Money Power And Concept Art Have Pushed The Artiste To The Periphery

The world of art has acquired the strangest of labels, viz., .news value.; advertising agencies and PR agents are available on hire to ensure that an artiste remains .in the news.; few artistes exhibit a feeling of .camaraderie .; and no one shares .contacts . or lists of patrons any longer.

With truth being stranger than fiction and money doing most of the talking, things have come to such a pass that the artiste, .the little chap., has been moved from centre-stage and his place usurped by various .intermediaries ..

In the mad rush for name, fame and fortune, some of the most important facets of artistic endeavour have been thrown out of the window.

Lamenting the artistic world.s loss of innocence and commenting thus on the current state of affairs, was Mr. Krishen Khanna, the renowned painter, who was speaking at the last meeting on .Trends in contemporary Indian art..

What appeared to upset him most was the fact that even wellknown painters and artistes displayed absolutely no qualms about doing .concept. art. He explained this phenomenon at some length.

.(Say) you have a concept; you write it down, draw it out, photograph it, or do whatever you like. You then send it to your karkhana, in other words, to your .factory.. The .factory . then actually makes it up.

.This has been done in New York. The artiste does it on his drawing board, sends it off to the workshop and the thing is produced. And the artiste, along with the other people who are invited, goes to see his work at his own show. The credit goes to the artiste because he was .the concept man. in this whole thing..

Recalling the good old days. PP Arvind and Rashmi Jolly seen with Mr. Krishen Khanna, the renowned painter, who was the guest speaker at the last meeting. In the course of his talk, Mr. Khanna regretted the fact that the world of art had come to acquire .news value.

A similar thing was happening in India, too. Thanks to this new trend, certain faculties that were very important and necessary for an artiste to possess, were being reduced.

The faculty that suffered the most was instinct. .It.s the only instrument that the artiste has. he can look at something and say whether it.s okay or not. There.s no buyer on earth who can tell you whether a thing is right or wrong. It.s only the artiste who knows whether it is. It.s your instinct that tells you..

By forgoing and virtually throwing away his/her instinct, the artiste was committing a huge blunder. .It does away with something (instinct) which is so tactile, (it is like) you are losing your fingers, you are losing the inheritance of touch and you are making a very strange object (or piece of art)..

Another development that amazed Mr. Khanna was the fact that the artiste, who used to be central to the situation, had become peripheral and various intermediaries had stepped in and taken over.

Once upon a time, museums were supposed to show what the artiste produced, but now the roles were reversed; they were telling artistes what to do. Thus, both museums and galleries were prepared to make it worth the artiste.s while to do what they wanted him/her to do. .And that.s putting it nicely..

Similarly, there were art critics who had their own axes to grind. And connoisseurs who knew what they wanted. They said quite clearly that they didn.t know anything about art, .but I know what I like.. And their word carried weight because they had the money.

The artiste, .the little chap, is on the outside, on the periphery. But he manages to survive. I.m glad about that. I wouldn.t for the world want to go back to those days in the .fifties which were very hard.

.I will not give you names, but I can tell you that a cup of tea would be bought and shared, one in the saucer and the other in the cup, by some very well known artistes. I wouldn.t want to go back to those times, but I do think that some discipline, some rethinking has to be done about it..

Mr. Khanna started his talk by recalling the good old days, when the world of art did not have any .news value.. Things were quiet, people maintained friendships and there was a great deal of camaraderie.

No one talked about money in those days. Today, when artistes got together, they did little else but talk about money and who was getting how much for his work. .Money seems to be related to efficiency, which I condemn. It has nothing to do with art. It.s (simply) a marketing act..

Whether it was Hussain, Souza, Gaitonde or Ramkumar, there was a close association between artistes. They were critical of each other.s work. But the same artistes went out of the way to help each other.

On his way to London for an exhibition, Mr. Khanna said, he had stopped over in Paris and stayed with Raza who had just held a show in London. On learning that he knew very few people in London, Raza handed over to him a list of people who had visited his own show and even bought his works. .Take this, it might be useful..

And it was. For, some of the people who had attended and bought Raza.s work, came and saw Mr. Khanna.s exhibition, too, and even bought some of his work.

