Discover Rahul Bhattacharya, a design educator, theorist, and independent art historian who explores post-contemporary ethics and aesthetics. Through curation, writing, and workshops, he engages in critical discourse and promotes insightful perspectives on design and art. With a focus on ethics, aesthetics, and the intersection of various disciplines, Rahul Bhattacharya's work offers a fresh lens to the evolving landscape of design and art.
a change is just around the corner
///--->>>rethinking art, contemporaneity and (my)self
Works and Curations
Sunday, May 22, 2016
#savebastar
Deeply committed to social and ecological sustainability, and am a frugal innovation enthusiast. I am an educationist, art historian, and experience designer living between Gandhinagar and Kolkata. Currently Head of the MDes Integrated Programme Department at Unitedworld Institute of Design and Mentoring UX design and research and a design consultant.
I have extensively written about Contemporary Indian Art, Medieval Architecture and Interdisciplinary Design Practice. Mentored social innovation, and community interventions, curated for galley spaces and for large public-based festivals.
Ex Managing Editor of Art&Deal Magazine and the founding Conveyor MATI (Management of Art Treasures of India).
Brick layer+ Co-Founder of Kolkata International Performance Art Festival.
Since 2014 I have also been a part of the NINE Schools of Art collective working towards developing workshop-based teaching methods for art, design and creative theory.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Dancing with the Devil
Dancing with the Devil is a curatorial project which aims to interrogate and decodes the notions of beauty that circulate in the gallery practices of Contemporary Indian Art.
The title of the show is inspired by the song of rapper Immortal Technique. The song contains a narrative in which Immortal Technique describes the story of a young man named Billy Jacobs who attempts to join a gang, and in order to prove how "real" he is, he steals, gets into fights, sells crack cocaine, and to finally prove himself, rapes a woman. An intoxicated Jacobs completes this task after covering the woman's face with her shirt, and is unaware of the identity of the woman until he takes the cover from her face. He is repulsed to find that the woman in question is actually his mother, which leads him to commit suicide.
The show focuses on a group of artists who who live on the edge of contemporary art, both in terms of art making and 'living as an artist' . It is a curatorial re visitation of questions around an ideal 'artist' . We can ask, what is not contemporary art? what are the trends that have the potential to de stabilise how the the word and the praxis of contemporary culture is understood? This engagement goes beyond 'manner', and focusses into the process of art making itself. Embracing an understanding of art that is almost suicidal in the context of how the contemporary imagines itself.
In this way the show seeks to become a collaboration between the artists Merlin Moli, Chi Muk, Sambaran Das, Moumita Ghosh, Aditi Chitre, Rishi Dharia and Varnita Mahajan) and the curator.
In this way the show seeks to become a collaboration between the artists Merlin Moli, Chi Muk, Sambaran Das, Moumita Ghosh, Aditi Chitre, Rishi Dharia and Varnita Mahajan) and the curator.
There is definitely an engagement with darkness...but what kind of darkness is the show looking at-
- The praxis of contemporary art has created this structure inside which contemporary artist hood exists. home, studio, gallery, (s), residencies, biennales, fairs and so many things have begun to define the lifestyle of being an artist. But if art has to become independent of market forces, we need to look at artists who survive on the tangents of structure of contemporary artist-hood.
- as we explore the political and the personal (and spaces in between)- it is important to interrogate the Contemporary's marriage of politics and beauty. What is the zone beyond that. We will be (re) exploring the content-technique-form-
presentation dialogue in New Media Art.
- We do see a return of analogue in terms of taste and demand. The formal face of contemporary art is changing. Digital polished surfaces seem to have be out of fashion- but this post digital analogue, is still very 'consumable' - : still working within the mainstream idea of beauty.Darkness here is the edge of practice; emerging painting styles that are formally very rooted to the 'painterly' yet extremely resistant to becoming a 'beautiful object on the wall - as we search for a post contemporary directions, right now it is important to focus on the borderline between the beauty and and the ugly.
The show will be held at the NINE Schools of Art for a period of twenty days starting on the 23rd of April 2016.
Labels:
Aditi Chitre,
Dancing with the Devil,
Merlin Moli,
Moumita Ghosh,
NINE Schools of Art,
post contemporary,
post digital analogue,
Rishi Dharia,
Sambaran Das,
Varnita Mahajan
Deeply committed to social and ecological sustainability, and am a frugal innovation enthusiast. I am an educationist, art historian, and experience designer living between Gandhinagar and Kolkata. Currently Head of the MDes Integrated Programme Department at Unitedworld Institute of Design and Mentoring UX design and research and a design consultant.
I have extensively written about Contemporary Indian Art, Medieval Architecture and Interdisciplinary Design Practice. Mentored social innovation, and community interventions, curated for galley spaces and for large public-based festivals.
Ex Managing Editor of Art&Deal Magazine and the founding Conveyor MATI (Management of Art Treasures of India).
Brick layer+ Co-Founder of Kolkata International Performance Art Festival.
Since 2014 I have also been a part of the NINE Schools of Art collective working towards developing workshop-based teaching methods for art, design and creative theory.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
THE MANY DEATHS OF ROHIT VEMULA
Realising that his struggles meant nothing to his Marxist brothers, he moved on further left
That was some years ago
Rohit took the blow and like any good fighter
Used the blow to become stronger
Somewhere though, the death had set in
A young Marxist was forced to become a young Dalit Marxist
the world of universities and learning, could not free him from caste suppression
They pushed him deeper into it
Yes, the first blow came from his comrades
The second blow came from the nation
Caste is history they said
Some even said, caste was the culture of the nation
Yet they believed that talking about caste now destroys the nation
Rohit loved justice too
It is a sad one-sided love story
He and his friends felt that Yakub Menon did not get justice
They called some friends to talk about Yakub Menon and justice
A small band of boys, radical and isolated
A small band of boys with a one-sided love affair with justice
Easy to isolate and destroy
A strong South Asian powerhouse began flexing its muscles and nationalism
Such strength against a small band of boys
Dalit Marxists, with a one-sided love affair with justice
Yes the second blow came from the nation
The third blow might have come from us all
Poverty, hunger, pride loneliness and fire
Rohit must have remembered his old Marxist friends
There were many of them and in large numbers
They had all the organisation and structures
There were many love affairs they still shared
But they were still silent
Busy with their grand struggle against capitalism
many did connect
But, they too were isolated, few and sometimes far away
It is an absence of hope that leads to suicide
A complete absence of hope
Yes, the third blow might have come from us all
Rohit died but left behind a body that was so alive
Finally in death, maybe he just wanted to be
Just a student, bright, political, hounded by institutions;
a bright citizen who had to leave all hope
Yet in his death, he became more Dalit
His identity was further hounded
Rohit's fire touched many hearts
Many of his older Marxist friends came out on the streets
Marching and chanting
But they brought in their old battles
Fascism and capitalism won over Rohit again
The final (yet) flow came from his comrades
Even as his mother led an emotional candlelight march
Even as she was assaulted, arrested
The old Marxist friends stayed inside universities debating nationalism and capitalism
Yes, the final flow came from his comrades
His narrative does not suit their memory
The room where Rohith killed himself . (Source: Express photo by Harsha Vadlamani) - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/dalit-scholar-rohith-vemula-the-student-the-leader/#sthash.lMlEpZ9R.dpuf |
Labels:
Caste,
Dalit Marxists,
Poetry,
Rohit Vemula,
Yakub Menon
Deeply committed to social and ecological sustainability, and am a frugal innovation enthusiast. I am an educationist, art historian, and experience designer living between Gandhinagar and Kolkata. Currently Head of the MDes Integrated Programme Department at Unitedworld Institute of Design and Mentoring UX design and research and a design consultant.
