In western philosophy, way
back in history during the golden Greek period, Plato declared, “art is fake- and not original” as an aesthetic dictum . But with the change of time and at the onset of 21st
century, we are now celebrating “what makes art?” as the new aesthetic order.
Material, ,medium,
idea, practice and the viewer, the basic entities for any
creative production have all undergone immense transformation and to be more specific
the contextual objectivity of art does not remain “observer-observed and
observation” anymore.
Even during the heights
of abstract expressionism and conceptual art, it was considered “the relative positioning of artist, work of
art and the viewer” is the most important factor in an art practice. (1), but
with the technological and mass media explosion like internet, motion pictures
and television, the very idea of viewer, the one who has an interest or the one
who is initiated has now become irrelevant. In today’s world, a work of art simultaneously
becomes an expression; creative idea, investment, performance, manipulation or
gimmick- in other words the relative positioning does not remain the same and
it has changed forever.
While with the death
of modernism, where body and its interactions were subjected to the
explorations of structures in cubism, social objectivity in constructivism,
protest in Dadaism, idea of redemption in conceptual art, essential in
minimalism and celebration of possible in pop art, those artistic engagements used
to occupy the creative space. As mentioned
earlier, when mass media such as television, motion pictures and Internet offer
everything a fine art other wise would have offered: entertainment, joy,
aesthetics, idea, design, decoration and above all an interaction, today artists
find it difficult to negotiate that space anymore.
In this context, it
has become essential for 21st century artists to seek spaces other
than what is essentially a mass media art occupy; a space relevant but unexplored in its
equation with mass appeal and importance. As it occurred during the
surrealistic period of art, where the artist dealt with subjectivity of human
mind and its fantasies, these days artists are dealing with subcultures more
often than normal to the mainstream sensibilities.
Rather than
protesting, artists now provoke human mind with their artwork that deals with
subcultures. These works of arts
does not make you comfortable, an idea of aesthetics prevailed over thousands
of years, but provoke you to seek the undeniable existence of sub-terrain
facets of the world we live. It shatters the sense of security, the
spectator presupposes in front of an artwork and it does not pose any question
like Mark Rothko or Duchamp who had to deal with the self-sufficiency of art.
These new age artists
rather try to be powerless to deal with such redundant subjects of the
day. Artists of the day subjects
themselves to vulnerability along with their work of art like anyone else from
outside the four walls of the white cube. Their work of art undergoes all
traumas of living including its necessity of making material gain, market,
power, brinkmanship and social pruning. Artists are not proving they are better
than others neither in skill nor in expression.
But at the same time
on the other side of the dice, Art, idioms and its scales did not remain the
same anymore. With the kind of scaled up market stakes on one side and
vulnerability on the other, the positions one take, the choices one adopt, the
practice one derive now have more consequences in society than ever before. Now
there are layers of media, communication and gallery practice along with a
well-crafted curatorial regimentation with sound theoretical and academic
arguments laid out for the art practice.
Interestingly despite
this inflated importance, visual art unfortunately is yet to be conceived as
something very relevant to society. George Lechner in his essay “ Art- east and
west” quotes Herbert Read, from Philosophy of modern art” (3) that “Do not let us
deceive ourselves: The common man, such as we produce in our civilization, is
aesthetically a dead man. He may cultivate art as a “culture”, as a passport to
more exclusive circles of society. He may acquire the pattern of the
appreciation, the accent of understanding. But he is not moved: he does not
love: he is not changed by his experience. He will not alter his way of life –
he will not go out from the art gallery and cast away his ugly possessions,
pull down his ugly house, storm the Bastille where beauty lies imprisoned. He
has more sense, as we say”.
This tragic
alienation of art and artist in society can not be completely ascribed to
lethargy of society at large as in the same essay (4) he further points out
that “We must wait; wait perhaps for a very long time, before any vital
connection can be reestablished between art and society. The modern work of
art, as I have said is a symbol. The symbol, by its nature, is only
intelligible to the initiated. It does not seem that the contradiction, which
exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of
modern society, can ever be resolved. “,
This dichotomy of
contemporary art, the one that is important in society but irrelevant in
appreciation becomes a tragedy for artists as their practice has became
completely vulnerable to a slow but steady degradation to craft by curators of
theoretical regimentation with much popular textual articulation. A historical
similarity could be drawn here to the bhraminical practice of Indian art where
the one who worked with hand is looked down upon while the theoreticians celebrated
with creative ownership of idiom.
The biggest tragedy
of this diabolic act is, as Thomas Craw
explains in his foreword to Charles Harrison’s Art and Language “The current
situation in art practice is one in which almost no possible artistic decision
is free from the burden of historical and theoretical self consciousness”, that
no artist is an inheritor of practice like craftsmen but in spite of the
practice being a conscious effort, artists are losing out their independence of
practice for curatorial articulation of textual excellence. Word is slowly and
steadily displacing the work of art. I don’t mean to say that word is not work
of art but certainly would like to remind word is not the only art.
Today conventional
art forms like painting, sculpture, installation, performance, theater,
singing, photography, cinema, computer graphics or the new age art forms like
virtual reality, gaming, internet / transponder projections are no different
from the word as all of them promise certain possibilities and certain
limitations.
As avenue of art is
vastly promising and liberated, it is rudimentary for any artist to stagnate or
stretch one form of art over another or one for the other. Validity of every
form of expression still holds valid and will hold valid. As discussed in the
beginning “what makes art?” may be the new aesthetical order but since time
immemorial the basic tenets of relationship, the foundation for human endeavor
to that art is relevant remains the same.
“If there is a
relationship, there exists an innate need for an aesthetical expression and it
is not separate from the creator. So artists don’t make the art but artist is
art, one is not secondary to the other and it is relevant enough for the
world.”
