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An Invitation For An Ongoing Dialogue And Reflection About Art And Society

By Sukant Khurana

09 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

Should art reflect on the state of society? Should society reflect on art? Are the two intangibly tied anyway that this mutual reflection is only natural and absence of such reflection an anomaly? Should art only provide entertainment? Should “deep and meaningful art” be gloomy and morbid or have an element that must be beyond observer’s comprehension? Is every anti-entertainment kind of entertainment art? Should art at all require intellectual comprehension? Can art be as divergent as people, society, context, and time? Should art be confined in narrow boundaries with narrow questions about its nature and purpose? Should society be so stifling and narrow, where even the nature and purpose of human life is straightjacketed? Can a straightjacketed society produce meaningful art as its reflection or only as reaction to reality?

Can art or writing even provoke questioning in a society where there is 24-7 blaring of news about rapes, murder, corruption, and religious, regional, and ethnic bigotry, and a general persistent malaise? Can you awaken a society where a PR campaign is sufficient replacement for real sustainable development? Can art catalyze revolutionary actions, where people are too busy looking at horoscopes for turn of events and finding too many holy cows and scapegoats to limit society’s progress? Can art replace deeper spirituality in a society, where religious conmen provide instant spirituality medley? Can art wake up a comatose elephant?

Can art: dirty, filthy, prostituted, bourgeois high-art; art that belongs to only rich or rich galleries, who use ownership of expensive (necessarily expensive) art as a proxy for suaveness and culture, can that art provide tools for societal introspection? If high art is incapable of introspection due to its golden shackles, can then lowly liberated art of protest, one of masses, one of proletariat – the frequently unsightly street art be the means to introspect? While introspection is necessary, is it sufficient or even partially capable without extrospection in looking at a society? Can art be local and confined in time in an increasingly global, globalized, and accessible world? Does art belong to galleries and patrons only, where it is housed because the price was right or does it also equally belong to social media where people do not pay a penny but get a partial exposure to the work and maybe also an appreciation of the gallery or the patron that hosts art? Does the necessity of artist having to live and earn, necessarily clip art’s full potential of social transformation or can the present age remove these unnecessary handcuffs?

Does art always need to have a relatable form to provoke, move, stir, titillate, and sooth, whatever ends up being that particular works intended or unintended outcome? Is art wingless without fixed form? Is the discussion of question of abstraction, symbolism, realism, hyperrealism, a pet peeve of critiques an utterly rubbish and meaningless, enterprise? I am inclined to think so. I think absurdity and abstraction can be just as well used as symbolism, realism and caricaturization. Defining art in form of styles and tools is reducing it to drudgery. Art is meaningful in its purpose and constant search of new purposes.

Those who believe high abstract art cannot reflect on society have not had the sobering and fulfilling experience of sitting in front of a Rothko for hours. Those who believe street art is lowly must have not witnessed power of Banksy’s protests that can send shudders down the spine. Those who are preoccupied with distinctions between high and low art should be given more laurels by different stifling authoritarian ivory tower structures that pretend to know a thing or two about art but should be discouraged from talking to artists or common folks. These critiques should be encouraged to rub their chin more thoughtfully than ever before, pretending to be the arbiter of deciding how and why an artist has created something and judging the historical context of particular pieces of art but should not be allowed to come in the middle of march or rather a new explosion of art.

For those of us who share camaraderie in not being concerned about distinctions in art to academize human creativity or concerned about distinction in art and life, for whom exploring new frontiers is a way of life, for whom whatever comes from churning, the introspection and extrospection of artist’s soul and society, whether it is a song, a novel, an abstract work, a caricature, whether it is digital, whether hand crafted, whether team made or whether individual effort, is emotionally worth what it churns in us, there is an urgent need of a dialogue. Those who are concerned with blasphemy of mocking art patrons or critiques might not find such a dialogue tempting but I suspect that those who are invested in humanity, irrespective of their geographic, economic, social standing, would find this dialogue meaningful.

Those who want to think about life, art, and society, whether they come with intention to own art, stare at it or merely use it as a backdrop for an interesting conversation that leads to some measurable action, would find an open invitation from me a welcome invitation. To such friends, here is an invitation to think, interact and communicate over coming years in form of various events. I write this copyright free article, on eve of an interesting event, called Pratibimb – Reflections, where I see some friends who study profanely profound and profoundly profane, just as much as deeply profound in search of reflection of society and art, so as to foster start of a dialogue.

Previously I had enjoyed interaction with some people from this bunch who had liberated art from galleries and taken them to street, in one of the first street art events in India that I got to know of after my relocation to India in 2014. I would encourage people to visit such exhibitions, starting with Pratibimb – Reflections held between April 10 to April 16 Apr 10 at 5 PM at Lalit Kala Akademi Rabindra Bhavan, 35, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi, India 110001 (https://www.facebook.com/events/1060154284043590/) and several more to come in coming days. Beyond participation in a particular event or not, the most important thing is to get involved in a dialogue to celebrate the multitudes in society and art, ones that have been explored and ones that remain to be explored.

Sukant Khurana is CSO at Data Is Not Just Data https://www.linkedin.com/in/sukant-khurana-755a2343




 



 

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