I have extensively written about Contemporary Indian Art, Medieval Architecture and Interdisciplinary Design Practice. Mentored social innovation, and community interventions, curated for galley spaces and for large public-based festivals.
Ex Managing Editor of Art&Deal Magazine and the founding Conveyor MATI (Management of Art Treasures of India).
Brick layer+ Co-Founder of Kolkata International Performance Art Festival.
Since 2014 I have also been a part of the NINE Schools of Art collective working towards developing workshop-based teaching methods for art, design and creative theory.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
A Blank Verse For My Smile
Once, smile had a meaning
Its own connection with eternity
Now the connection is gone but everything else remains
Just that, the best things do not bring out a smile any more
Sometimes they bring out a deep sigh
Learning that the faintest smiles etch the deepest
Sometimes i smile when death heals
Someone has to give that farewell smile
Jokes too make me smile, so does love
Everything negotiated through that broken connection with eternity
Labels:
Poetry
Deeply committed to social and ecological sustainability, and am a frugal innovation enthusiast. I am an educationist, art historian, and experience designer living between Gandhinagar and Kolkata. Currently Head of the MDes Integrated Programme Department at Unitedworld Institute of Design and Mentoring UX design and research and a design consultant.
I have extensively written about Contemporary Indian Art, Medieval Architecture and Interdisciplinary Design Practice. Mentored social innovation, and community interventions, curated for galley spaces and for large public-based festivals.
Ex Managing Editor of Art&Deal Magazine and the founding Conveyor MATI (Management of Art Treasures of India).
Brick layer+ Co-Founder of Kolkata International Performance Art Festival.
Since 2014 I have also been a part of the NINE Schools of Art collective working towards developing workshop-based teaching methods for art, design and creative theory.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
A BLANK VERSE FOR A TROUBLED RIVER
Floating on the web @ tumblr.com |
The night was a neon outburst of emotions
Dawn brought some dread, some hope
The other side was steeped in dusk
They sat down to drink some tea
Hoping their dawn would shed some light
But, the other side was still dark
Some music could perhaps to stir the soul
Can music save a dark dying river
Can a river ever die
The tea pot was empty
But no one knew what was inside
On the other side, the dusk still lingered
How does light come in
Do we know how to remove our shadows
Unanswered questions over a opaque tea pot
Dusk came in and soaked their senses
The dusk on the other side lingered on
Another night, another neon outburst of emotions
Sunday, November 22, 2015
The Hint of Violence:
My catalogue essay for Indrapramit Roy’s solo-show with Galerie 88 Kolkata. ‘Mezzaterra’, previewing on 20 November, 2015.
“Maybe the "trivial" is just a failed version of the "everyday." The everyday, or the commonplace, is the most basic and the richest artistic category. Although it seems familiar, it is always surprising and new. But at the same time, there is an openness that permits people to recognize what is there in the picture, because they have already seen something like it somewhere. So the everyday is a space in which meanings accumulate, but it's the pictorial realization that carries the meanings into the realm of the pleasurable.”Tumlr, Jan | The Hole Truth.
What is
tension, but a hint of violence?
The
paintings carry the sense of empty sets.
Sometimes they seem to be
anticipating actions, sometimes we see residues of actions by characters that
we never see. Spaces and objects, become metaphors that evoke the drama. The
artist takes away the human agency as the prime actors of the drama, but the
human presence is everywhere - the serendipity and violence that lies in the
zones of absence and presence. The space and the objects speak about that
presence, and are frozen moments of cinematic tension. However, these are not
just spaces and objects; they are of a special kind. These mundane, ordinary
spaces carry the empathy of intimacy, an intimacy achieved, not only through
durational bonding, but also often through experiences and memories. They seem to want to tell a story and stay
silent about what the story could be.
Over a
period of over ten years Indrapramit Roy has been experimenting with a visual
language that capture the emptiness and tensions when mundane
meets the everyday in moments of transience. At the same time;
emptiness, tensions, mundane, transience only touch upon the surface of his
imagination. When one visits his art from the aspect of language formation, one
can read many linkages and cross references in modes and strategies between the
artistic influences, political positions and engagements regarding the
aesthetic value of objects and spaces.
The
Aesthetics of ‘contemporary art’ has long being governed by the idioms of content,
style and concept, when experimentation and investigations over Form and Language
(almost) surrendered to the digital/electronic media. Contemporary Art itself
began by being critically distant, cold; layered by dominant purity, pristine
images, perfect copies and spectacular illusions. Indrapramit Roy belongs to an
early group of contemporary Indian painters who realised that mediatic-realism
needed to be scratched and washed if painting had to offer alternatives to the
neo liberal-digital progress. In the emptiness of contemporaneity the notions
of physicality and body are very important. Indrapramit Roy’s engagement with painting
has always been through a physical engagement with materiality; right from his
very early experiments with frame of the canvas, his journey into multiple and
shaped canvases, the cardbox box period, and lately in his combination of
drawing, marking , painting, overlaying actions that mark his watercolour
series.
Indrapramit
Ray's artistic practice has always found its edge by producing art which is a
constant critique of the ‘fashionable’, interrogating the manner in which
medium, form, motifs are chosen, rendered and presented. Yet his subversion
does not take the direction of the anti-aesthetic. In fact, his dialogue is
deep rooted in the linguistic structure of form, line colour and space (they
become tools for expressing a Jamesonian[i]* lament about the contemporary celebration of
surface-ciality). It attempts to reconstruct the philosophical tradition of
affective alterity and to construct a discourse though one's own artistic
journey.
The
architectonic, layered, compositions, the love for bird’s eye views that become
important for Roy’s language formation hints at of narrative traditions ranging
from the murals of Giotto to Benode
Behari Mukherjee and works of artists like Bhupen Khakhar and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh. At the same time Roy situates
himself in a post narrative mode. The high-density motifs, textures, figures
and postures disappear, instead the viewer is invited to pause and imagine. He
is one of the rare artists who have taken the idea of a culture far beyond the
domains of the narrative and the iconic.
The paintings become propositions towards a fresh understanding of the
pictorial surface. The post narrative
tradition that Roy begins to articulate, is not interested in the city as the
site of the local or in the play of urban folklores. His cities are motifs, visited and revisited
though alienated birds eye views or large illuminated empty spaces; in either scenario
no living beings are seen. The local exists for the intimate viewer, but these
cityscapes are also templates, the artist transforms empirically observed places into wistful critiques of an
empty present and a dystopian future.
The
paintings offer us a space to rest our eyes, and in them, there is enough chaos
to stir our anxieties. We live in an age of the spectacle, when images are
designed to jump at you, craving for that attention that bounces off into the
recesses of your overfed consciousness. In these times Roy offers us a
different mode of seeing. It’s the quaint silence of a tranquil mind, etched
with abstract anxieties.
