A Note on the Re-worlding of 'Contemporary Indian Art'

Impulse to soar. Naxal desktop wallpaper

crossposted from http://www.aaa.org.hk/newsletter_detail.aspx?newsletter_id=33&newslettertype=archive

The editorial brief from the Asia Art Archive, asking me to write on how organisations and institutions outside India are constructing histories and simultaneously representing contemporary India and its art, left me perplexed and worried. Where does one locate 'India's' agency in self-representation? Is India, as for centuries, still being constructed and consumed by (neo) imperial powers? This nagging question repeatedly surfaced as I kept trying to write this essay. Who had the right to represent and what then are the implications of this brief?

Naxal dominated  zones of india.

Any question around the issues of representation of Indian art finds an automatic starting point in the Western academy. Much bashed, yet still shamelessly Orientalist in its quest for the Other, the Western academy is today challenged from both within and outside. A quick Google search — the only option from my 'Third World' position — shows that even today, courses, conferences, and the juggernaut of the American academy remain fixated on the pre-modern, the 'classical', the civilizational.(1) If indeed there is an interest in the modern and the contemporary, this curiosity and 'desire for knowledge' remains focused on the popular — on the glitzy world of Bollywood, 'cheap' calendar prints, and the 'exotic' 'art' of the bazaar. If courses, conferences, and academic publications are symptomatic of the West's larger interest in its 'Other', contemporary art from India does not even figure in this discourse.(2) And, of course, archives, as handmaiden to the project of knowledge making (for good or for bad), reflect this predilection. Not surprisingly, an analysis of the online documentation provided by the two primary U.S.-based archives of South Asian art — the John C. and Susan L. Huntington Archive and the Digital South Asia Library — reflect a disproportionately high focus on pre-modern art. Of course, there are a few (allegedly) representative images — a Husain, a Souza, and a Tyeb Mehta — standing in for the modern and the contemporary!

Tyeb Mehta, Buffalo Slayer, Acrylic on canvas

However, I cannot afford to privilege the American academy as having the sole 'right' to represent India today. The post-1990s economic boom, the software bubble, and the emergence of a South Asian diaspora in the West are playing important roles in the re-casting of Indian art. As Rajeev Sethi, a leading promoter of Indian art notes, [e]very successful economy needs a tangible celebration'.(3) In the recent past, modern art has suddenly become a symbol of success and self-confidence. Perhaps, because art adds value, in terms of wealth as well as image, the nouveau riche has (now) recognised art as a commodity, a product for investment. 'People want icons that you can show off — you can't put stocks and shares on your walls', Sethi further observes. While, on one hand, pressure groups created by today's self-confident diaspora are resisting the American academy's 'right' to represent India,(4) on the other hand, the fruits of globalization have opened up horizons for 'Contemporary Indian Art'. Not surprisingly, the strategic and commercial interests shown by the industrially advanced 'global' communities in newly liberalised India have had a cultural resonance on the manner in which 'contemporary Indian art' is produced (at home) and consumed (abroad).

Returning to the editorial brief, what then are the (imagined or real) implications of this changing socio-cultural scenario in the archiving and construction of Indian art abroad?(5) At the turn of the century, three important texts were generated which specially took up the project of representing objects of Indian art and (to various extents) also of representing the cultural context of production. I am referring here to the 'Bombay/Mumbai' exhibition at the Tate Modern, curated by Geeta Kapur, 'Edge of Desire', a show curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, and Made in India, a documentary by Madhushree Dutta, commissioned by and based on the curatorial note for 'New Indian Art: Home Street Shrine Bazaar Museum', by Gulammohammed Sheikh. In recent times, these have been the most significant showcasing/representations of objects that participate within the aesthetic discourse framed by notions of art, India, contemporaniety, politics and aesthetics(6). Though the aesthetic discourse shaping the most recent trends in contemporary Indian art claims to have located the aesthetic discourse in the zone of multi-polarity, a close analysis of the 'Edge of Desire', 'Bombay/Mumbai' and Made in India, shows this multi-polarity (only) within a neo-liberal multi-cultural framework.

