"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.