The manner
in which he mixes his media, the self consciousness about the various mediums
and their aesthetics, and the manner in which he appropriates the photographic,
the mediatic into the ‘painterly’; speak of a deep entrenchment into the
history of visual vocabularies. Deeply influenced by modernity, Roy has always
worked towards a critique of it. One can see his works as an aesthetic critique of modernity , at another level ,
when one reads into his gaze, one sees an awareness of the
historical/aesthetic frameworks of class
consciousness and the understanding of ‘spectacle’ and ‘intimacy’ as
political categories. This class consciousness is significant it a time when
class consciousness become marginal in the globalised imaginations and desires
of urbanity; it marks a certain resistance to the homogenization of the urban into
a globalised cosmopolitan. It is this post modern critique of contemporary,
which strongly marks his experiments with watercolor and drawing.
The lived
cultural memory of the class is layered; layered by the nostalgia of a past,
layered by the anxieties of the day to day, layered by the celebration of the
present and layered by the skepticism and fascinations about the future
Celebration of the neon; co exists with the empathy for the decay.
Sometimes, it gets inverted to celebration of the decay and anxieties about the
neon[ii]. Through the
intimacy of his object studies and alienation of his cityscapes, we see Roy
invoking the relationships between humanity and urbanity, between beauty and
spectacle.
The painted
surface is not just a residue of pictorial mark making and rendering, it is
also a reflection of the artist own gaze, the way he or she engages with the
world, and how images morph inside our heads. Roy is not a flâneur, his gaze is not shifty, behind the scenes and
documentative. Instead his gaze has closer connections with the discourse on
boredom as a discursively articulated phenomenon, one that understands leisure
as both objective and subjective. This brings into his subject matter not just
a sense of response to the world but also a historically constituted strategy
for coping with its discontents. In his paintings, leisure and hints of boredom
become fundamental to the experience of time and problems of meaning, creating
that hint of tension between notions of existence, consumption and taste.
[i][i]
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Verso,
1991
Monday, August 31, 2015
The touch of sweat and sperm is itchy
The mix of sperm and sweat is becoming unbearable
The sticky humidity makes it worse
Please turn on the air conditioning
But there is no electricity in Gaza for over a year now
But Delhi is humid and has no windows
The sticky humidity makes it worse
Please turn on the air conditioning
But there is no electricity in Gaza for over a year now
But Delhi is humid and has no windows
The touch of sweat and sperm is itchy
Sticky humidity makes it worse
Maybe we should take a long shower
But my friend lives in a salt pan far away in Kutch
They share a bucket of clean water for a week
I cannot take the itchy stickiness any longer
My cravings leave me listless
Maybe we can fly no more
Please turn on the air conditioning
And I will pray for the submerged villages of Narmada
And I will pray for the submerged villages of Narmada
I want to chase your warmth again
Delhi is humid and has no windows
But in my room now so far away from Gaza
Air conditioning brings out my goosebumps
And makes the mix of sperm and sweat seem so much better.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Female Body Inside - Rhine Stone @IAF2014
It was the winter of 2014, the vulnerability of the female body in the public sphere was occupying minds and public action across the country. The high art season was at its peak, just 2 days before the India Art Fair . Deeply immersed in exhibition set up, parties and heated debates..I almost did not pic up the phone when it rang.
Rhine's voice - " I am on my way to Delhi , and i want to do the box performance again. Are you in it? will you curate?"
I was still reeling, the box performance had the potential to touch many raw nerves.
"Where do want to do it?"
"Either India Gate or Art Summit?"
glimpses of Delhi police flashed by
"i am in, Rhine"
On the 2nd night of the IAF , we had a meeting - there was a small group of performance artists and friends who had travelled to Delhi from the Kolkata International Performance Art Festival. We figured out how to get the cardbox into the fair ground, Jeevan Suwal by now was becoming a specialist in assembling 'the box'. Who would dissapear with the clothes, with the shoes, how would the box Jeewan melt away after putting the box on Rhine, how do we insure documentation? How do we keep it guerrilla and yet inform audience before hand.
I had already explore the audience reaction at IAF through Duchamp's Silence, so that helped.
In the afternoon of the final day of the IAF2014, the performance was initiated.
"ok, sending in chrono order now. dont have all pics but this is how it went box spotted opened - alarm - walkie talkies- board cover pink cloth whole lot of cloth screening off of area knew girl was in box and kept her in there. ambulance comes removed cop puts arm around a visibly quaking satadru and questions him.i go and try and rescue satadru they catch me cop says girl has fainted , i ask satadru her name and start shouting 'rhine are u ok'c op says go check on her-i go in to barricade with cops and ask firang girl why they are holding the box and if girl not ok will they take responsibility? they say no- i ask them to lift box and let in air they pull boxt here is a cheer as box is seen on top of screen- rhine is ok - firang girl says who r u? we can handle this, not your businessi am escorted out by cops-cops ask everyone to clear off from the area repeatedly--i start walking away and call you--i hear shouting, i start back by then screen is off and a dressed rhine is escorted in to the cafe and no one allowed near"
un edited text from an email sent by Megha Joshi
2/3/14
|
It was great to observe how notions of permission and fears of nudity had the potential to raise a bomb alert kind of situation, mobilising so much police, ambulance and so much security. The huge installation IAF organisers did in response to Rhine's body in the box reaffirms the destabilisation power of performance art.
Moreover it was interesting that one of our team members Sajan Mani was cornered by the security personel and shouted at " This is not a public space ,, I want you to go out now "-
They made sure with two security guards ...ironically one " public Performance " was going to happen the same ground !
The behaviour of the organisers brought forward issues of public/ private and permission which is dominating high art practices today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was 7 pm, the fair was winding up, we were packing up the stalls- it had been over 3 hours and Rhine, Jeevan and Bhuvanesh were still in police custody-
I needed to intervene-
Anita Dube was at the Lakeeren stall, packing up- i just had to tell her and she immediate agreed to come with me.
Anita opened the gates , and then she had to go....after that for 3 hours we bullied and intimidated the police till they let us out.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Lessons on Leonardo: Connoisseurship in the Open Market
Parvez Kabir's 2011 review -‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’
Last week, the biggest exhibition of 2011, ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’ came to an end. The show went houseful from day one to its very last. The opening was broadcasted in every electronic media, including the Cinemas and it boosted National Gallery’s visitor count up to a record high. The exhibition brought half of Leonardo’s painterly oeuvre to the public along with many of his original drawings and a handful of paintings from his workshop. ‘The Guardian’ justly described it as, ‘Knockout’.
The display itself was intelligent and well thought out. Seven rooms were made to house one iconic work each, accompanied by drawings and workshop products around its theme (1). An exception to this rule was the fourth room, which was conceived as a chapel for the two ‘Virgin of the Rocks’ facing each other. To the full credit of the curators, Luke Syson and Larry Keith, the works displayed in this way enabled the viewers to engage with them in two distinct ways which are usually thought incommensurable. They could contemplate the masterpieces in isolation, as objects of beauty, devotion and meaning, and they could also see them as reflections of the world around. This world was preserved in the drawings, studies, copies and workshop production, in short the context where they belong to. I cannot recall when was the last time I saw an exhibition which retained such a delicate balance between the two modes of viewing without favouring one over the other.