This recent surge in the display of contemporary Indian art, framed through neo-liberal multi-cultural politics, within the context of 'Western' museums, is perhaps not coincidental. Powerful art brokers based in the U.S. and global institutions like the Asia Society and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt have, in their own ways, opened up a discursive space for the display of contemporary Indian art in the 'West'. Simultaneously, the rising capital force of the Indian diaspora has meant that international auction houses now take Indian contemporary art seriously. Bonham's, Christie's and Sotheby's regularly hold auctions dedicated to contemporary Indian art, with global attendance and earnings in billions of USD. Thus, in the early 2000s, when Indian contemporary art crossed the million-dollar mark, market analysts announced with a great flourish that 'finally' Indian art had come into being. There is an urgency to problematize any easy celebration of such 'coming into being'. Is this 'coming into being' then decided, on one hand, by the market value of a select few and, on the other hand, by a few exhibitions in the West that claim to be a serious stocktaking of the country's contemporary cultural heritage? These shows assert a traversing of conventional divides between the urban/fine and folk/tradition, between the high and popular. Claiming to represent the socio-political transformations in India, these exhibitions attempt to address contemporary political, social, and environmental realities.

India, like Asia, has multiple discursive values within itself. Therefore questions of authenticity would lead one to dead-end mirages. Acts of representation will always be the result of discursive relationships between the locations of the represented, re-presenter and the re-presentational context. The 'emergently dominant'(7) embodiment and representation of India is that of a demography fast getting caught in the winds of late capitalist progress, riding the shoulders of a large neo-liberal middle class that operates from cosmopolitan cities to colonize the heartland. To provide 24/7 power supply to Mumbai, a suburb goes without power for about 6 hours a day and a little deeper into the hinterland, the population faces the psycho-social trauma of poverty-driven suicides spreading through the farmlands. It does seem that the poor, peasant, and the proletariat as categories have fallen out of fashion, and with that these 'residual' categories seem to have lost the right to be 'talked to' or engaged with, contributing to a collapse of the 'local'(8) as a point of consideration.

N.N. Rimzon. Speaking Stones, 1998. 'Edge of Desire' exhibition.

Contemporary India is thus a highly fragmented identity, with steep socio-economic disparities and pockets of conflicting religious/ideological nationalisms. As contemporary neo-liberal straits are increasingly taking a neo-humanist (post-capital humanist) direction, global art institutions and agencies are becoming participants in these manifestations of continuities, totalities, constants, quantities and accumulations, evolutions, fields (disciplines) and Hegel's 'spirit of the age'. The title, 'Home, Street, Shrine, Museum', Gulammohammed Sheikh's curatorial project (conceived as a part of 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games), is both seminal and metaphoric of the manner in which cosmopolitan India is imagined. It is significant that neither 'Home, Street, Shrine, Museum' nor 'Edge of Desire' showcase (re-present) fragment constituents of India like the North East; the large tracks of Naxal-prone heartland in which the Maoist insurgency influences visual hegemonies; the extreme Dravida ideological movement; or even the moderately extremist artistic movement known as the Baroda Radical Painters and Sculptures Association. Inclusions and exclusions will always happen and though these pockets are extremely important (the northeastern and Maoist counter-hegemonies territorially occupy nearly 40% of India), as Santosh S. recently pointed out, one needs to recognize the upper-class/caste cosmopolitan bias that informs these 'forgettings' and hence inform the representations of contemporary India.(9) And of course, as an art historian, I find it perplexing that the harbingers of 'India Poised' and 'India Shining' have conveniently forgotten a larger history of equally important global art shows and political concerns that have marked much of Indian art from the 1920s.(10)

Shuvaprasanna, Golden Flute, 2005, Oil on canvas

Samir aaich. Untitled, Oil on canvas

As much as it is problematic to employ monolithic assumptions in constituting the idea of India, one similarly needs to fragment the notion of 'abroad'. For the purpose of this thematic, Euro-America (and in recent times the Far East(11)), with its constellation of art collections, dealers, institutions, and galleries, remains the key player — and thus frames my definition of 'abroad'. It is this 'abroad' that I wish to fracture.(12) While up until now my paper seems to suggest that Indian art inhabits a specific art world — that of Asia Society and the New York power brokers — a closer look further complicates this picture. Apart from the 'blockbusters' mentioned above, Indian art is now being consistently shown in private galleries across Europe and the U.S.(13) One notes that the artists and artistic practices that are promoted and consumed through these private galleries provide a distinctly different view of contemporary Indian art. It is interesting that artists, for example Samir Aich and Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharya, whose works dominate the global consumption of Indian art through such galleries, are never represented in these 'blockbusters'. I raise this issue not to valorize Samir Aich and Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharya but to question the omissions in shows that carry the claim of 'serious stocktaking' of India's contemporary visual heritage. Is it that these artists are considered to be functioning outside the socio-political definitions of taste, progress and other such cultural concept-metaphors defined through the hegemonic ambitions of a neo-liberal India?

