a change is just around the corner

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Works and Curations

Showing posts with label Art and Deal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art and Deal. Show all posts

Sunday, February 5, 2012

thinking - notion sof art and public


portrait of  og husain by R.K. Chitera


Art&Deal editorial for issue 41

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Thursday, 15 September 2011 at 18:10
”Even as intellectuals, celebrities and art lovers continue to mourn the death of M.F. Husain, unidentified men here Friday destroyed the sand sculpture created by an Uttar Pradesh artist to pay tribute to the ‘Picasso of India’.R.K. Chitera, 26, a famous sand artist, was not allowed to complete Husain’s eight-ft-long sand sculpture along the bank of the Ganga river. “While a group watched me from a distance, two-three men ran towards me and destroyed the sculpture by their feet. It all took place when I was about to finish the sculpture,” Chitera told reporters in Allahabad, some 200 km from Lucknow. “I don’t know who they were… They even threatened me of dire consequences if I organised any programme to pay homage to the great Indian artist,” Chitera added.
When contacted, Superintendent of Police (City) S.S. Baghel told IANS that the police do not know about the
incident. But they “will definitely inquire about it and ensure the sand artist faces no problem”.
Husain was forced to leave India in 2006 after his paintings of Hindu gods in the nude triggered attacks on his
works and police complaints were filed against him by radical Hindu organisations.
“I do admit that Husainji invited several controversies, but they can’t take away his great contributions to the
art. An artist can spend his entire life in learning his work,” said Chitera, who had earlier created a 1,500-ftlong
painting of batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar by working non-stop for 38 hours.”
- http://www.newsleaks.in/husains-sand-sculpture-destroyed-in-allahabad


When the Mf Husain tribute editorial was being written for the June issue of Art&Deal Magazine, this destruction of the Hussain sand sculpture on the same day he died came to my knowledge but at that moment almost when numbing timed down my reactions, somehow not being able to put this information in its proper context the Supreme court judgement (It noted that art is dangerous. It is the business of art to be dangerous. Art without danger is not art.   Quoted from www.ibnlive.in.com/blogs/shivvisvanathan) ,. What further numbed my senses was among the rich tributes paid to Hussian and the heart felt mourning, caused by him dying in exile. There was no mention, no lament, no outcry over this act of vandalism. It brought back memories of the times when Hussian’s house was attacked, his exhibitions vandalised and he was threatened by a series of criminal cases filed by right wing groups. We were all parties in various capacities to debates and protests attacking such vandalism and threat on ‘freedom of expession’ . However, the news cliopping cited above becomes important on precisely these lines. Are we (silently) shouting out loud that freedom of expression is valid only in the zones of ‘high art’. R.K. Chitera , who is quite renowned for his sand sculptures across North India was absolutely defenseless and unsupported that too on a day when the nation’s sensitivity towards Husain was so high. Does this points towards a politics of propaganda we are all part of? Or does it betray how we look at art which is produced and made by/for the ‘Public’?
                  At the same time one cannot negate that increasingly the notion of art and public is going through a sea change in India. It’s not surprising that it is in the medium of Performance, and within the understanding of art as a socially performative practice that such a change is being felt and expressed. Again it is not the mainstream political turmoil that finds its expression in this ‘new radical art’. Rather it is the energy of resistance movements around Kashmir and Manipur, Telengana and ‘land acquisition’, and deep poverty - that has radicalised art.


               A small buzz is there, some new constellations are forming, artists are voicing out, alliances are forming , and in certain quarters atleast, art is challenging its domesticity. Carrying the crucifix of such radical subject matter; such artists are using performance and perofrmitivity to find a new audience. One can see the liberating influence of the avant-garde form China, Latin America, and the spontaneous political art of Mexio, South East Asia. However, what saves this new radical art from being ‘cool’, are its connections with popular notions of art, street theater movements, and traditional notions of body and performance. This hunt for a new audience is promising, and maybe one day this new audience will protect the sad sculptures of Mf Husain that get vandalised  on our river banks and sea shores.
rangoli by a young girl, her colourful map for Telengana

However, what saves this new radical art from being ‘cool’, are its connections with popular notions of art, street theater movements, and traditional notions of body and performance. This hunt for a new audience is promising, and maybe one day this new audience will protect the sad sculptures of Mf Husain that get vandalised on our river banks and sea shores.  Art can only be protected and nurtured by the society when it is rooted and engaged with its politics and culture.


          Modernism found its artistic salvation by struggling and forgetting the academy. Pablo Picasso captures it best, when he expresses the struggle to unlearn that gave him the freedom to draw like a child. We have all been lured into fine art institutions, chasing a world where our taste and knowledge will be enhanced.  Yet, as we discover new forms of art, and learn about trends and isms, we also tend to forget (often brush aside) the understandings of art we grew up with. The new institunionalised expansion of taste parallely curtails taste, creating ‘others’ like kitsch, craft and ‘layman’. In Europe and America the notion of ‘I’ is very strong. Thus it was possible for the modernist avant-garde to be deeply individualistic.  Yet, artists ranging from Picasso to Joseph Beuys (through pure abstractionists like Wassily Kandinsky) created art in deep dialogue with their times.  In a country like ours, where human life has such less value, it is difficult to defend the sanctity of an artwork.

cover installation by lochan upadhyay SANDARBH 10 Days Artist Workshop at Bhagora Village,Partapur-Banswara