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| taken from MONA: A Pop-Up Museum..http://www.detroitmona.com/mona_pop-up_museum.htm |
It’s a curse …it’s a blessing…spending time inside art galleries challenge basic theoretical presumptions so hard that it forces you into some kind of poststructuralist nirvana, but sometimes it just sends a chill down your spine. In one such art gallery in Delhi I happened to overhear a conversation “the middle-class” has no space in Art” said someone, “yes” came a voice in agreement...“only for the very rich or the very poor”… as I walked on in the gallery the conversation trailed off. There was feeling of being stunned. What baffled me most was that we live in a age where the business class never ignores the middleclass, and makes it a point to ensure that middle class is the highest consumer of the product or the brand. Depending on how the particular business likes to play the number game, the refined capitalist mindset has figured that the middle class plays a key role in sales or marketing. So while brands like Coke will look at the middle class as the largest market where actual sales of their products happen, brands like Christian Dior ensures that the middle class buys into their branding and ‘generation of desire’. In fact it is well known that an expensive niche brand stands on the grounds of the middle class desiring it and only the rich being able to afford it. That’s why even if the precuts are only available in super posh shops, the brand is available to the middle class through media campaigns. So when the most expensive Haute couture brands don't feel that the middle class is irrelevant, how come the thoughts echo hard inside our art galleries? Maybe this betrays a deep seated feudal mindset that makes it impossible for art galleries in India to adjust to high capitalist approach to marketing.
The other reason why the chill traveled up my spine is that expect for a few super stars, most of our artist, viewers and writers belong to the middle class, how can the main pillars of the industry be so dis regarded by people who are entrenched and market leaders (such was the position of the people involved). Then, it is not just about the fine arts industry, in contemporary times, money is fast emerging as the sole symbol for value. We have lost the ability to see value in money less contexts. When we were in Art College, there was an awareness that so and so broke record in auction houses, but that for even once affected art historical analysis of an artist or the respect that circulated in peer groups. This is increasingly un imaginable now a days. Moreover works of tremendous value like heritage sites and the murals at Shantiniketan lie in sheer neglect. Artist lead initiatives have become dodos, living masters like KG Subramanium and Joiti Bhatt are almost forgotten in the centers like Delhi and Mumbai, and we have one of the smallest artist banks and print making is almost dead. Maybe these are signs of what happens to an industry leaders think that the middle class does not matter.
There are positives that we may get if we expand out horizons of taste. India as a country is going through so many problems; it would help if the youth of the country contributed some time to volunteering. But they are so busy, when will they find time. There were time s when artists were extremely political in the lives they lead, they fought freedom movements and went to jail, yet in their art they explored humour, or the human form…or even the beauty of landscapes. Today couch potatoes make political art. We deserve what we get.
And we are all suffering from it. This deep seated feudal attitude has ensured that we have not yet developed into a recognized industry, and we continue to grope with fakes, lack of price control, lack of investors’ confidence and governmental neglect in terms of funding and regulation. I often ask my friends that unless we have long queues of visitors outside the NGMAs, and till art events attract a much wider audience, in a country like India, why the government would invest in art? Sadly its’ a question no one is willing to take.
written as editorial for for the 39th issue of Art&deal Magazine Monday, 11 July 2011 at 18:33
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| Art&Deal Magazine 39th issue Cover |
indeed.... being an artist feels like being stuck in a quagmire... on the one hand you have your stomach and on the other your mind. except a few collectors, the rich buys the art to match their walls...artists creates wall matching art in turn knowing fully well that this is not the art she/he desires to make... like the above analogy of coke and its marketing strategy should artist advertise their 'products' for mass consumption? this is where the quagmire situation comes into play... most artists don't see their art as commensurable entities but a piece of themselves or reflective images of their perceptions and experiences...but seriously who cares for 'my' ideas to give their thoughts over it by patronising 'me' and 'my' exhibitions?
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