(I do not know how politically correct is putting one's response ahead of a writer's post, for once I am taking that politically incorrect position:-) )
But they also were instrumental for the much-needed shift from the modernists and Baroda narrative for Indian art. As a matter of fact Geeta Kapur’s one of the first books were on AR Ramachandran’s paintings!
In post seventy market dominated art scene, poor financial guys did not know how to create value for few inches of canvas in astronomical bubbles. For the dead artists it was easy for them: either by evangelizing or by the economic principle of demand and supply, but for the living artists they did not know how to make that happen. Then they have invented the post-modernist academia: who through their verbal diarrhea annihilated everything that were sensible, and the scaled up materiality: large scale material spectacles that justified the scaled up money involved. The artistic process and its arrival have always puzzled aestheticians and its theoreticians. From the days of Greek philosopher Plato who escaped the criticality of art by blaming it as fake to the Indian aestheticians who considered it as only an entertainment to this day of post modernist, this saga continues. This exasperation is not as well explained as in the words of Greta Refsum (2002) in that essay about the question of theoretical frame work or methodology on art practice and art work
“Artists and the field of visual arts deal primarily with that which happens before artworks are made. This is their specialist arena, what comes afterwards is the arena of the humanistic disciplines. If the field of visual arts wants to establish itself as a profession with a theoretical framework it must in my opinion, build its theory production on that which happens before art is produced, that is the processes that lead to the finished object of art”.
They wanted art to fall in line with the linear thinking of language from its lateral imagination as if artists were eager to make their work theory dependent. Even if one argues post modernism as lateral thinking, one should not forget its grammatical linear construction of language in it.
But this bonhomie between financial accountants and their convenient academia of postmodernists when started dominating or became the bridge between market and art, a new genre of artists and art works were emerged in the world of art. First artists who never work with their hand: because it is difficult to theories skill and production and secondly the skewed production cost should not be a factor of scaled up pricing of art work, and secondly art works where artists are completely missing. (In this context the performing art response of Marina Abramovic : artist present is worth remembering to understand this context).
But unfortunately as the capitalism found its dead ends with its obscure derivative markets and others, its counter part post modernism also found its dead ends with “death of author” finding its authors standing tall!. Their last ditch effort were the “art fairs” and to reaffirm the legitimacy of those artists and artworks from those art fairs, they founded “triennale” and “ biennale “ across the globe and made these post modernist theoreticians as curators to construct curatorial theory around it. As these things also have started falling apart with its “missing artists” in art, now market is trying its last bet to leverage their investment by projecting artists as curators in the belief that they can bring back the “missing artists into art” make art appealing again. Hope it works!!
Tragedy was many galleries who were brining out best of art works from artists jumped into this boogey- woogey without realizing its consequences on their longer term business. They started boasting themselves as the cutting edge artistic custodians and promoted “un-skill” materiality as aesthetical order, cutting down their core art business – painting and image making. They all are now paying the biggest price for their decision of this – many of those once respected names have closed their galleries or moved into smaller places or remained only on Internet. They forgot what market's grand old dad Warren Buffet has taught them about market- he puts his money only in classical model of capital industry where physical materials are produced on basic economic principles. All new age industries are for playing leisure time gamble till it touches the sixty or seventy years of history
With due respect to your strong artistic position and creative vibrancy, in my limited personal capacity I would not agree completely and hold Vivan, Geeta Kapur, Ranjit Hoskote, art india editor personally responsible for this state of affair in Indian art. They were not only representing the art market but were also responding to the need of an artistic shift in India from modern era. Their arguments were convenient to market so the market employed them and they were smart enough to play that role well. Beyond that their culpability is unfounded.
As we cannot blame one ism for the failure of another ism, we can not completely blame one set of art form for another. But certainly the set of art form these individuals were promoting and the system they have built around it have crumbled; Indian art has no reason to celebrate it any further in Galleries. It is time they find its space in museums. Although market is trying its level best by unleashing art fairs across the world including this country’s every city, we don’t see the works of this genre making any enthusiasm any further.
The number of artists liking the title of your post itself is a sign of discomfort that are shaping up in Indian art scene.
Hope the writings like yours and experiments by Riyas Komu through his Student’s biennale will bring out a new genre of artists, who will surpass this dead end. We, the art teachers in new age art and design colleges are also trying to contribute in our limited way to leverage our student’s imagination away from these indoctrinations for the :pure love of art.
(Hope you will come back on institutions and their culpability as well
How Vivan Sundaram and Company Killed Indian Art
If you remember there was a frantic situation created by Geeta Kapur, Ranjit Hoskote, Nancy Adajania and their junior versions in the art scene. They were quoting European critics and philosophers to justify Indian impermanent art. Without Foucault, Derrida, Agamben, Danto, Guittari and Deleuze Indian art sounded incomplete. But I demand an answer from the abovementioned people why they justified Indian art with those philosophical tools that even the west itself has rejected in due course of time.