.That is the kind of thing you did. People are greedy now. Artistes are very closed-circuit, they keep lists close to their chests and it.s really quite sad. I think what has happened is that. at that time there were very few artistes, they knew one another and they talked. But the situation has changed radically. The number of artistes is enormous; some are good, some bad, some indifferent. And there are people who call themselves artistes. People are trying to find their differences, not their affinities. All sorts of things are happening and anything goes..

The old definitions of art had changed. Work was being done by placing things here or there. They were welcome to do as they pleased, Mr. Khanna said, but it had nothing to do with painting, which was what he was interested in.

Commissioner in our midst. Maharashtra.s Commissioner for Integrated Child Development Services, Dr. Ujjwal Uke, and Deputy Commissioner, Dr. Pokharkar were guests of the Club at its last meeting. Dr. Uke is in charge of more than 15,000 .anganwadis. in the State. The city has more than 5,000 .anganwadis. caring for over eight lakh children. In a collaborative venture, it is proposed to offer these children several services such as nutritional supplements, toys, education and so on. Members are aware that child care is one of the District .Thrust Areas. this year. PP Kalpana Munshi presents a bouquet of flowers to Dr. Uke in the first picture, while in the second, Dr. Uke is seated in the centre in the first row. Others from left are Shyamnivas Somani, PP Arun Sanghi, Dr. Pokharkar and Alok Sekhsaria

Mr. Khanna recalled his visit to the historic site of Borobodur and being .knocked out. by its size and by the concept behind it involving several generations of artistes making it a grand, overwhelming monument.

Some time after that, while visiting New York, he had attended a cocktail party at the Museum of Modern Art where he related his experience to Mark Rothko, the great painter and a fellow guest. He mentioned the monument and wondered whether a similar one could be built today, at a time when everyone was on his or her own .trip.. Would people get together to create something so enormous and enduring?

The reply he received was .marvellous; it was a dodge, an excuse for the present situation, but a very good answer..

And this is what Rothko said: .If you take the entire production at any given point of time, take all that is happening in the world of modern art today, you will probably find that this new so-called monument would be bigger than Borobodur itself..

That led Mr. Khanna to turn to his pet theme, viz., .the inheritance of the picture window, or the frame, the two- or four-sided area within which one had to work.. To him it was like homing in with a telescopic lens on only one particular aspect.

.This particularisation has just gone on and on. You.ll find all works, different works, concerning themselves with little bits of existence.

.But art was, is and can be a huge enterprise, a big playing field which can incorporate all sorts of things, even contradictions, and hold on to them.

.And I think there is a loss in that. How do we do it? How do we discard the picture frame?.

The answer was very clear, Mr. Khanna said. It was there in India.s own tradition of mural paintings, the large ventures devised by one person but executed by a number of people. There was no .ego-rattling. and the work was more important than the individual.

Some time back, he had the privilege of doing a huge mural for ITC.s Chola Hotel in Madras. It was large sized (80 feet by 7 feet) and placed at the entrance. As he had conceived it, the mural could not have taken any oil or any colour. It simply had to be done as a drawing.

.It was my suggestion. I didn.t think they would ask me to do it, but since I was asked to make the suggestion, I had made it. And indeed they came back to me and said, .Would you do it?. Well, I had put my head in the noose, as it were. I couldn.t say no, so I thought of various short-cuts. But they didn.t work.

.Finally, I had to sit down and do this 80-foot-long drawing. I am very happy that it was shown recently (in a facsimile copy because the original is now nailed down in their corporate office in Gurgaon). It was taken to London for my show early this year. This huge thing occupied a whole hall..

While working on this drawing, there were so many things at play. The Nava Rasa was chosen; .there are nine big emotions. but there are (other) small emotions that come out of those. And what does it do to the artiste? It does not make him sit down cross-legged and start praying; no. He has to work on the incorporation of the nine sentiments, the nine different emotions . and that is going to give him a full experience..

.That is what art is all about. It.s fulfilling..

Another opportunity came his way when he was asked .to fill an area. of 4,000 square feet at the Maurya in Delhi. He had met several artistes and asked for their help, because he had never done anything like it before. But, strangely, none of them came forward. Most of them seemed content with making singular paintings.