Shilpa Gupta. Blame. Mixed media installation at APJ Media Gallery, New Delhi

This picture gets further complicated if one looks at Indian art promoted by Euro-American collectors such as Espace Louis Vuitton (France), Daimler Chrysler (Germany), and Ralph Burnet (U.S). The jarring slippage between the record-breaking names on the auction circuits (mostly early post-Independence modernists casting their own interpretation on Western masters such as Picasso, Modigliani and Rothko) and the artists who are today enjoying maximum visibility in international art residencies and spectacles (artists working with notions of 'new art') speak volumes in the reception of contemporary art. Why are the major collectors of early post-Independence modernists necessarily of Indian origin while it is the Euro-American collectors who promote the younger generation working with 'new art'? Is the diaspora then relatively 'conservative' in its aesthetic discourse? And why is it that corporate Euro-America prefers 'new art' from India? Though these questions cannot be answered without further in-depth research, it does allow for a disrupting of the possibility of an easy narrative of the West's construction and consumption of Indian art.

Very Hungry God by Subodh Gupta

In recent years, the world has been moving away from its long relationship with Euro-America centricism to a polycentric play of hegemonies, and it is this movement that has created space for 're-worlding'. Within this polyphony of contestations over global hegemonies, East Asia is fast emerging as a new centre (a new 'West'?). This shifting hegemonic balance has resulted in major Asian institutions like the Asia Art Archive and the Arario Gallery showing an interest in contemporary Indian art. The 2006 exhibition 'Hungry Gods' at Arario and the recent appointment of an Asia Art Archive research post for India are early indicators of this growing interest. Although this trend is too recent to be historically analyzed, even here one sees a predilection for 'new art' — an interest shared with Euro-American corporate collectors. Yet again, there are new imaginings of India, art, and contemporaniety that are informing institutions outside India and their attempts at constructing contemporary Indian art.
Footnotes:
(1) This is not a diatribe against the American academy nor is it an attempt to posit it as representative of the 'West'. I merely use the American academy as an example — perhaps an exemplar.
(2) The 'West' today does not merely signify a geographic location, but rather is a metaphor for certain ideological constellations which arise out of a 'superior' position certain hegemonies claim and are bestowed with.
(3) http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ra-magazine/winter2006/features/made-in-india,49,RAMA.html%20
(4) For example the recent California School Text Book debate.
(5) Being an art historian located in India, my paper does not claim empirical understanding of the actual functioning of either the Western academy or the new institutions interested in contemporary Indian art. Rather, this is an attempt to understand the politics and problematic of the 'outside' constructions of Contemporary Indian Art from the perspective of an 'insider'.
(6) Any aesthetic discourse seeks to locate high art as a vehicle for aesthetic and ethical elevation. This is in continuation of the Kantian belief that art, not science or philosophy is the road to ultimate truth. It is true that there have been serious disrupters within these continuities and contemporary notions of ethics and aesthetics are significantly removed from Kant's assumptions of them. However, both these notions still stay rooted in complex webs of power and hegemonic articulation. Significantly mainstream art theory and art practices have not been able to engage with the question of 'value' except through an engagement with the evaluation of the (new) ethical(s) and (neo) aesthetic(s) elevation provided to the subject through the viewing/participating experience.
(7) The terms 'emergent', 'dominant' and 'residual' in this paper are drawn from Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, London, Oxford University Press, 1977.
(8) It is common to argue that dichotomic 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 itself a cosmopolitan identity and by and large subscribes to a lifestyle where differences in space, time, gender, caste, sexuality, and race tend to collapse. It is this collapsed (constructed) identity that casts itself in a postmodern universalism, and which can increasingly be called neo-liberal.
(9) Santosh S., presentation in panel titled 'Art and Subaltern Politics: Focus on Dalit Discourses' at symposium 'Elective Affinities, Constitutive Differences: Contemporary Art in India', New Delhi, 2007.
(10) Partha Miter, The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922-47, London, Reaktion Books, 2007, for this 'forgotten' history of early to mid 20th-century global cosmopolitanism.
(11) The Far East is sometimes used synonymously with East Asia, which may be defined in geographic or cultural terms as to Russia's East, and including central and coastal China, Taiwan, Japan, both North and South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as the states and cultures of the rest of Southeast Asia.
(12) I draw my arguments from earlier scholarship on ways in which the 'Occident' as a category needs to be problematised. For example, Dipesh Chakrabarty. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, Princeton University Press. 2000.
(13) For example, Art Pilgrim (London), Bose Pacia (New York), Collect World Art New (Rochelle), Galerie Mueller & Plate (Munich), Jack Shainman (New York) and Kala Fine Art (Austin).

