For the canvas called mind

Balvinder

An unpleasant gulf seems to have developed between today’s ‘high’ visual art forms and lay viewers. No wonder today many people visiting art galleries/shows end up saying: “We do not understand modern art”! 

Perhaps that is why most art enthusiasts, who cannot afford to buy originals, still prefer buying prints belonging to the artists of old schools of art for home decorations. Just as a majority of visitors at the famed Louver rush to have a glimpse of the legendary Mona Lisa and overlook the seemingly alien contemporary art of the day! Even at Chandigarh Museum, the chief attractions for a majority of visitors remain Sardar Sobha Singh’s paintings.

Despite the existence of such established contradictions, the new visual art forms, matching perhaps the prevalent socio-technological chaos, are very much alive and kicking, rather vociferously! For, art, like life, can never be static or say dead!

Perhaps there is nothing more pleasurable than spending some time with arty creations of great art masters. More so because one never ever feels cornered or conquered by their awesome presence. For, they inherit in them a mystical power that politely allows one to join them in their nomadic and reflective wanderings. And, in the process, one gets a highly soothing and relaxing meditative effect on one’s mind. Such a meditative foray into keenly observant and imaginative minds of artists is possible only if their works do not present complex or conflicting imagery. In fact, only those visuals attract one’s attention that are rendered in informal and unpretentious ways, and remain on the edge of philosophy without getting severely systematic like philosophical methodologies.

Plus, they exhibit an innovative kind of loose unity that can be delightfully digressive and, thus, engrossing. These works provide one with wings to fly along with the artist’s heightened imagination and provide sufficient spatial scope to let one move around so to conjure up one’s own inventive inferences.

But do all lay art viewers derive, on confronting an art work, the same amount of pleasure and satisfaction as referred above? Perhaps not. Maybe because today in the realm of visual art, like in every other field of human endeavour, things have been changing rather fast. Perhaps that is why many an arty explosion today put an isolating effect on most viewers’ minds, leave aside lay art viewers. Even trained ones often feel alienated while looking at today’s many a jarring, and thus confusing, image, which may be right in their own right! 

Interestingly, despite the new genre of art being overtly loud, having huge sizes and extreme visual contrasts, its intellectual impact remains somewhat restrained and restricted to the extent that they often fail to etch any lasting visual imprint on one’s mind. Maybe because most of such art renditions are aimed at dwarfing the onlookers’ imagination. Massive physical proportions, equally enormous price tags supported by brash print and electronic media explanations seem the new parameters, set chiefly by the brazenly market-oriented West of ‘high’ art today.

This over-sized commercialisation and commodification of art can well be gauged from the fact that earlier one would measure an artist’s standing through his creative explorations; today one figures an artist’s status not by his work but through the ‘price’ he fetches.

Thus, in regard to such a confusing and conflicting visual art situation of the day where does one find the fault line? Perhaps no straight answers can be found to this worrying but valid question. More so because visual arts are passing through the same difficult (?) times that every other field of human activity is going through currently. No wonder, today’s art seemingly cannot stand on its own feet and needs commercial crutches (media, gallery managers, curators, interpreters and so on) for support?

One of the reasons behind such a downtrend in the visual art field, unlike in the literary world, perhaps is the non-existence of any accepted verbal vocabulary of visual arts. Another reason perhaps is the present deafening din of the rising art market, in which this once silent art form too requires to raise a louder voice so to be heard. As most artists cannot communicate in languages other than their visual outpourings, this necessary evil of an urge ‘to be heard’ has led to an unprecedented growth of vocal art interpreters and mediators. Sadly, these so-called art promoters have acquired a pedestal that is much higher than that of the art creators. Though the overall current situation seems quite pessimistic, the ray of hope should never wane. The most plausible remedy perhaps lies in returning to our roots.

While re-looking at the term “Sadanga”, Sanskrit word for the six meditative principles of Indian art that were laid in our ancient texts and were enumerated by Vatasayna in Kamasutra, one often wonders why today’s art does not follow any of these principles. Whereas, in contrast, the basics of all performing arts, as laid out in Natya Shastra, another ancient Indian treatise that encompassed theatre, dance and music, have not gone fully redundant even in today’s context!

The recent revival of yog(a), though more as a fad than following a serious tradition, shows a silver lining. For, in a far wider context yog(a) is much more than the performance of a few physical exercises. It is in fact a modest and self-effacing practical way of living one’s life, peacefully! 

Since the pivotal play of an artist, who initiates and completes the creative process, and the sincere efforts of a viewer to grasp them, both are Yogic efforts of great vitality, they need to be thoroughly understood, revived and truly practised, for the factual promotion and true understanding of visual arts, from ancient to the contemporary.

No art form perhaps can survive long if it fails to connect with its ‘consumers’. That is why things are changing, though slowly, in this regard too.

One of the perceptible changes is the birth of effortlessly decipherable hyper-realistic forms of art. And there too are emerging some other easy connecting individualistic art styles, which deftly use contemporary media without losing the essence of art. 

Let us hail the change!