper is an attempt to reorient our focus on new media art. In art history departments one is only trained to engage with old media as per as materiality is concerned.  Are there any directions towards engaging with it in terms of greater curriculum focus?

S.P - We have not made a concentrated effort to cope up with the mediumistic shifts, we still do not have an archive through which one can expose oneself to works done in new media. But there are questions like where to get it? And the faculty we are located is also old media oriented, like we don’t have a department that specializes in alternative art practices, so there is a sense of lagging behind. Personally I don’t have a specific interest in mediumistic shifts I tend to look at art more in terms of ideas and language. We do try to get art historians like Gita Kapur or people like that who have a greater focus on mediumistic shifts.

There is no concentrated effort to document or teach whether it is in the art history side or the practical side, but we generally talk about it, in my modern Indian art classes I try to historically lay it out. It is very difficult sitting in a place like Baroda to get everything here into the classroom…nearly impossible. There is also a question as to where do you accommodate new media art in the syllabus

To be frank I am not fascinated by media itself, what are you communicating through the media is more important, so I am not much over bowled by mediumistic things. I am more eager about ground level collaborations, artists going to the people…and that have been happening since sometime. It is not like new media is going to revolutionize the society; Internet is not going to give you food …right? And what percentage can access the net as per as India is concerned…it’s a very elite minority. So all those avant-garde notions with regard to the medium, I am quite skeptical about it...and it should never be that if you do this medium you would be automatically avant-garde or something. But I am sure some people are using it in a most effective way.