Editorial disclaimer - The opinions and views expressed in the Perspectives column do not necessarily reflect those of the Asia Art Archive, staff, sponsors and partners.

Review of - ‘REMARKING THE RIVER’-Atul Bhalla 2007:

Exhibition view

It is some times one is destined to like an exhibition. On a wet march afternoon when one entered, the Anant Art center at Noida it was dripping wet…inside the gallery. Leaking the leaking roof and seeping water from the basement transformed the show into a site specific installation. There was mildew growing over the minimalist wooden blocks piled on to each other in fragile curvilinear straights, the lush green in the video projection of brutal lumber sapping, reflected off the wet floors and transfused in the damp wall to create an ambience of the ‘tropical wet’ under which the brutal metaphor of the tree being hacked and slowly sapping away stands out in a mellow disturbing manner.    It is this quality of mellow disturbance that characterizes Atul Bhalla’s ‘aesthetic approach’. As a Performance Sculptor and Photo Artist he reveals in aestheticising his intense performative experiences, using the possibility of mediamatic intervention to garb his encounter with ‘disturbing realities’.

It is obvious to state that his body of work shown at Anant Art Center (a body produced between 2006 till date in different residency/workshop studio context), is thematically centered on water. Instead let us being at the point where one reads Atul’s understanding of water as a metaphor for life. Not only a metaphor but in a sense also the carrier of life…eternal in existence…therefore the eternal store house of knowledge. The in episode Mahabharat in which the Pandava, are put to test by a water Yaksha Bhalla, reads the questions as nature asking us whether we are fit enough to rule the world.

His works have also been located in a certain engagement with ‘free’ access to water and nature. Strategically transforming nature into a public domain, Atul Bhalla by and large chooses to radicalize the gallery sphere into sites from which contestation can be articulated to enable us to re connect with our urban spaces and ecosystems. How far this intentionality gets realized is to be seen, and is dependent on how the artist negotiates within the nexus of production, consumption and patronage, and we negotiate through viewership, patronage and engagement. Formalistically he is engaged with the ‘shapes’ water occupies within its various containers; through the shapes he continues his formal engagement with Volume. 

 Title: "Wash/Water/Blood"          
   Medium: ( Archival Pigment print )                    
   Size: 13"x20"x(22 prints).
   Year: 2007
Though it is never really spelt out, water also stands as a cleansing agent. The series of photographs showing blood been washed away from the artist’s hands (after the hallal performance in the walled city of Delhi), plays with the oxymoronic tension between life and death. This engagement with purity and water (sometimes translating into purity of water), draws Atul to Jamunna, its environment, and its socio-political life. The life of Jamuna as it transforms from being a life giving river…choking as it slowly cuts through the city.  “If in the past the riverfront was a place of interaction and the river a conduit for barges and boats from afar, the water distribution and drainage systems put into place during the modernizing drive that redefined the architecture of the city in the colonial era, ensured the formation of a gap between the life giving river and the inhabitants of the city” . From Shukla Sawant’s February 2007 catalouge essay aptly sums up the linkages between environment and public domain Atul seeks to draw our attention to.

Washbasins, urinals, pipes, commodes for Atul become tropes, of our ‘choking of the river’, beautyfully solid casted with cement and Jamuna sand, these submerged casts in their etched glass boxes, negotiate our viewing through the projected prism of words and phases essentialising the questions posed by the water Yaksha to the Pandavas and Yudhishtir’s response to the questions. Temporary appropriating the ‘right to speak in behalf of the river’ Atul Bhalla uses the Yaksha’s question as a reflective introspection of our ability to make ‘policy’ under the onslaught of the forces of capitalism.

The observation that dead wood looses weight as water continues to evaporate out it, turned Atul’s attention to wood as a container of water…metaphored through the prism of life. The felling of the branch video, is in dialogue with the hallal performance in ‘Dilli Dur Ast’  residency. It is interesting that in this video, the camera lingered on the sight of the sap dripping from the  tree as it has being hacked by the artist, where as in the showcasing of the hallal (video being an integral part of it) the artist strategically stayed away from showcasing the spill of blood…consciously avoiding the aesthetics of gore. Ants running helter-skelter in the wake of the brute chaos of the hack, pose poignant questions regarding invasions, violence and capture. 

