On 5/16/07, Deepa Mohan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Nishant wrote:
There is surely a difference between art that shocks and art that
> sensationalises. Art should, per se, shock, inspire, inspire, leading
> you to different paradigms of the sublime. It is about seeking the
> most impossible, the improbable, and the disparate.
Nishant...I agree with the first sentence, but disagree with the ones
after that. A lot of art can be pleasant and take the viewer to a
haven of peace and escape from worldly strife, too. I don't always
want art to shock me; most of the time, indeed, I want the fine
arts...music, art, sculpture, to soothe me. Sometimes I may be
inspired or exhilarated or intrigued. I, personally, do not want the
fine arts to be a form of contention or strife. That, of course, is
only my personal opinion.
Maybe we invest different emotional and experiential values into the
word 'shock'. I do not use shock as a negative emotion or experience.
I do not think of shocking as something that necessarily offends,
aggravates or infuriates us. I was thinking of shock only as a
positive energy force that shakes us out of our general inertia and
the specific stupor that seems to arise out of our very bones. I am
waxing slightly lyrical but then that is the only way one can actually
talk about art - and the realm of the sublime.
I look upon art's ability to "soothe", placate, pacify, soothe and
"exhilarate" as a part of its ability to shock, to surprise, to burst
into the joy of the improbable. Especially when the boundaries between
traditionally pristine art and popular cultures is blurring, the only
way I have to recognise something as "Art" (note the capital A) -
cinema, music, paintings, installations, websites, buildings, roads,
erotica, et al - is to see if it can indeed force upon me the
questions of aesthetics, politics, interventions, genre and form. And
if these questions are indeed being asked, surely there is some
powerful emotion at play that is leading me to do that?
And since I think that what shocks or angers one may arouse a
different emotion in another, I have really no opinion to offer on the
Vadodara incident...unless I myself had seen the exhibits, I am not
competent to talk about it.
I know that many of the people who protested against Husain's
depiction of Saraswati had not seen it, or, indeed, heard of it in the
20-odd years it has been in existence.
Art is never universal. Even canonical art can be facetious to
somebody. I remember attending the Van Gogh exhibition in Mumbai four
years ago, and overhearing people looking at his work saying "Yeh to
main bhi kar sakta hoon... is mein kya badi baat hai?" I don't think
of those people as "Philistines". I only think that they were people
who were immune to the questions that Van Gogh was posing for his
intended audience. Or maybe they were people who could not read the
question (art illiteracy is a legitimate excuse for not understanding
art) that Van Gogh was trying to ask. I do not claim that I have the
correct interpretation and understanding of Van Gogh's work but that I
have specific questions that his work brings to the fore over and over
again.
I have only seen documented evidence of the Vadodra art work - in
words, in pictures, in video files. I can see how the work can easily
lend itself to anger on grounds of blasphemy (more than obscenity) and
why so many people would protest against it. At the same time, my
interest in the entire issue lies in questioning the processes of art
reception. Why is our faith so easily offended by somebody? Why is it
that we can sit in inertia over religion being used as a devious
device for manipulation and control (from the sex scandals to the
communal riots) but we are ready to come in arms against a
representation in painting? It is a sad comment on the state of the
State that commercialisation of the religious figures (Ganesh fans and
Durga Beedi, anybody?) is passed by but a questioning, reworking and
probing of the religious symbols and icons is punished so seriously.
The most disappointing in all this is the lack of recognition that the
artist who creates these work of art is probably more of a believer,
has stronger faith and has the courage and conviction to engage with
icons which otherwise are relegated to the realms of the ritualistic
and the functional (at least in my view of the world).
There are many things that offend us -unfortunately the notions of the
bohemian artist and the blasphemous representations becomes a soft
target to vent out our frustration at lack of control and our own
realisation that God might be dead and that bastid Nietzsche has
indeed killed It.
Nishant
Deepa.
On 5/16/07, Nishant Shah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Frankly, I'd find this pretty distasteful [1]. This seems to be just
> > another example of the recent trend of "shock art" like the display of
> > dead bodies as art:
>
> And here I was, thinking that the only good art it art that shocks
> you. There is surely a difference between art that shocks and art that
> sensationalises. Art should, per se, shock, inspire, inspire, leading
> you to different paradigms of the sublime. It is about seeking the
> most impossible, the improbable, and the disparate.
> --
> Nishant Shah
> Ph.D. Student, CSCS, Bangalore.
> # +91-079-26405559
>
>
--
Nishant Shah
Ph.D. Student, CSCS, Bangalore.
# +91-079-26405559
