From the ‘Concerns’ Desk ... June /July 2008

After the Vacation

Welcome back to www.artconcerns.com

Summer, perhaps is a month of introspection. Soaring mercury levels send most of the affluent to cooler climes and those cannot afford things like that, take shelter under poetic canopies. Wherever you are, during summer you tend to introspect, re-charge your batteries in order to come back with a bang.

During my summer visits I found many Indian contemporary artists retreated to their studios, preparing for the shows that were slated to take place in the coming days.

These days the adrenaline flow is quite high and strong amongst the players of Indian art scene. Any talk on Indian contemporary art both in India and elsewhere begins and ends on citing the amounts of money that it could generate in the last commendable auction.

There was a time when people talked about art. Then people talked about the names of the artists. Now none talks about art or artists. Most of us prefer to talk about auction results, price rigging, coteries, ‘gangsters in the art market’ etc. Artist’s name has become a sign, as in structural linguistics, which cannot concretely and permanently signify anything. If at all it signifies, it signifies like, “This is not a pipe.”

Is it an indication that art loses its values pertaining to human civilization and (r)evolution? Where would we all go with this money? Does the eventual blooming of capitalism predicate an apocalypse; an orgy of self destruction? What will happen when all that money we generated out of art fail to buy things as things either become too cheap or too costly or too scarce?

Does art predict its own demise as a defunct republic? When all words fail to talk about art, when all tongues are muted by the burden of safety and reluctance, when art criticism and history become an available template in a super computer, which could produce art along with its history and criticism without human mediation, perhaps art would regress into a self defeating republic.

But then we need not worry. We are lucky to have a few artists and other creative people who think differently, who look at market differently. We are lucky to have words that still carry five elements in their wombs. We are lucky to have tongues that speak both from the wilderness and the market place. We are lucky to have those programmers who while making templates for super computers, find relaxation in human touch.

Market/money is a path that leads us to something beyond and it is as important as the goal itself. In fast forward, I can see clearly that none would care about the money a work of art made. People would look at a work of art for the sheer magic with which it has survived time; the magic of history and the power of words.

Show to those people who throng at the Louvre Museum in Paris, a cheap calendar reproduction of Mona Lisa in the place of the original, I am sure they still would show the same reverence because they are there not for the ‘monetary value’ of it, but for the sheer magic that the myth of Mona Lisa has created over the ages.

Art is not money. It is magic. And any creative person is an artist who creates magic and survives time. Joseph Beuys said it, Rajneesh said it and anybody spends time with oneself would unfailingly say it.

With that happy note, I welcome you once again to the June-July issue of www.artconcerns.com

I am happy to announce that Rikimi Madhukaillya, a young art writer and researcher has joined www.artconcerns.com as an Assistant Editor.

Enjoy reading

JohnyML