The series of photographs with the Piaos and other free water distributing agents have also originated in the ‘Dilli Dur Ast’ residency.  The Piaos established by Muslim, Jain and Hindu institutions, are still surviving as the only visible source of free drinking water, in a city where even the middle class accepts branded water as a reality. His attraction to the various Piaos in the city is definitely rooted in the realm of aesthetics. He has a very poetic understanding of form, and it is through this engagement that he has been ‘framing’ the Piaos.

Atul revels in being consciously artistic, in his acts of capturing and strategising the re-presentation of his ‘framings’: in giving an aesthetic validity to an object of his attraction, usually passed over as 'mundane'. A quest rendered significant by Atul’s constant re-thinking of what art is, and exploring the boundaries of what different modes art making can take.

firt published in artconcerns.com ...
images courtsey atulbhalla.com

Khoj No Escape- Who is vulnerable?

We  fought a lot over this one - Report of a presentaion by anita dube and atul bhalla- winter 2006

The KHOJ ‘no escape’ is positioned as “a forum where artists are invited to share a significant artwork and or an aspect of their practice, followed by open discussion / critique with the audience”. As a designated space for public expression, as a designated space for public expression, ‘no escape’ has the potential to facilitate a kind of intellectual exchange between the artist and her audience…a phenomenon which is which is increasingly marked by its rarity. The ‘no escape’ held on May 31: Wednesday at the KHOJ studios, was an eagerly anticipated event, as it sought to generate discussion on recent works of two very strong artists; Atul Bhalla and Anita Dube. Two artists who have over the years played between the lines of aesthetics and politics…creating a body of works which lure us with their formal values…unfolding their politics as we enter and take delight…slowly striking the sensitivities lulled by our conscious. There event (oops?) was also rendered interesting as the artists have crucial differences in their approach to art and politics…and one of the things to look forward to was how the differences played out, and how each articulated his/her artistic practice. There is also a marked difference in hierarchy between the two artists, Anita has been an internationally appreciated artist, who has (in the last decade) exhibited in prestigious art shows…and has often been cast as the face of cutting edge feminist art in India. Atul on the other hand has had mellower career, even though he has had a long running engagement with Delhi’s circle for the arts, he is yet to have get national-international exposure, and only recently is he coming out as an ‘acknowledged’ ‘artist’.

Over the years Anita Dube has created works with a conceptual language that valorizes the sculptural fragment as a bearer of personal and social memory, history, mythology and a certain kind of left leaning feminist experintiality. Her involvement with art and politics was fore-grounded by her involvement with the Baroda based phenomenon called ‘Radical Painters and Sculptors Association’. Anita often uses art to investigate both personal and societal loss, subtly invoking a neo-humanist critical agenda as an outlet for her desire to tangentially address the social through metaphorical means. The work that was put up for interrogation on the last ‘no escape’ was her first entry into ‘performance’, a work titled ‘K E Y W O R D S’, (September 2005) a work through which the artist wanted to explore the movement from ‘body to concept’ and to also re cast the idea of ‘performance’ shifting away from spectacle towards that which embodies pedagogy. Conceived as a performance through enaction and discussions with the gathering, the artist cut/wrote four words/phrases (permanent revolution, avant-garde, sexual love and ethics) from slabs of meat and intended  ‘dissected’ their meanings and histories with the audience.

Atul Bhalla has had a long run with water, centered on its aesthetics and politics. His art treads the fine line between the poetic and polemic in a way that reveals a ‘chewed’ conception and considered response to the subject…and is beginning capture critical attention is the manner in which Atul personalises the experience of water. Atul’s engagement with water goes much beyond the realm of art, as teacher at Mira Model School, Atul has key role in shaping his students into responsible, environmentally conscious citizens. He played a key role in the setting up a rainwater harvesting system in the school campus, which covers an area of 16,000 sq.m. He personally supervised the project and was involved in every phase of construction. As an artist, Atul uses the different media at his disposal but with a humility and economy of scale that is enchanting. Even as his works reveal in the ‘poignant’ and often come from the position of an individual having a Romantic disengagement with his times, Atul consciously works to avoid the cliché of ‘political’ art, he often subverts the politics of his works through an Aesthetic engagement with Form.  The body of works Atul did in the recently concluded Dilli Dur Ast (A lens-based artist camp in the walled city of Delhi)…was to put up for interrogation. In the camp Atul had produced a photo series on the Piaos of the walled city, and a video documentary on a halal, he had done in the process of making a Masq, the Masq and the knife involved were displayed as an installation.