But all great achievements come at a cost. The world of Leonardo was different, very different from our world and to put these works back into their context also means a bit of ‘letting go’ from our side. This, the curators couldn’t afford, and much as I sympathise with them, I fail to understand an aspect of their curatorial work. The literary and cinematic material around this exhibition, for some reason, is overwhelmingly connoisseurial. A lot of paper and film is spent on establishing the authenticity of some works which were thought of as workshop products in earlier times. ‘The Madonna Litta’, Christ ‘Salvatore Mundi’, and the ‘Musician’ are the three works which enjoy this expenditure most. But at the centre of all attention stands the London version of the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’. From the documentary film to the Museum souvenirs, we are bombarded with details of this work because, the film tells us, “this work sums up Leonardo’s Milanese period”. It doesn’t take much to see that the real motive behind this is to establish this work as an authentic Leonardo, which it probably is; but isn’t that already known? There are sceptics, of course, and I too am one of them, but to a general knowledge this work has long been established as an original. Then why this intellectual wrestling, why this mad angst to extract it from doubts all over again?
The reason, I am afraid, is the exhibition itself, and some of its contents. In order to give its audience a well-rounded view of Leonardo’s time, the exhibition, perhaps the first of its kind in this regard, displayed products from Leonardo’s workshop alongside his own works. There were works by Marco D’oggiono, Francesco Galli, Ambrogio di Predis and Francesco Napoletano, all remarkably close to Leonardo’s overall style. But the star of the show was Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, whose draughtsmanship seemed capable of giving Leonardo experts a run for their money, had he not been right handed. The exposure of these works at once revealed a rich, colourful workshop with a fluid exchange of works and ideas between the master and his apprentices, and an environment of learning and sharing.
But what is a delight to an Art Historian is often a nightmare to a connoisseur. The very exposition of a workshop casts a fresh cloud of doubts over the works which were sorted out earlier. But what more, it challenges our own frameworks of looking at the past, its objects and its artists. It muddles up the Leonardo we know, the Leonardo who was given to us by thinkers such as Burckhardt, Freud, Berenson and Clark. They saw in him the spirited individual that the ‘Artist’ was to become in Modern times, with Art being the natural expression of his personality. This idea, of course, would have been ‘news’ to a 15th century gentleman whose works were primarily judged on the scale of skill, mastery of design [designo] and ability to improve over existing models [invenzione]. There was hardly any artist in the 15th century who didn't have a workshop and was not responsible for some group-work or another.
The problem at hand is that our ways of understanding Art are fundamentally different from the ways it was understood in the Renaissance. We owe this to Modernism2. In the modern order, we know, a work started and finished all alone by a master comes to assume an autograph value and fetches a much bigger price in the Art market. An exposure of a workshop, still today, runs the risk of affecting a Master’s oeuvre and the price of things around it. It is this constraint which restricted the curators’ work to a regrettable degree. They could have revealed an illuminating history had they not been cramped with this burden of keeping intact the monetary order of things. Thus we see them painfully extracting original Leonardos from workshop products throughout the catalogue, even on occasions when all the evidences run counter to their argument. After all, in an open market, the loss of value, or rather price, is everyone’s loss.
To return to the show, it was puzzling that no one cared or speculated over the nature of the workshop, how was it possibly organized, how were the commissions taken and honoured and the labour distributed. Instead, the works were made to stand as answers to such questions, with their beauty hailed as qualitative evidence. This, I’m afraid, is the least convincing of all methods which connoisseurs normally employ while detecting ‘hands’(3). Talking of ‘Madonna Litta’, it is remarked in the exhibition catalogue, first quoting Gustav Waagen, that “this picture…is the rarest of all those ascribed to the great master which it is currently possible to buy in Europe.”, and then quoting Gukovskij “Those critics who doubt that the Madonna Litta’ was painted by Leonardo himself have not succeeded in putting forward the name of another artist to whom there are any kind of convincing grounds for ascribing a picture of such great artistic quality.” The author then presents what she calls ‘the indisputable evidence of scientific examinations’, which conclude “that the work was painted by one artist working alone, not by two”. She also reminds us that the work was copied by many in Milan and “it would hardly have occurred to the numerous copyists to repeat and adapt the work unless they were convinced that they were dealing with an original by the great master.” (4)
Now, compared to this, what do we get in the exhibition? The painting displayed along with preparatory studies made in the Leonardo workshop. We get this beautiful head of a woman, by the master himself, and two other preparatory studies, one of the child’s head and another of the Madonna’s drapery, by Boltraffio! Looking at the child’s head, the author tells us, “It has been suggested that it was copied from the painting. But that it was actually preparatory soon becomes apparent, since the quality of the drawing is extremely high and the correspondence is close but not exact.” Of the drapery study, he says “they [these studies] are almost certainly preparatory drawings for the painting rather than copies after it, since they do not overlap each other compositionally. […] some of the beautifully designed deep folds of drapery falling over the arm in this drawing are covered by the Christ’s left leg in the painting, which can therefore be understood as the result of a series of independent studies, cleverly assembled.”(5)
What are we to make of attribution, then? It is common to see apprentices making finished works from their master’s studies, their dictates, in order to meet lesser commissions. The reverse seems unlikely but cannot be ruled out. In any case, external facts aren’t enough to shed light on this problem. But if we play the game by the curator’s rule, taking the work itself as evidence, we may see a thing or two in this regard. It can be argued that the figure is cold and wax like, and it altogether lacks the tonal dissolve of a usual Leonardo (6) . Then you have a weird Christ Child with a rather awkwardly gazing eye. But what this painting really suffers from is the coordination among the figures. Madonna’s right breast appears to have shifted further right to meet the mouth of her child, which can only be a result of an on-the-board collage of the three preparatory models. But then, Leonardo’s model bent a little more forward whereas Boltraffio’s stood erect. As a result, the unhappy collage of the two cartoons produced a pumped up effect in the upper part of the Madonna’s body, further distorted by the insertion of the child in the composition. However, I must mention here that these minute flaws do nothing to obscure the work’s beauty, which is indeed of a high order. Neither do I believe that apprentices are more flawed than their masters, for often the opposite stands true. The point I want to make is that in autograph works, we usually see a unity of imagery where both inspired moves and flaws appear to be equally distributed. In the hands of the apprentices, however, the parts appear flawless and often improved but their blending onto a whole is what gives the game away (7).
So the question remains, is this not a Leonardo, then? The answer, I am afraid, is in double negative; it is indeed a Leonardo, regardless of whether it is by the master’s own hands or not. The work was commissioned to the master, who gave the lead, approved its quality at its completion. It was meant to carry the brand Leonardo and ‘function’ as his work, a point that should conclusively put an end to all our silly ‘who did what’ games. Nobody cared in 16th century if an apprentice painted the parts of a work by a well-known master as long as the brand and quality was retained, and neither should we. And yet, we judge these works solely on autograph values, something which they never intended to address in their own time. We do so because it’s not them, but us who are caught up in a complicated system of ‘relic- economy’. Isn’t it curious that in the last ten years, a handful of ‘originals’ have been extracted from workshop products, but not a single original pushed back to the workshops? In older times the traffic moved both ways, partly because works were seen as national treasures, and in a competitive international market, one’s loss is the other’s gain. The situation is different in the open market; here symbolic pride gives way to hard cash, and one person’s loss is everyone’s loss. As a result, the market cannot afford a ‘price- drop’ anymore. The one who suffers most from this is the Art Historian; he is wanted as long as he makes the past meet the needs of the present. When he does the opposite, nobody wants him anymore.
