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Book Review (Think India Quarterly, Jan-Feb 2006)
Modernism in Indian art has had a long history of ambivalence in terms of response and acceptance. At one end, it has been seen as imitation of the Western modernism which emerged under entirely different historical and socio-cultural contexts and implanted in India by colonialism. At another, it is viewed as a world-wide movement which India could not have possibly escaped or avoided. It has also been argued that in India there have been two concurrent modernisms: one provoked and propelled by the Western influence and second born out of the restlessness and anxieties of our own tradition. At yet another level, it could be noticed that while visual arts, literature and theatre have firmly and in many ways radically modernised themselves, classical music and dance have preferred to remain more stubbornly rooted in tradition. Altogether modernism in arts and aesthetics presents a very multilayered and complex area to understand and explore. Its multiple forms and connections while embodying its robust plurality could also create a lot of confusion. Indeed it already has. In this context the present book by Shakti Maira, an eminent thinking painter, offers a fresh perspective and some provocative insights about the contemporary visual culture of India. It is very much a painter’s book based not only on his own long journey across continents as a painter but also on his experiences as a sensitive traveller to many parts of India and the world. He is the one who reads deeply, observes carefully, remembers and is able to connect and does not shy away from some of the dominant questions relating to globalisation, market economy, middle class ethos, malaise of education, active forces of communalisation, cheap spirituality, value-vacuum of most politics etc. He does not offer solutions but raises relevant questions and also enhances our awareness about the dark implications of the glitter that surround modern art in India these days.
One of the major points Shakti Maira makes is that since the manifold
traditions of aesthetics and art-practice in India have generated great
and enduring art-works across millennia, contemporary Indian art, or for
that matter its aesthetics, cannot possibly ignore or bypass them without
creatively and critically rediscovering and reinventing them for our
times. While analysing the various theories that have been thrown up in
the West during its modern movement and the current post-modern phase, he
emphasises the place of communicativeness in art particularly in the
context of India and questions the over-bloated notions of individualism
and self-sufficient autonomy of art. He rightly underline the
communicativeness and self-expression are not necessarily mutually
exclusive. He asserts, “Art has the ability to joyfully move our minds
from dullness to curiosity, from unknowing to knowing, from darkness to
luminosity. Something that can only happen when we don’t merely look at
art, but when we look into it.”
Shakti laments the undermining of ‘the intelligence of the hands of the
artists’ by art pundits, the Brahmins of art. And he does not fail to
notice that “one of the great excitements of Modernism as a social
movement is the flattening out of oppressive hierarchies”. Making an
important distinction between style and vision, he lays stress on the
point that a young artist must aspire to attain a vision of his own and
his style would follow.
One of the most interesting parts of the book relates to Shakti Maira’s
experience of and insights into Buddhist art and aesthetics. He identifies
four defining characteristics namely ‘a focus on the beauty of inner
reality’, ‘the attempt to create an art experience that includes and
integrates sense perceptions, feelings and emotions, thoughts, cognition
and understanding’, ‘the motivation of the artist’, and ‘the quality of
attention and mindfulness the artist brings to art making’. Interspersed
with personal encounters with art-works, events and experiences, Shakti
Maira comes out with some very interesting ideas. While acknowledging the
enduring fascination with the notion of perfection in human history, he
remarks, “A critical problem with perfection is its unitariness, which
flies in the face of the diversity in nature. We imagine perfection and
then try and conform to that imagined form. But in nature everything is
different. So to presume that only one form of a leaf, or a face, or a way
of being is perfect is to deny life’s truth. Perfection is a multiplicity
and not a singularity. If art is a way of truth, perfection is a false
premise.”
Shakti Maira looks critically at the dominant aesthetics of the bizarre,
the abhorrent, and the ugly in the contemporary Western art and makes a
fervent plea for making art in India “that is profound, beautiful and
joyful.” He feels it is time “to revive and revitalise the Art of Joy”.
Taking his cue from the Indian philosophical and aesthetic traditions, he
pitches in for art in which “there has been inclusion of the temporal and
the spiritual, an integration of the sensual and the spiritual, a
celebration of the pleasure of the senses, of sexuality, happiness and
laughter.” Dealing with beauty, he observes, “Both art and people are much
more than their physical form and it is their wholeness that we often fail
to respond to in our preoccupation with the surface. With people, our
deepest experience of beauty comes not from their looks but from their
love and wisdom. With art it comes not from its material surface but from
its deeper transformative qualities.”
The book also reads like a notebook of an artist. It allows Shakti to put
down his chanced observations without losing the overarching concerns of
exploring the philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings of art in our time
and culture and looking for an alternative vision. For instance, he find
the age-old practice in the South India of painting and plastering
beautiful stone carvings unaesthetic and remarks, “There is real beauty in
natural materials and good artists and designers do not allow their
intrinsic beauty to get lost in pretence and artifice. Nakedness if
beautiful. We could allow more of it, with the exception of naked walls.”
Prudishness and decline of visual literacy and artistic intelligence in
contemporary India are dealt with at some length. Shakti examines various
aspects including the sociological factors. He starts by noting that “the
moment our people step out of the beauty that remains in our traditional
crafts, they seem to show no sign of visual intelligence or literacy. They
go straight for the loud, vulgar and ugly.” He moves on to the stipulation
that “the feudal elite and their temples and palaces probably hijacked art
and aesthetics from everyday living and made it their privileged reserve.”
One of the pleasures of reading this book is that every once in a while
you come across a problem or a situation which might have bothered you.
Shakti offers interesting analysis of many such things; for instance, he
thinks that most people’s inability to relate to sculpture has less to do
with attitudinal issues and more to do with the changes that are occurring
in the way we see. He adds that “modern life is making people see
two-dimensionally. We can’t appreciate three-dimensionality as we once
used to. Our faculty of sight is being so extensively used for reading
words and viewing pictures on the printed page, cinema, computer screens
and television, the flatter the better, that is causing changes in how we
see and relate to the dimension of depth. Depth has become de-emphasised
in modern seeing and even when we look at the three-dimensional, we scan
the surface-plane rather than see depth. We are carrying our habit of
reading page or screens into the real world and are thus seeing most
things only two-dimensionally. As a result sculpture has lost its ability
to stir us through its magic of dimensionality and depth.” There are two chapters namely ‘City Cultures and Shoptalk’ and ‘Expectations and Education’ in which there are several useful suggestions for action by both private and public institutions and agencies in terms of improving community aesthetics, reinventing education of arts etc. Both policymakers and persons in charge could greatly benefit from the rich experience and robust wisdom they so intensely and yet practically embody.
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