POSTSCRIPT CINEMA | CONTEMPORARY ART

Can This Too Be Art?

The experimental nature of contemporary art often leads to incomprehension.
by C K Meena

o the average Indian, contemporary art remains a sealed package. While books and writers get considerable play in the media, the only time we hear of art is when a work fetches a fabulous price or attracts controversy. But art is more than chisel on stone, or brush on canvas. Its dimensions have grown elastic, its meaning stretched almost to the point of incomprehension. Contemporary art spans a far wider range of genres than most of us are aware of. Time was when categories of visual and performing arts were simply and clearly dened. If you used paint, you were an artist; if you carved material, a sculptor; and nobody had doubts about what dance, music and theatre were. In newspapers and magazines, the artist was a painter or sculptor and the artiste a performer. Today everybody who practises the arts is an artist. They often work in multiple mediums: words, images, sound and movement overlap or merge. For instance, Jayachandran Palazhy, director of the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, extensively uses digital art in his choreography, and when Navjyot Altaf presents a video art installation based on a Bastar tribal myth, she draws the audience in through light and sound as much as through the physical material. Installations, performance art, video art, digital art, grafti art, sound art these are only a few of the genres that Indian artists have embraced with enthusiasm.
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Physical or manual skill is no longer a necessity for creating art; concepts will do. In fact, ideas are the driving force of contemporary art, so much so one wonders whether the head has replaced the heart both in the creation and appreciation of art. The success of such a work of art lies in whether its core idea gets conveyed to the audience, and whether they respond to it in any manner (other than with bewilderment, presumably). Response becomes crucial, since the audience has to experience the work of art for the circle of creation to be completed. Installations whether in a gallery or al fresco, whether temporary or permanent are often accompanied by explanatory notes for the viewers edication, which implies that meaning is not self-evident but may have to be uncovered with assistance from the artist. Contemporary art can be political without being preachy or sloganeering. Performance art, a category born in the 1960s, in which the often nude body is used to make political statements, has its proponents in 21st century India as well. The primary material used by these artists is their own bodies. The performances of Marina Abramovic, one of the pioneers of the genre, included whipping herself, slicing a star on her belly with a blade, and other actions that tested the physical and mental limits of her body. In this century, Delhi-based performPhysical or ance artist Inder Salim chopped manual skill off his nger and offered it to the is no longer a polluted Yamuna river. A less exnecessity for treme form can be seen in the creating art; works of photo-performance artist concepts will do N Pushpamala, when, for instance, she dresses up as a Toda tribal and adopts various poses, subverting colonial stereotypes. A deliberate lack of nesse characterises some forms of contemporary art. Bricolage, using materials found in the environment that happen to be available, without polishing them, is highly popular among installation artists. Aural bricolage is another possibility: when Abhijeet Tambe uses discord, digital noise and found sound to create a soundscape of a neighbourhood, the result is termed sound art. Similarly, the fuzzy, grainy, black-and-white photographs you see in a gallery space are not an amateurs folly but art photography. Then there are those whose art is a protest against the commodication of art. Tino Sehgals experiment is conversation as art, where he organises discussions in a room with a few chosen people. Although the discussions are freewheeling, some rules restrict them and movements are choreographed. Since Sehgal doesnt believe in the use of material to create art, he allows no photographs, videos or other records of these conversations, so that the art that is experienced is conned to the memories of the performers and the visitors who listen to them. The experimental, experiential nature of contemporary art lays it open to scepticism, particularly among those of
september 21, 2013 vol xlviII no 38
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

POSTSCRIPT URBAN GEOGRAPHY | CYBERCURRENCY

us who are unschooled in the eld. It is hard to decide whether a work is self-indulgent, pretentious or genuinely cutting-edge. Does it affect you, entertain you, engross you, or stimulate you to think? If it does, perhaps it has achieved its objective. But when one reads about Dutch conceptual artist Florentjin Hofmans latest creation a 54-ft-high inatable yellow rubber duck that apparently symbolises happiness one tends to raise an eyebrow and ask, Can this too be art?
C K Meena (ckmeena@gmail.com) is a freelance journalist and author who currently edits ArtConnect.

Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

september 21, 2013

vol xlviII no 38

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