The session began with Atul showing his video, and the discussion around it. Atul introduced his video and installation, as stemming from his fascination, with the phonetic connection between Bahisht and Bhishti. One, the Urdu word for life and the other, a person who carries water in a Masq…a container made from goat hide. Atul was fascinated how the Masq, a product of an act of killing, could have a semiotic resonance with Bahisht. The semantic overlapping is, in fact, because of a long-standing understanding of water as life…he went on to explain. It was strange that he did not show the body of piao photographs as it kind of put the video out of context…and in a certain way hid Atul’s experience of Dilli Dur Ast.

It was a rainy waterlogged evening and the audience was limited…and that in a certain way limited the kind of ‘takes’ that emerged during the discussion (of course it did not limit the number of questions). The questions that came in towards Atul were initially limited to the way video, and Atul’s decision to eliminate the footage of blood and the struggle of the goat…eventually Atul was charged with sanitizing the act. It took Atul sometime to explain that the act was re-presented in the video more as his experience…rather than a showcasing the Halal act. Atul kind of cornered himself; as he went on to describe the experientiality of his stay in the walled city…his engagement with the existing (traditional?) sources of free water…and so on. Immediately he was questioned about the work not communicating the experience (remember, by not showing the piao photographs Atul’s video stood completely decontextualised). The question in fact hit upon the weakest link of Atul’s works done in Dilli Dur Ast. Somehow he had not adequately grappled with capturing the experience of his month long stay in the walled city…almost thinking that it was naturally transparent.   

The discussion soon came to the act itself, why did the artist make the choice of killing the animal but ‘outsourced’ the actual production of the Masq. Atul’s answer though (sounded) fine (that he did not have the expertise of making the Masq and wanted it actually hold water)…but somehow it seemed that the artist had not adequately dwelt upon this duality…definitely…maybe. At this point the discussion essentially went around these grounds…with the artist having to justify his intentionality at every step. However one must admit that Atul was quite comfortable admitting mistakes and shortcomings.  

By the time Anita showed her works…the audience was visibly a bit jaded, it is a pity cause the nature of her works demand a certain degree of intellectual attention. It did not help matters that someone who had not witnessed the performance (Surbhi Saraf a member of the Peers residency) edited the video representing the ‘performance’…and chose to do so in an sleek funky manner…completely de-contextualising the artist’s and the audience’s experience of it. As a result only those who had witnessed the ‘performance’ could enter the discussion. The discussion came to be centered around Anita’s artistic strategies deployed during the performance…and the possible problematics   of such.

         One important strand of discussion that came up was around the intended pedagogical value of the ‘performance’. Why did she choose those set of words/phrases…what kind of dialectic interchange with the audience she presumed would take shape? The artist felt that audience was not used being vulnerable…thereby they were silent when invited to reveal their reactions to the set of words/phrases. Her answer ‘provoked’ a further interrogation of her artistic strategies. As the discussion unfolded one got to know that there were certain memories Anita was enacting (her father was a surgeon)…one also got to know that if it was not for the invited audience the fatigue would have made her stop. One of the main concerns that emerged was the value the particular act as a ‘performance’…or rather was it a ‘failed’ ‘performance’ as it did not give the artist the kind of discussions that were intrinsic to the artist’s intentionality.  

It surprised me to a great extent to an artist of Anita’s stature slip into such a defensive mode. Surely the ‘performance’ came across as one of her weakest works…as her first ‘performance’ it was clear that the artist was yet to fully understand (or to employ her understanding) the medium of ‘performance’. One has full confidence in an artist like Anita to hone her strategies and sharpen her representation in this new medium she is grappling with…but she does not have to defend an initial foray, which simply did not click.

It had been a long evening, and after a while the discussion just scattered…(breaking up into small pockets of interpersonal exchanges…becoming nearly impossible to follow (though I clearly remember the fascist/anarchic value of the audience being forced to go through the performance…and Anita trying to make sense of it) …and in most cases the thirst for beer taking over.

However I left KHOJ with a concern that somehow artists felt defensive in a forum like this…both Atul and Anita betrayed an anxiety against criticism…treating the audience like the ‘other’.  Is it because the KHOJ ‘no escape’ is too strong an anti thesis to the all congratutary exhibition openings? Or is it something to do with the structure of the forum itself?

Will wait till the next ‘no escape’ to make up mind.