The Leonardo show, with all its glories and its eye popping brilliance, its serene beauty and its dazzling discoveries, has some lessons to give, then. We are moving towards a time where only upward mobility of capital will serve the interests of the market, and any downward mobility will be met with grave resistance and institutional indifference. This also means that our experience of history will operate on two registers; while the virtual register will enable greater dissemination and share of our past, the corporeal register will produce an ever increasing distancing of the same. These are only the first signs of things to come; these are only the lessons learnt, lessons from Leonardo.
-----------------------------------------------------
End notes
-----------------------------------------------------
I
The display itself was intelligent and well thought out. Seven rooms were made to house one iconic work each, accompanied by drawings and workshop products around its theme (1). An exception to this rule was the fourth room, which was conceived as a chapel for the two ‘Virgin of the Rocks’ facing each other. To the full credit of the curators, Luke Syson and Larry Keith, the works displayed in this way enabled the viewers to engage with them in two distinct ways which are usually thought incommensurable. They could contemplate the masterpieces in isolation, as objects of beauty, devotion and meaning, and they could also see them as reflections of the world around. This world was preserved in the drawings, studies, copies and workshop production, in short the context where they belong to. I cannot recall when was the last time I saw an exhibition which retained such a delicate balance between the two modes of viewing without favouring one over the other.
But all great achievements come at a cost. The world of Leonardo was different, very different from our world and to put these works back into their context also means a bit of ‘letting go’ from our side. This, the curators couldn’t afford, and much as I sympathise with them, I fail to understand an aspect of their curatorial work. The literary and cinematic material around this exhibition, for some reason, is overwhelmingly connoisseurial. A lot of paper and film is spent on establishing the authenticity of some works which were thought of as workshop products in earlier times. ‘The Madonna Litta’, Christ ‘Salvatore Mundi’, and the ‘Musician’ are the three works which enjoy this expenditure most. But at the centre of all attention stands the London version of the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’. From the documentary film to the Museum souvenirs, we are bombarded with details of this work because, the film tells us, “this work sums up Leonardo’s Milanese period”. It doesn’t take much to see that the real motive behind this is to establish this work as an authentic Leonardo, which it probably is; but isn’t that already known? There are sceptics, of course, and I too am one of them, but to a general knowledge this work has long been established as an original. Then why this intellectual wrestling, why this mad angst to extract it from doubts all over again?
The reason, I am afraid, is the exhibition itself, and some of its contents. In order to give its audience a well-rounded view of Leonardo’s time, the exhibition, perhaps the first of its kind in this regard, displayed products from Leonardo’s workshop alongside his own works. There were works by Marco D’oggiono, Francesco Galli, Ambrogio di Predis and Francesco Napoletano, all remarkably close to Leonardo’s overall style. But the star of the show was Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, whose draughtsmanship seemed capable of giving Leonardo experts a run for their money, had he not been right handed. The exposure of these works at once revealed a rich, colourful workshop with a fluid exchange of works and ideas between the master and his apprentices, and an environment of learning and sharing.
But what is a delight to an Art Historian is often a nightmare to a connoisseur. The very exposition of a workshop casts a fresh cloud of doubts over the works which were sorted out earlier. But what more, it challenges our own frameworks of looking at the past, its objects and its artists. It muddles up the Leonardo we know, the Leonardo who was given to us by thinkers such as Burckhardt, Freud, Berenson and Clark. They saw in him the spirited individual that the ‘Artist’ was to become in Modern times, with Art being the natural expression of his personality. This idea, of course, would have been ‘news’ to a 15th century gentleman whose works were primarily judged on the scale of skill, mastery of design [designo] and ability to improve over existing models [invenzione]. There was hardly any artist in the 15th century who didn't have a workshop and was not responsible for some group-work or another.
The problem at hand is that our ways of understanding Art are fundamentally different from the ways it was understood in the Renaissance. We owe this to Modernism2. In the modern order, we know, a work started and finished all alone by a master comes to assume an autograph value and fetches a much bigger price in the Art market. An exposure of a workshop, still today, runs the risk of affecting a Master’s oeuvre and the price of things around it. It is this constraint which restricted the curators’ work to a regrettable degree. They could have revealed an illuminating history had they not been cramped with this burden of keeping intact the monetary order of things. Thus we see them painfully extracting original Leonardos from workshop products throughout the catalogue, even on occasions when all the evidences run counter to their argument. After all, in an open market, the loss of value, or rather price, is everyone’s loss.
II
Now, compared to this, what do we get in the exhibition? The painting displayed along with preparatory studies made in the Leonardo workshop. We get this beautiful head of a woman, by the master himself, and two other preparatory studies, one of the child’s head and another of the Madonna’s drapery, by Boltraffio! Looking at the child’s head, the author tells us, “It has been suggested that it was copied from the painting. But that it was actually preparatory soon becomes apparent, since the quality of the drawing is extremely high and the correspondence is close but not exact.” Of the drapery study, he says “they [these studies] are almost certainly preparatory drawings for the painting rather than copies after it, since they do not overlap each other compositionally. […] some of the beautifully designed deep folds of drapery falling over the arm in this drawing are covered by the Christ’s left leg in the painting, which can therefore be understood as the result of a series of independent studies, cleverly assembled.”(5)
What are we to make of attribution, then? It is common to see apprentices making finished works from their master’s studies, their dictates, in order to meet lesser commissions. The reverse seems unlikely but cannot be ruled out. In any case, external facts aren’t enough to shed light on this problem. But if we play the game by the curator’s rule, taking the work itself as evidence, we may see a thing or two in this regard. It can be argued that the figure is cold and wax like, and it altogether lacks the tonal dissolve of a usual Leonardo (6) . Then you have a weird Christ Child with a rather awkwardly gazing eye. But what this painting really suffers from is the coordination among the figures. Madonna’s right breast appears to have shifted further right to meet the mouth of her child, which can only be a result of an on-the-board collage of the three preparatory models. But then, Leonardo’s model bent a little more forward whereas Boltraffio’s stood erect. As a result, the unhappy collage of the two cartoons produced a pumped up effect in the upper part of the Madonna’s body, further distorted by the insertion of the child in the composition. However, I must mention here that these minute flaws do nothing to obscure the work’s beauty, which is indeed of a high order. Neither do I believe that apprentices are more flawed than their masters, for often the opposite stands true. The point I want to make is that in autograph works, we usually see a unity of imagery where both inspired moves and flaws appear to be equally distributed. In the hands of the apprentices, however, the parts appear flawless and often improved but their blending onto a whole is what gives the game away (7).
III
The Leonardo show, with all its glories and its eye popping brilliance, its serene beauty and its dazzling discoveries, has some lessons to give, then. We are moving towards a time where only upward mobility of capital will serve the interests of the market, and any downward mobility will be met with grave resistance and institutional indifference. This also means that our experience of history will operate on two registers; while the virtual register will enable greater dissemination and share of our past, the corporeal register will produce an ever increasing distancing of the same. These are only the first signs of things to come; these are only the lessons learnt, lessons from Leonardo.
