The meaning of art

Over many moons of watching the whimsical world of art from a distance and at comfortably not-too-close quarters, of meeting and speaking with artists, of wandering about museums and galleries, of writing about shows and gazing with great puzzlement at some works, there is one clear-headed and much-amused conclusion that I have come to. Art is a lot like fashion. Or history. Or even the seasons. What goes around invariably, inevitably, comes around again before long. And if there is something that arouses argument, debate or, best of all, protest with a degree of violence, it is considered to be not just successful art, but path-breaking, significant and, perhaps most importantly, saleable. Along the way, there have been many occasions where I have had to call some artist or the other and ask about the ‘latest trends’ in art, a question that is surpassed in banality only by that masterpiece of mundane mumbling: ‘Who do you think will be the artist to watch?’

Today, art and its makers have changed. There is indeed a trend, one that veers towards alternate professions and adventuring. A recent show in Mumbai that I saw had a number of women artists who were better known – or perhaps more visible – as illustrators, architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, photographers, or other fields that are indeed art-related, though not from the obvious, conventional perspective. This is in keeping with the trend to more experimentation in art. From the maverick MF Husain’s Shwetambari many years ago, where pieces of white cloth and shreds of newspaper scattered the floor of a large gallery space all covered in white, to the more recent model of a water tanker (Aquasaurus) made of bones crafted from resin by Jitish Kallat to an esoteric display of experimentation in fashion by Shilpa Chavan (aka Little Shilpa) at a current show, art has slid off the canvas and into spaces that are still being explored. At each stage, of course, there has been a degree of shock greeting the display – Husain’s work was reviled by many, but lauded by ‘those-who-should-know’, of the ilk of Akbar Padamsee and Tyeb Mehta, whom you would think would be a better judge than the average Joe. Kallat’s bones aroused curiosity and a certain morbid fascination that his eloquence did much to dissipate. And Little Shilpa’s hats have taken the fashionista audience by such a great storm that the arterati have got carried, perforce, along with it.

In all this artistic adventuring, even the averagely-talented creative expressionist has gone global. Many claim fame with local self-sponsored shows and citations from ‘foreign’ names decorating invitations, along with a resume that includes exhibitions in various parts of the world that they may have traveled to. Some of these exhibitionists – in the literal sense of the word - of course, are genuinely talented and gradually find inclusion in reputed collections and support from enviable fund-pundits. A few become international celebrities, trotting frenetically around the globe from show to show, working hectically to keep pace with demand and, somehow, pulling off the coup of always remaining creative, inspirational, lauded and coveted - again, Kallat is a case in point. And one or two think beyond their own careers as artists to become support systems for others and curators of the kinds of shows they themselves want to see, like Krishnamachari Bose, for instance. 

Along the way, the medium has become, in a strange way, the message. The use of video and audio clips is more popular now. Often, painting melds with photography and can become part of an installation that includes sculpture, with a few bytes of sound and moving pictures thrown in to complete the sentence. That sentence is meaningful at various levels – to the artist as an individual, to the viewer as an unconnected passer-by and to society at large as an audience that needs to be made aware of something, from child abuse to contemporary forms of suffrage to political rot. A work by Sonia Jose that impressed me recently had a white rag rug lettered in black reading ‘so much to say’ – the message could be anything, the directions of thought countless and the mood an entire spectrum from dark and deadly black to a clear, joyous white. It left the viewer to decide, even as it hinted of a deeper mental process for that same viewer to decode and debate. 

Perhaps the best part of art today is that it gives the person looking at it, feeling it, experiencing it, something to do. It is not interactive in that you need to get hands-on and fiddle with buttons and knobs and listen to beeps and whistles like with a video game, but it provides a sense of freedom of interpretation. There is something serious going on, but it’s all left up to you to decide what that something could be. And that, methinks, is really what art should be about!