What is Contemporary Indian Art / what is contemporary art in India

Concept note for 33rd issue of art&deal magazine

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Thursday, 2 September 2010 at 21:17

In the title, India, contemporary and art get repeated. Through this we hope to draw your attention to the need to revisit these terms. Contemporary Indian art has become a brand. Artists and curators who’ve been a part of important shows abroad, in their PR and press have explicitly claimed to represent the best of Indian art. Those curators have gone on to forsake any responsibility to represent India. This is very close to how BCCI went on to tell the Supreme Court that it was just a club and had no obligations to represent the country. Like what ‘contemporary Indian art’ is slowly getting, the BCCI has a near monopoly over cricket production and viewership; so various cricket tournaments which are not recognized by the BCCI, simply get erased from the history of Indian cricket. The issue is positioned from a concern that something similar might be unfolding in the sphere of art in India.

We are living at a time in which, like in many other times, the word contemporary and the word India stand for fragmented realities and imaginations. This issue seeks to examine both these notions through the prism of art practices. Though we begin from the location of Art, we hope to also have a substantial dialogue with the location of arts. The discussions generated by the e-flux issue on ‘what is contemporary art,’ are not really applicable to our concerns. It primarily addresses cultural situations that are more homogenous and art that already has a well understood social meaning.

India is acknowledged to be one of the most culturally and politically fragmented time spaces in the world. It is being slowly acknowledged that it is in India that a truly post-colonial situation is unfolding. Art in India is still not easily understood, both as a positioning and as an aesthetic activity. As one talks to the various super star artists in the country, one hears how their families, relatives, villages and sometimes spouses don’t understand what they are doing and the world they are engaged in. yes, it’s true, that this world has gained a lot of frequent flier miles lately, but does that make this world culturally superior?

Unless we begin a sustained engagement which is informed by methodologies of subaltern history writing, it  might be just too late to rescue the rich heritage of art practices in the country that exists right now.
In truth this issue is also inspired by the last Biennale Seminar which was thematically focused on ‘reimagining Asia’. During that seminar, I sat and wondered how would be to start reimagining India. Thus the conceptualization of this issue carries forwards a lot of learning that happened during this seminar.
The spread of Maoist influence has made Lu Jie’s Long March Project very relevant. It unfolds possibilities in center-periphery relationships that might just be very significant. About 30% of the country refuses to be with the nation state or is in serious conflict with it. Then there are other pockets like Gujarat and Mumbai that are claiming a hyper identity for themselves that is often coming into conflict with the identity foundations on which the country stands. Moreover, the kind of schism that exists between metropolitan pockets and the agrarian heartlands makes one wonder what the contemporary reality of India is.
We have taken to the ‘folk art versus contemporary art’ hierarchy like fish to water. Wonder what is it that connects us to the western upper-class that created this hierarchy and made it intrinsic to their cultural identity. Is it by chance that various pockets of the country look at us as colonizers? How do we re-visit this concept/metaphor called art in a manner that it stays relevant to the contemporary realities of the country?
Over the last two issues, the Art & Deal editorial staff has opened up the magazine to art and art practices which exist outside galleries and other mainstream institutionalized spaces that are dominating the meaning and course of Contemporary Indian Art. In one sense the previous two issues were a bit of a research for this one. There are certain proposals one seeks to explore:
·         In an attempt to begin thinking with a clean slate and come around the folk vs. Art hierarchy, can we use the terms Contemporary Urban Art of India and Contemporary Rural Art instead.
·         The Lalit Kala Academy as an institution has made itself redundant as a discourse generating agent. Since the 90’s there has been a lament that the government is completely dysfunctional in terms of supporting ‘forward moving’ art practices. One forgets that Lalit Kala like any institution is made of people, and those people are us. Either as artists working in Garhi, or visitors of the gallery, or applicants for scholarships, writers for the journals etc. if one looks at the Sahitya Kala Academy, which constitutionally is a twin of Lalit Kala, one sees support for the most radical voices in literature, especially the vernacular. To blame an intangible entity called the ‘government’ is a kind of escapism.
·         What is celebrated as the new contemporary Indian art is the least understood by the public at large. Discussing this notion of the public has become intellectually unfashionable post the 80’s. Is Art mirroring the worst phase of the post-90’s neo-liberal India? Apart from pockets of Latin America and Africa, India is the only country where the distance between hyper-cosmopolitan plushness and a farmer’s suicide is only a five hour drive.

tribute to MF Husain

A man wearing a free Ai Weiwei t- shirt. Image courtesy - catherinehyland.blogspot.com