-----------------------------------------------------
End notes
-----------------------------------------------------
(1) The first room is called ‘The Musician in Milan’ where drawings and workshop products led to the central image of Leonardo’s ‘Portrait of a Musician’. The second room, ‘Beauty and Love’ brought studies and Milanese portraits around the painting ‘Lady with an Ermine’. The third room, ‘Body and Soul’ brought Leonardo’s anatomical studies and group compositions around the painting of ‘Saint Jerome’. The fourth room ‘Representing the Divine’ installed the two ‘Virgin of the Rocks’ facing each other, with workshop innovations on the other walls. The fifth room had ‘The Madonna Litta’ among sketches and improvised copies by Leonardo’s pupils. The sixth room ‘The Miracle of Talent’ had the Burlington Cartoon, surrounded by sketches and compositions and also the newly discovered ‘Salvatore Mundi’. The last room, in the Sainsbury wing, housed drawings and cartoons made for the ‘Last Supper’; a blown up digital image of the same and also a 17th century full scale copy of the mural.
(2) As we know, the discourse of Art shifted paradigmatically in the 19th century. Of all artists of the past, those who were distinct personalities were found compatible to the modern ideals of artistry and were consequently absorbed and re-contextualised. Those, whose works were less idiosyncratic and more in sync with the normative, for example Raphael and Reni, were denied such a reconfiguration and were seen as somewhat outdated. But artists like Leonardo, with an independent personality or Michelangelo, with a brooding individualism, hardly posed a problem in conversion. Their works became the artists themselves, their traces, or even better, ‘a piece of them’, a living testimony of their psychology and temperament.
(3) Beauty is often a result of stylistic conventions, and in the pre-modern times, every master who ran a workshop sought to systematize his style so that it becomes easy for emulation. This is why we find so many ‘figure types’, ‘compositional schemes’ and ‘cartoons’ in 16th century workshops, including those of Raphael, Perugino and Titian. A talented apprentice, following such a ‘system’, can indeed conjure up pictures of real beauty without sacrificing the ‘style’ of the workshop. Gombrich knew this when he remarked “With Raphael, the more a picture fits to his ‘style’ the less likely it is to be by him.” What he meant is that we should do good to separate the general from the particular in detecting ‘hands’, for chances are more that the general style will lead to pictures of great but predictable beauty while the particular will produce unpredictable results.
(4) The catalogue essay on Madonna Litta, by Tatiana Kustodieva, herself a curator at the State Hermitage Museum, is exemplary in its with anxieties with attribution. The case she makes is rather sloppy, for the absence of negative evidence [the absence of another candidate-author for the painting, the absence of a trace of group work etc] cannot be taken as proof for the presence of a positive one. The last point is particularly pitiful, for we find ample of copies made of workshop products throughout the Renaissance, including Leonardo’s own ‘Leda and the Swan’.
(5) Antonio Mazzotta, quoted from the exhibition catalogue.
(6) 19th century Connoisseurs usually had a refined sense for ‘surface impressions’. Both Richter and Cook relied on their eyes for judgment and it is hard not to agree with them on most occasions. Following their connoisseurship, we may separate the Leonardos into two categories, warm and cold. The warm Leonardos usually have a glowing skin with a richer and subtler blend of tones. The portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, La Belle Ferronniere, Christ Salvatore Mundi, the Paris Virgin of the Rocks and the Mona Lisa are examples of this. The cold Leonardos have a stronger use of chiaroscuro, a sharper tonal dissolve and a wax-like flesh tone which the 19th century connoisseurs found difficult to attribute to Leonardo’s style and technique. The Madonna Litta, The London Virgin of the Rocks, Leda and the Swan are examples of this. Connoisseurship means little to my historian’s interest; in fact, it is rather a hindrance to a fuller understanding of past practices at times. But faced with a choice, I would rather follow the judgments of the 19th century connoisseurs than the present ones here, who seem to be too keen to reach the end of their objective, irrespective of the means taken in the process.
(7) In the connoisseur’s method, ‘Pentimenti’, or ‘the change of mind’ is one of the characteristics which separates autograph works from workshop products. Since the master doesn’t have a ‘superior’ model to emulate, we see him often improvising on the relations between the parts and the whole of his composition, rendering it a fluidity in the process which increase chances of going either right or wrong. Leonardo’s St. Jerome is a case in point. Here he changes and improvises relentlessly but never quite gets to the harmony of forms. He even makes the Lion a size shorter and thinner, with a rather long tail, in order to fit it to the semicircular foreground. In contrast to these extreme cases, the workshop products are usually error free but they seldom live up to the same degree of liveliness which we recognize in autograph works.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In my opinion Parvez Kabir was the best Art Historian of My generation - Consumed by tuberculosis he left us very early. http://theblackyellowarrow.blogspot.in/2013/11/a-tribute-to-parvez.html
(3) Beauty is often a result of stylistic conventions, and in the pre-modern times, every master who ran a workshop sought to systematize his style so that it becomes easy for emulation. This is why we find so many ‘figure types’, ‘compositional schemes’ and ‘cartoons’ in 16th century workshops, including those of Raphael, Perugino and Titian. A talented apprentice, following such a ‘system’, can indeed conjure up pictures of real beauty without sacrificing the ‘style’ of the workshop. Gombrich knew this when he remarked “With Raphael, the more a picture fits to his ‘style’ the less likely it is to be by him.” What he meant is that we should do good to separate the general from the particular in detecting ‘hands’, for chances are more that the general style will lead to pictures of great but predictable beauty while the particular will produce unpredictable results.
(4) The catalogue essay on Madonna Litta, by Tatiana Kustodieva, herself a curator at the State Hermitage Museum, is exemplary in its with anxieties with attribution. The case she makes is rather sloppy, for the absence of negative evidence [the absence of another candidate-author for the painting, the absence of a trace of group work etc] cannot be taken as proof for the presence of a positive one. The last point is particularly pitiful, for we find ample of copies made of workshop products throughout the Renaissance, including Leonardo’s own ‘Leda and the Swan’.
(5) Antonio Mazzotta, quoted from the exhibition catalogue.
(6) 19th century Connoisseurs usually had a refined sense for ‘surface impressions’. Both Richter and Cook relied on their eyes for judgment and it is hard not to agree with them on most occasions. Following their connoisseurship, we may separate the Leonardos into two categories, warm and cold. The warm Leonardos usually have a glowing skin with a richer and subtler blend of tones. The portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, La Belle Ferronniere, Christ Salvatore Mundi, the Paris Virgin of the Rocks and the Mona Lisa are examples of this. The cold Leonardos have a stronger use of chiaroscuro, a sharper tonal dissolve and a wax-like flesh tone which the 19th century connoisseurs found difficult to attribute to Leonardo’s style and technique. The Madonna Litta, The London Virgin of the Rocks, Leda and the Swan are examples of this. Connoisseurship means little to my historian’s interest; in fact, it is rather a hindrance to a fuller understanding of past practices at times. But faced with a choice, I would rather follow the judgments of the 19th century connoisseurs than the present ones here, who seem to be too keen to reach the end of their objective, irrespective of the means taken in the process.
