YESTERDAY I went to see an art exhibition in one of the city's leading galleries. But what caught my eye more than the paintings themselves was a huge prosperous looking woman bedecked in heavy loops of gold draped all over her expensively clad body. She was intently surveying the paintings and the business-like glint in her smile dazzled me. I watched her from the corner of my eye as she took out little scraps of cloth from her handbag and matched the blue to the blue shade of the painting. Satisfied, she beckoned to the person in charge who sensing a sale beamed at her before making hurried motions to a minion for tea and biscuits. The artist was also there and hovered in the background. He stepped forward and approached the woman. After much debate, it was understood that the blue hue of the painting was slightly darker than the shade she held out...the colour of her sofa set. The artist agreed to paint the exact blue onto certain parts of the canvas hence ensuring the sale of his work. I watched appalled as the transaction took place and yet another colour coordinated drawing room gained its 'cultural' identity.

In his 1891 essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", Oscar Wilde wrote: "A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an

amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist."

There are artists who alter their works to suit the tastes of the flamboyant nouveau riche. There is the artist who produces the identical painting year after year, adding perhaps a single unobtrusive element that would perhaps save it from criticism. He does so as the 'style' is one that was highly lauded by the buying public and hence a safe space for him to work from. The sale of his works is ensured. Then there is the artist who paints insufferably sentimental paintings. And there are artists who cannot say one single word to the paintings credit. Why has he made such a picture? What does it say? There is no answer. It is like asking why the sun shines.

Why does this inherent apathy dog the heels of the many 'modern' painters working in the contemporary situation in India? History has provided us with religious, icono-graphical and archaeological interpretations of Indian art. Based heavily on the theory of beauty (rasa) derived from this, a tentative contemporary art practise has mapped out its space. Yet, there is a great divide between the artists who belong to the school of 'making of art' and those who uphold the 'thinking of art'. This is an ironic process at work here for one cannot exist without the other.

A great sense of complacency and ease has set in. The Indian easel painter largely no longer responds to, respects or translates contemporary experience into visual

space. It is too difficult for an artist to tread that fine line between intense private association with public understanding and interpretation. In this age where the post-modern thinker/artist is producing works of compelling concern and a precise recognition of the political and social situations they are faced with, the easel painter in India has slipped into a state of antiquity and one that exists to pander to the needs of a demanding societal lifestyle.

To state a clich , a country like India that strains between various identities - spiritual, traditional, modern, nuclear, metropolitan, international tribal and rural should offer up enough imagistic fodder to keep the artist satisfied for decades. The post-modern artist would have been very, very happy in India. But instead of bold new images, we are still faced with the rural landscapes, the pensive Rajasthani women (very popular with Delhi buyers), the tortured man stretching out his arm for an unattainable goal or the usual splashes of colour quickly passed off as 'abstract'. I have even seen clocks attached to certain canvases to give them some additional use value; almost as if the artist himself was apologetic about making something that had no function other than to look pretty (that too would be debatable)

The subordination of art to lifestyle is a grave problem facing the art world in India and it is not a question of a few isolated cases. Many well-known and respected artists who are often seen cavorting between the pages of leading newspaper's society pages also indulge in these methods, be it to make a

quick buck or just plain lack of creativity. Their elite aloofness and distant aura add to their sense of being a heavyweight and make it possible to get away with whatever they may choose to paint. I remember when I was in art college where I spent five long years of my life trying to master the brush, a respected and high-profile artist came visiting. The first thing he said to a class of 30-odd young students was to 'never think'. Perfect advice for the artists who were to become the future.

The idea of the artist as a being who is liberal in his support of freedom of expression and demands for equality and the belief that their art could influence human destiny, that they could change the world is an image absolutely lost to the present generation painters. The idea of being consciously involved in a process of thinking about himself and the society he inhabits, of becoming aware of his cultural self in history is replaced by a sense of detached factory-like, assembly line production. He does not and cannot instill through his work a sense of sensitivity to cultural, ethnic and human conditions and experiences.

The western artist in today's world recognises the world as radically heterogeneous, the past as radically different from the present and all cultures as radically different from one another. They uphold the uniqueness and the singularity of all individuals. Conceptual artists, be it Performance or Installation or Earth artists, deliberately produce work that is difficult if not impossible to classify according to the old system such as painting, sculpture or photography. Some have produced work that cannot be placed in a

museum or a gallery. Late 20th century art has deliberately placed itself beyond the limits of control.

Today western art historians and critics can no longer absorb contemporary art into the system. Traditional art theory and art history have failed along with modernism. Although now in the West this is now being ridiculed by conservatives as "political correctness" India has yet to even see the beginnings of the tensions created by the postmodern condition or situation as it is often known. The so-called 'thinking' artists are yet grappling with modernism and its pitfalls.

As a fledgling, liberalizing third world country India adds yet another identity to itself. Her approach to development is a catalyst to economic and technological advancement. She will attain a higher standard of living with more spending power and become part of a 'global environment'.

In looking at development in India as industrialisation i.e. creating products for consumption, Vandana Shiva points out that it has not exactly been a positive force of change. She says "...development was thus reduced to a continuation of colonization: It became an extension of the project of wealth creation in modern western patriarchy's economic vision.…"

So we are, to a certain extent, looking at a country that is getting rich quickly with that section of society which is able to generate the money capable of affording anything that catches their eye. The art of buying fine art has always been a big business and India is no exception with the few big names becoming richer, the lesser known ones fading even more into obscurity and the

students of art merely copying the styles of the big names dominating and holding a monopoly in the art world as their styles have been proved to be viable with buyers. A Third World society that is getting rich quick and thinks mostly in terms of its investments and profit will see art as such. Art is bought on the strength of the name behind the stroke or it is purchased for its need to fill a colour co-ordinated space on the wall. The West went through and conquered this phase, yet we refuse to understand it and skip this phase of evolution for ourselves.

This is not to say that there are no artists who are worth their salt. I have many favourites and they do convince me that there is hope yet for the easel painter and that there is space for the rise of the avant-garde conceptualists. There are artists who are concerned with the crisis that has gripped painting today and be it through experimental new media such as video or even through painting itself, they try to animate the inert spaces left behind by the glorified billboard painters. But it is a disturbing trend of note and more than the society that commands the costs, it is ease that is probably the greatest enemy of the arts. It's important for the artist to keep an edge, a degree of difficulty and to push himself to do something he hasn't ever done before and only then will this burden of apathy, the clutches of history and the abounding ignorance change for the better.

Source:Internet