.Here was this huge area which had no beginning and which had no end. The circumstance of the whole building itself dictated what I called .the great procession., which is India; there is no beginning, there is no end. It goes on rotating. Things are there for ever. They can vary with changing times but basically the functions remain, which is absolutely true of our people, too..

That was a big loss, he added. Answering questions, Mr. Khanna said when the muse struck, it bit hard. Then, it did not matter whether or not one was being paid well. When a work of art was destined to be born, it would be born.

What differentiated the Progressive painters. group was the fact that its members, including Hussain, could only and would only paint as a choice. They could have done many other things. But they just wanted to paint. .So come hell or high water, painting it.s going to be. If you don.t have material, use newspapers, Souza did, it.s only expending your energy. .

Finally, there would be some people who would see that the work was worth the while; and somebody would pay for it, as they were doing now, rather over-generously.

President Dr. Rumi Jehangir mentioned .The Da Vinci Code. which ascribed several intricacies to old art paintings and asked the painter for his views.

Mr. Khanna said he had not started reading the book, but such techniques, intricacies and manipulations did happen. They were a part of art.

.But good work is not contingent on these things. When it happens, it happens. I don.t think I.ve answered y our question properly, but I.m not trying to dodge it. The novel was written and it has done the gentleman, the writer, a lot of financial good..

Turning to Vincent van Gogh.s life and works, Mr. Khanna said both the book and the film showed him drinking or cutting off his ear, but not painting; whereas the main motivation in van Gogh.s life was his work, not his eccentricities.

Next came the perennial question, .If beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, does it mean that we lack the beauty in interpreting and/or appreciating certain works?. Sometimes, a dot, scribble or little line was all that was seen on a canvas. It was difficult for the viewer to comprehend exactly what was being conveyed; yet, such paintings were sold for very high prices in the name of art.

No, said Mr. Khanna. One did not have to be a musician to appreciate good music. But it required a general education in music to know what was what. The same applied to painting.

.When you see a line, there is a good reason for that line to be there,but you.ve got to see the whole, the total reasoning behind it. It may be, I am not suggesting that it is so, but it could be that you haven.t really been through the whole gamut of the potentialities of line.

.There are innumerable possibilities in lines; they can be very subtle and you may say it.s just one little line and yet I.m being asked to pay this kind of money. but actually it could be a whole lifetime.s work that goes to make that little line..

Soli Cooper wanted to know more about the deleterious effect of huge prices on the art world. While he did not grudge the artistes their due, he wondered whether it was true that the surviving members of the Progressive artistes. group had become more greedy and were pushing up the prices of their own works?

This, in turn, was inspiring younger artistes to do the same. Could it be said that the senior artistes were failing in their duty of instilling a sense of responsibility in the younger lot?

Mr. Khanna agreed, but said .we are living in an ostensibly open society and the basic feeling is that water will find its level. If prices are excessive, people sooner or later are going to get wise to it. Some people are going to get caught, of course, but a phoney price cannot sustain itself any more than a phoney reputation of a painting will sustain itself. It may last for one or two years..

Winding up the question-answer session, President Dr. Rumi Jehangir said he was reminded of the story of van Gogh, most of whose last paintings were in various shades of brown and red. It was diagnosed posthumously that he must have developed a black cataract before he died. However, Rumi was not sure about the authenticity of this story.

Proposing the vote of thanks, PP Arvind Jolly recalled that he and Rashmi had known Mr. Khanna for more than three decades.

Soon after their nuptials, Rashmi had gone to his workshop and said that she had just married and was setting up a small house and wanted a painting. He told her to pick up any one of the small paintings. But Rashmi said she wanted the biggest painting that he had, which was ten feet by six feet.

Mr. Khanna said the painting had already been booked. When Rashmi persisted, he suddenly recalled, .But didn.t you tell me that you.ve got a very small house?. She said, .Yes, but I.m young and ambitious and I.m going to have a bigger house!.

Finally, Mr. Khanna parted with the painting after asking her to pay the cost of the canvas.

Every time they met after that, Mr. Khanna asked Rashmi whether she had sold his painting. Now it occupied the biggest wall in Rashmi.s and Arvind.s house. And every year a zero or two was added to its value.

Arvind regretted that art had now become unaffordable. It seemed that only NRIs could afford to buy art. .We are not able to buy our own painters,. he added. .

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