(7) In the connoisseur’s method, ‘Pentimenti’, or ‘the change of mind’ is one of the characteristics which separates autograph works from workshop products. Since the master doesn’t have a ‘superior’ model to emulate, we see him often improvising on the relations between the parts and the whole of his composition, rendering it a fluidity in the process which increase chances of going either right or wrong. Leonardo’s St. Jerome is a case in point. Here he changes and improvises relentlessly but never quite gets to the harmony of forms. He even makes the Lion a size shorter and thinner, with a rather long tail, in order to fit it to the semicircular foreground. In contrast to these extreme cases, the workshop products are usually error free but they seldom live up to the same degree of liveliness which we recognize in autograph works.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In my opinion Parvez Kabir was the best Art Historian of My generation - Consumed by tuberculosis he left us very early. http://theblackyellowarrow.blogspot.in/2013/11/a-tribute-to-parvez.html
Monday, July 6, 2015
what is it that am looking for
There was a rabbit at the door
No news paper on the floor
Marley sung no more
Being told that i snore
Blue whales are cast ashore
That desire to soar
I loved the tea that you pour
Or the shirts that i wore
But i must have done that before
Is sex is a decor
Or dreams are such a chore
That rabbit at the door
Did make me implore
What is it that am looking for
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Notes on Neo liberalism and Indian Art
Debanjan Roy|INDIA SHINING I (GANDHI AND THE LAPTOP)| Edition of 5 | 2007 | Fiberglass with acrylic paint| 27 x 46 x 30 in.
|
·
It is common to argue that dichotomy and polarities are out
of fashion. Moreover, nation states have
been proven to have been constructed and hence in many arenas they have ceased
to exist. In such a situation if one seeks to revisit the ‘global’ ‘local’
dialogue using contemporary Indian art as a case study, then the positioning of
the ‘local’ suddenly seems to be on fleeting grounds. With ‘localities now
being trans geographic, it is increasingly becoming difficult to position the
‘local’ within the ‘global’-’local’ debate. On the other hand, the ‘global’ is
well positioned. It is clearly trans-geographic, it claims for it self a
cosmopolitan identity and by and large subscribes to a life style where
differences in space, time, gender, caste, sexuality, race, tend to collapse.
It is this collapsed (constructed) identity that casts itself in a postmodern
universalism, which can increasingly be called neo-liberal.*
- · To understand this neo-liberal identity, one could pose the India Shining campaign sponsored by the first BJP led NDA government(1999-2004) with the ‘India Poised’ campaign (2006-07) sponsored by neo-liberal image building forces within in corporate India. At the core of both the campaigns lie the claim of re-presenting India in a newly shaping (reconstructing) Asia within a world which is increasingly trying to re configure itself while still being in the ‘crisis’ of being an unipolar world. How these two campaigns represented the notion of 'India' and 'development' become crucial in understanding the links between contemporanity and neoliberalism in india. Both these campaigns heavily deployed, 'scale', 'shine', global, and the urban as both campaign strategy and and symbols for desire and progress. Though these campaingns failed badly as they did not comprehend the 'local' and the symbols of 'desire' was copy pasted from the 1st world imagination, the (this) language became the cornerstone for contemporary urban expression.
A stadium hoisting events of the 'India shinning campaign' and a satellite image of india during Diwali, heavily used during the 'India shinning campaign' |
·
Of course
contemporary Indian art (the part of which fetches the maximum prices and gets
the highest degree of participation in international art spectacles,
residencies etc) is constituent of practitioners who have strong (to
superficial) left wing or center left ideological positionings. ‘India
Shining’ was a center
right campaign; I use it to argue that in matters of economic and foreign
policy, there is an amazing collision between the new left and the new right.
This collision has made it possible for the economic right wing to appropriate
subversive Marxist concepts like ‘re-worlding’, and transformed it into something that sees the
world as a constellation of cosmopolitan cities (and hence the easy manner in
which the India Shining campaign get replaced yet adequately compensated by the
‘India
Poised’ campaign.) This
act of representing, the politics of such, the innocence of such, and (maybe)
most importantly the ‘values’ involved in such can serve as key pegs as one
seeks to interrogate the ‘global’, ‘local’ as polemics and conditions.
The strong winds of neolibelisation that came to us, has only grown stronger and deeply affected our commonsense. Recently second NDA government launched the 'Make in India Campaign' , which has been accused of being India Shinning on steroids. In the years between 2006-14 , much has changed in the global socio economic imagination. The 2008 financial crisis has lead to Neo liberalism turning aggressive and militaristic. Right now outside the restance pockets in Latin America, privatization, consumerism, war on environment, bing, and spectacle are operating on never before seen global levels.
The strong winds of neolibelisation that came to us, has only grown stronger and deeply affected our commonsense. Recently second NDA government launched the 'Make in India Campaign' , which has been accused of being India Shinning on steroids. In the years between 2006-14 , much has changed in the global socio economic imagination. The 2008 financial crisis has lead to Neo liberalism turning aggressive and militaristic. Right now outside the restance pockets in Latin America, privatization, consumerism, war on environment, bing, and spectacle are operating on never before seen global levels.
"The proverbial cat, however, is now finally out of the bag, for the slogan to ‘Make in India’ is an invitation to global corporate capital to come loot and plunder the natural commons, to destroy the environment, to dispossess populations made dispensable and to exploit cheap Indian labour; it is an invitation to global corporations who are being forced out of their home countries because high environmental and labour costs have been long been eating into their profits. Whether or not the notorious Lawrence Summers Memo of 1991 that talked of moving ‘dirty’ industries to the third world was a serious policy proposal or a mere sarcastic prank, the Modi government seems to have internalized its impeccable economic logic. China was the trail blazer in this regard and one can already see the devastating impact it has had on daily life in China. Even as GDP soars to the skies, daily life gets more and more insecure and violent. That is the direction that the new government has chosen to take India in the name of making India the manufacturing hub of the world. Yes, there will always be people to point out how GDP growth has meant more employment and money circulating among ordinary people at large, but these are the classically myopic economics-drunk people who have not spent a minute thinking about what all this means in the longer run." Aditya Nigam http://kafila.org/2014/10/20/make-in-india-modis-war-on-the-poor/
"On Sunday, along with German Chancellor Angela Mekel, Narendra Modi inaugurated Hannover Messe, World’s largest trade fair. In the fair top businesses from numerous countries participated. Indian P.M Modi said India is an attractive destination and his government will make it easy to conduct business and it will be place where there will not be any surprise element. Raising the pitch for Make in India, he said it is a national movement that covers both businesses and society. We have moved with speed and created confidence both at home as well as abroad. Modi told his audience, we will protect your intellectual rights. The tax system will be more predictable and also talked about new financial instruments to fund nation’s growth. Modi further added, the will to change is there and also it is moving with speed in an right direction. His last line, during the inauguration of the industrial fair along with Merkel, encouraging businessmen from both sides, he said. When the shutter comes down at this industrial fair, I wish many new doors to open." 13th April,2015 http://www.bjptelangana.org/en/tbjp_news/make-in-india-a-new-national-movement-modi
|
·
Art practice does not operate outside socio-political hegemony. One needs to question whether the dominant forces of contemporary art while claiming for itself a leftist intellectual base is in fact like the British New Labour completely complicit with the right wing in matters of economic and foreign policy. There is a claim that the fruits of ‘globalization have opened up horizons for ‘contemporary Indian art’, and that the fruits of the strategic and commercial interest shown in the newly liberalised India by the industrially advanced ‘global’ communities since the early 1990s, has had a cultural resonance on the realm of ‘contemporary Indian art’. Over the last decade or so Indian painters and sculptors have enjoyed a measure of visibility in the ‘global’ art structure. They have, more recently, been joined by installation and video artists, and artists’ active in the new digital media, whose projects have outgrown the ‘local’ limitations of production , exhibition and consumption. These young to mid-career artists have been represented (and have represented India) in major international art events, such as the, various Triennales, Biennales and (of course the) Documenta.
