A few months have passed between my last Salon and this one,
and I have shed an inner tear or two every time Facebook has reminded me of
it.
So when Rashmi came down, I decided it was time to bring
back the lost glory, and the best way I know of doing that is to dust out the
most abstract and unresolvable subject there is, older than the Universe yet
more topical than this morning’s sunrise, the eternal question of how deeply
should one look at Art.
The question came to me quite organically actually and like
most questions do, via social media. I came across a poem, it was about women
and their eccentricities, you know, how these anguished men write - oh woman, who shall know thee, but not sing
song about thine complexity. Now I don’t doubt the poet’s intent, the
expression of one’s feelings in any form even remotely resembling Art is about as sacred
to me as anything can ever be, and no doubt, he too, was oblivious to all but
the tugs of his own heart and its lifeblood pouring into his pen; but I obviously
could not let it be.
It set me thinking about how down the centuries, with said pen
being mostly wielded by men, such portraits, guileless in their individual
selves, but perhaps lethal in collectivity, have deemed women as changeable
mercurial creatures, unpredictable illogical beautiful, ever the muse never the
artist. And this very strong feeling towards a hapless poem and its creator triggered
this question, first in my mind, to eventually become the metaphorical
avalanche that kicked off this prodigal episode and the question, of whether Art
was a thing of beauty, an individual’s fancy, or a powerful tool.
The guests were eminent as usual. My dear friends Amrita and
Ak (Akankshaa) were the regulars on my couch, as was my reluctant husband,
Ankit (who puts on big airs of being dragged into these affairs but is almost
always the first to jump in greedily once the games begin); Kanika M, the final
wicket in my Unilever universe, made a dignified debut, as did Rashmi, whose
presence was the raison d’etre of
this one, being not only my friend but more pertinently a career conversationalist.
Then there were Priya and Neel, my sister and newly minted brother-in-law,
another pair of debutants, who like they do everything else, did this long-distance
too, skyping in from two different locations.
As you can see I drew this group from near and nearer, and though
I am no Karan Johar, I do have my nepotism flag flying high. The saving grace and
coup d’etat of the evening was
the lovely Heta, of ‘Doodlistic’ fame, the lone artist in the pack, trying to
make a living through expression.
Now while it was my intention to spend most of the time on
understanding what makes Art tick for each of us, the discussion inevitably
teetered towards freedom of expression.
There is no shortage of tributaries along this particular
vein; the one that got maximum air time was the offense & defense of
Maqbool Fida Husain, and his unholy goddess portraits. As usual the artist’s
freedom was the kernel around which the fire raged, but we did refreshingly touch
upon the artist’s responsibility as well and took the discussion into
unchartered territory by according unprecedented respect to the freedom of
expression of those consuming the Art. Did the vox of the populi not count? Were
they to express their feelings through anger, why was that not acceptable? Of
course, a line has to be drawn and anger when turns to violence is neither a
legitimate nor a legal expression, but doesn’t the anger itself have value? I
personally don’t know how we might draw a distinction between anger against the
Art and baying for the artist’s blood or even asking for his work to be shut
down, but the discussion sure opened up some questions.
We did draw a distinction between different kinds of Art, namely
Commercial & Individual; the point being that Commercial Art by virtue of being
made for external validation, probably carried the burden of responsibility a
bit more definitively. Case in point, movies that in the guise of recreating
history, end up creating theatrical distortions of it, Dangal being somewhat of
a recent example, for some parts. I especially feel a little shocked that the
makers of the movie got away with their untrue portrayal of the real life coach,
and I marvel at the irony of Art in this case being the perpetrator of harm,
the big moneyed villain of the story, in confrontation with the rights of a
relatively unknown individual.
There were a few points made on the role of Art down the
centuries, as chief outrage-creator in every era, and as such gently pushing
humanity forward. Be it the earliest paintings of Michelangelo where he painted
nude figures for the first time in a divine setting (The Last Judgement), or the
one by Manet (Olympia) that shows a woman boldly owning her own nudity, gazing
controversially into the audience’s eyes, both were giant controversies in
their time, but possibly brought in refreshing sensibilities, helped society
relax a bit, loosen its Victorian (anachronism alert) clench.
We did speak about viewing Art as separate from its message,
indeed seeing it for the possibilities it presented rather than what it said of
its creator’s social, political, economic or religious stance. Heta was
unsurprisingly at the forefront of this school of thought, almost heartbroken
at our collective’s propensity to dissect and anatomize. And here thankfully,
we finally spoke a bit about non-controversial Art, among which works the
evergreen productions of nature found many a fan. Do we not admire a sunset
without getting upset about what the Milky Way is trying to say, experience a child-like joy at the
sight of a rainbow in the sky, however irksome some of us might find its
symbolic appropriations on earth?
Over the course of the conversation, I found myself having
traversed the arc from bitterness to understanding of the many ridiculous forms
that public outrage takes nowadays. A man, offended by one kind of Art, might find
himself unequal to the job of protestation via an equal and opposite kind of
Art, hence words must do; uncouth and unpolished though most of them may be, they
are as equal in being a form of expression as Manet’s Olympia or Rushdie’s
Verses.
As to the original question, of how deeply should we look at
Art, well, I do certainly think it’s difficult to separate the container
from its contents, the word from its meaning, the dance from its expression and
the painter’s strokes from the thought that compels his hands to feverish motion. But
that’s just me, and that’s just now. Happy to report that no collective
conclusions were reached via this Salon.