Art&Deal EDITORIAL-A TRIbuTE TO HusAIn

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Saturday, 11 June 2011 at 20:39

M F Husain is the first Indian contemporary artist (who is )possibly going to be awarded the Bharat Ratna (posthumously). He died in a London hospital and his new Qatari citizenship has thrown open a Pandora’s Box between the relationship between Indian art and Indian society. On surface the debate is about whether Husain is an Indian artist or Qatari artist of Indian origin. Undoubtedly one of the greatest modernist painters to have emerged from India and a man of unparalleled genius, Husain’s style is avant-garde in the art, life and manner of the early 20th century French modernists. In spite of what everybody said and did, possibly Husain’s greatest victory in his exile era was the Supreme Court’s judgment and the continuous increase of both cultural and financial value of his works and his continuing domination of the Indian art market. At a time when contemporary Indian art has failed to evoke deep political responses Husain stands out as an exception. He did almost everything you could expect an artist to do, create overseas market for Indian contemporary art, make films, provoke vandalism of art institutions, develop uniquely original and bold formal language, be the first Indian artist who became a crorepati, and to die in exile. Understandably his impact on contemporary Indian art has been tremendous.

Whatever may be his acts he acted out of faith and conviction. However a lot of his audience was unforgiving with a largely hindu decry about him painting Indian God and Goddesses nude. Thus starts the two parallel stories about M F Husain. First, the story of a muslim man who took Indian secularism to heart and took India’s (largely hindu) history as his own history and as a true modernist appropriated it, used it , played with it and celebrated it. The hue and cry that came up with Shiv Sena and Vishwa Hindu Parishad vandalising his works and attacking his exhibitions appalled him. It was tragic for Husain to suddenly know that he was not an Indian but a muslim who had no right over “Indian culture” and it Gods. This became tragic when in the post 90’s era the communal forces and the hindu right wing began to get prominent in the country along with
Islamic terrorism and took away the basic value systems that was essential for Husain’s survival, both as an artist and as a human being. The systematic moral and political decline of the Congress party definitely added to his political isolation.

Husain was delighted with a line of Supreme Court judg- ment. 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

Being ideologically rooted in modernist avant-garde Husain’s explanations defending his art were inadequate in the 90’s post-colonial India. He was a playful character often subversive and ironic. But the people who defended him ended up sounding boring and predictable. And (as usual) the secular intelligentsia’s lost their battle. In this particular case the inability to work within
the nuances of ‘naked’ and ‘nude’ proved crucial in the loss of cultural space in the country. Maybe Husain’s biggest folly was the painting of Indira Gandhi as Mother India ( after the declaration of emergency). However he was not the only one fascinated and captivated by her charisma at that time. The second story is of course the story we all grew up with. The story of a young signboard painter in Bombay who through his energy, the boldness of his line, a compulsive
urge to document the socio politics around him and the brightness of his colors captured the imagination of art lovers across India, Pakistan and later almost all countries. Our (in)ability as a culture to deal with Husain’s art and his modernism betrays how as a society contemporary art often pretends to exist outside the ambit of culture.


In contrast, about 10 days ago during the 22nd anniversary gathering of the Tiananmen Square massacre held in Hong Kong 1 lakh people gathered. Outside the vigil people sold t-shirts bearing the face of Ai Weiwei who they consider to be the most high profile cultural-political voice of dissent in China. Such an artist-society relationship is unimaginable in India yet. Most debates around art and society have been centered on either art and censorship or public art. It is as if normal painting, sculpture, installation are not considered commodity unless they are declared public art or they evoke censorship. This vacuum in understanding has led to grotesque apathy of public funded art institutions and creation of a empty space where it is easy for right wing voices to come in to exile a Husain or to bring down Chandra Mohan’s painting from the Faculty of Arts display.

There are many aspects to this vacuum/divide. The dominance of English language while framing art, the focus of exhibitions shifting from viewers to collectors, the packaging of art primarily as a commodity of investment, all these and much more. In the meantime let us just observe a minute of silence an remember the greatness of M F Husain.

value and art

issue 39 editorial-Art&Deal magazine

by Rahul Bhattacharya on Monday, 11 July 2011 at 19:33

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 post structuralist nivana, 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 middleclass plays a key role in sales or marketing.  So while brands like Coke will look at the middleclass as the largest market where actual sales of their products happen, brands like Christian Dior ensures that the middleclass 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 though 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.

And we are all suffering fro/m 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.
 
art&deal 39th issue

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.

courtesy Gallery Threshold

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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.

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