Valay Shende, Scooter, 2007, welded metal buttons, 45 x 70 x 30 in.| IMAGE: COURTESY SEATTLE ART MUSEUM |
"SQUARE AVASA for elite: North Face Entrance Concept. East and West facing houses will be of equal priority where north face entrance concept is unique in our project. Individual opinion matters as East shows mental/Spiritual progress with prosperity & North Shows Prosperity with tremondous growth in monetary wise and Wealth.Recreation is plenty at Square Avasa. You can relax by the cool environs of the swimming pool or take a swim to tone your body. For those who are serious about fitness, you have the gym where you can strengthen and beautify your muscles. If you are keen on sports, there is the indoor & out door games facility where you can try your hand at different games or practice Yoga. Besides the excellent landscaping and the shimmering water bodies comfort you to the point of relaxation. SuqareMile Projects Constructions, a leading construction company with good experience and reputation for delivering quality housing" http://www.clickindia.com/detail.php?id=133633946
|
Art practice does not operate outside socio-political hegemony. One needs to question whether the dominant forces of contemporary art while claiming for itself a leftist intellectual base is in fact like the British New Labour completely complicit with the right wing in matters of economic and foreign policy. There is a claim that the fruits of ‘globalization have opened up horizons for ‘contemporary Indian art’, and that the fruits of the strategic and commercial interest shown in the newly liberalised India by the industrially advanced ‘global’ communities since the early 1990s, has had a cultural resonance on the realm of ‘contemporary Indian art’. Over the last decade or so Indian painters and sculptors have enjoyed a measure of visibility in the ‘global’ art structure. They have, more recently, been joined by installation and video artists, and artists’ active in the new digital media, whose projects have outgrown the ‘local’ limitations of production , exhibition and consumption. These young to mid-career artists have been represented (and have represented India) in major international art events, such as the, various Triennales, Biennales and (of course the) Documenta.
·
Their work has been
showcased in blockbuster exhibitions organised by prestigious art societies and
institutions, the dominant articulation celebrates an articulation to advocate
a certain kind of post-modern Indian art, which is rich with the possibilities
especially through their value within a particular definition of
multiculturalism. However, even in
the ideological framing of their practices there is a complete refusal to
interrogate this ‘fruits of globalization’ which
fellow leftist intellectuals and activists have grave anxieties about.
·
There
is a
feeling in some corners that contemporary Indian art has not (yet) established
itself as a major and sustained ‘global’ presence. Artists curators claim that
this is modest and intermittent by comparison, for instance, with the
domineering attendance contemporary Chinese art has secured since its advent on
the ‘global’ scene in the late 1980s,
or how east and south east Asia have recently become hubs of a much larger
scale. However, very rarely do we express concerns about monopolizing of
cultural capital, an oligarchic control over knowledge and resources. We
also fail to consider that China as a nation, (and not just its art) enjoy much
greater attention than India does on a global scale. It enjoys more attention
in the UN, Olympics, Biennales, sea trade…etc. Is it an unfair argument that
‘contemporary Indian art’ cannot locate itself outside the operative hegemony
called ‘contemporary India’, and the various hegemonies that operate within it?
And is this question relevant even as (or specifically because) a newly
dominant strand within ‘contemporary Indian art’ is deeply engaged with forces
blurring national boundaries, taking up representational roles in ‘global art
institutions’ and creating an oligarchy of power?
·
One of the biggest
problems has been that the great inflow of financial and cultural capital, have
some how bypassed the grassroots infrastructure of Fine Art in India.
Institutional neglect, and lack of non-institutionalized support, ensures
skeletally existing library facilities, scant archives, and absolute neglect as
‘conditions’ of art colleges all over the India. The net as a medium is
extremely difficult to access, and that coupled with the lack of English
education, is keeping out art students from the domain of knowledge that is now
dominating the multicultural contemporary art. Essentially there is not enough
of the (new) money and exposure coming back to nurture, or to even have a
debate with the grass roots. It does seem that the poor, peasant, and the proletariat as categories have
become grossly out of fashion in Marxist thought, and with that these ‘residual’
categories seem to have lost the right to be ‘talked to’ or engage
with…contributing to a collapse of the ‘local’ as a point of consideration. The
‘local’ and its ‘public’ could be the ‘inspiration’ informing the work, can
even be the ‘represented’ in the works, but somewhere s/he seems to have lost
the right to be considered to be ‘peer’…the work is no longer addressed to him/her.
·
Most people don't talk about it, but the most
thriving days for art criticism in India were in the 1920's when a heated
debate on the formation of an Indian national style was being played out
amongst art journals, popular literary magazines, and newspapers. (Read Partha
Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922: Occidental
Orientations Cambridge University Press, 1995). Today, a
critical contestation over arts in the public domain is absolutely
unimaginable.#
·
Art criticism in India today essentially find two
strands...in one mode the critic represents the artist like a suave court
painter; the writer uses skills in rhetoric and imagination (often in
collaboration with the artist) to weave and or locate a suitable context and
bestow it with cultural capital. Such is the celebrated 'up market’ criticism
in India, which helps to legitimize a certain kind of post-modern Indian art,
which is rich with the possibilities exiting consumers through their value
within a particular definition of multiculturalism. The ability of a critic is,
(now) judged by how s/he can represent Indian art in international terms.
Clearly the role of the critic as an aesthetic interrogator has no space within
contemporary art practices, and one begins to wonder where to locate writings
on contemporary Indian art, and consider its role vis-Ã -vis the production of
the analyzable subject and look at what relation does such production have with
consumerism? #
·
Print and online magazines have created space for
critical art history of contemporary arts, but the print media magazines (due
to reasons of funding of the high production cost), hesitate to publish
interventionist, alternate writings on art. The online
magazines, on the other hand, have a greater discursive potential. However,
currently they suffer from financial instability (the online publishing
industry in India is yet to take off), and are yet to ideologically position
themselves vis à vis the mainstream. #
- Another key critical vacuum is caused because our attention is so taken up by the mediatic aspect of new media, and we don’t seem to be engaging with what it does to language. We seem to be yet so Ruskinian in our analysis that the media is often read as a vehicle for a direct reflection of the artistic-aesthetic intentions. Especially in the context of new media art, a much more complex analysis of about how media influences language is very important. It is only such an analysis that will help us to understand how language and power operate within the contemporary Indian art society. This is also particularly important because there seems to be an erosion of the notion of the public as peer, and often we forget to make the simple connections between language and communication. Peer-hood now is something that can be found in the globe’s various cosmopolitan pockets where the vernacular (‘local’?) is mostly the ‘other’. This is more significant because new media art is a key instrument through which trans geography articulates.
Subodh Gupta | U.F.O | 2007 | Brass utensils | 114 x 305 x 305 cm |
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* Cited from AAA>Diaaalogue > May 2007 > Perspectives A Note on the Re-worlding of 'Contemporary Indian Art', Rahul Bhattacharya (http://www.aaa.org.hk/Diaaalogue/Details/33 )
* Cited from AAA>Diaaalogue > May 2007 > Perspectives A Note on the Re-worlding of 'Contemporary Indian Art', Rahul Bhattacharya (http://www.aaa.org.hk/Diaaalogue/Details/33 )
# Cited from Short notes on art history and criticism:, Rahul Bhattacrarya (http://theblackyellowarrow.blogspot.in/2015/06/a-short-note-on-art-history-and.html)
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