 Dose Size ‘Really’ Matter?
Perhaps, this is one of the questions that most of the human beings have thought/worried about at least twice in their lives. Mostly young boys ask this question during their growing up years. The question persists in their 20s. Then they forget this till they reach the age of forty. Okay. I am playing the role of a pervert here. I should not be blamed completely for this as this question is always related to the size of a particular human organ. Now the context is different. The renewed context is that of art. Here in the realm of art, does size matter?
Of late, the art market has been looking for bigger works. It has nothing to do with the presence or aesthetic quality of a work of art. It has more to do with the economics. The bigger the work, the better the yield. This is a complicated economics. It starts from the financial agents who do the art dealing. Many people are involved. And all of them have to get their ‘cuts’. To make the cut possible and feasible, one has to sell big works. Then the onus comes to the gallerists. They ask their artists to work in bigger formats. Bigger format means a lot of time. Some artists are not able to handle the bigger formats. So they need assistants. Now, who is going to make the frames? A group of carpenters come into the picture. They make bigger frames. But the size of a canvas is limited. So there is an urgency to create diptychs and triptychs. Bigger works throw challenges of transportation and transporting agencies are roped in. Gone are the days when artists used to move around with rolls of canvases tucked under their arms. Then comes the storage problem. More and more space is needed. Conventional white cubes down their shutters and they migrate to larger and larger spaces. Size really matters in art now.
Bhavna Kakar of Art Konsult throws a spanner at the spoke. She asks whether size really matters or not. To prove her point she conceives a show with twenty five artists. They all have worked on small format, not bigger than 3’ x 3’. Most of them are very small and cute. But there is a different kind of calculation. Twenty five multiplied by three makes seventy five. Or twenty five multiplied by four makes hundred. A total of hundred works or seventy five works. The market economy comes back with full force. Nobody is a loser in this game.
That is the success and failure of this show. Success is, the curator could gather gem like works from twenty five artists. But the failure is, most of the artists do not have any particular affinity for the smaller format. They are asked to do it. So they have done it. May be for some of them it is a relief. Thank god, she has not asked for huge works. How many commitments one can take up in a year?
Size, in this show does not translate into an ideological or aesthetical issue. Instead, it looks for such expressions which could be accommodated in small format. Look at the works of Pooja Iranna. They are really good works. Her architectural concerns get an existential tinge in these works. They are very small. But they are fifty in number. Generally Pooja does bigger works. Manisha Gera Baswani is another artist who generally works in smaller format. She has done justice to her forte. Banoj Mohanty does good work in small formats. Manjunath Kamath has proved his talent both in small and bigger formats. Of late Yashwant Deshmukh does not get time to do small works. The art market asks for more and more big works.
This show would have become pivotal in probing the economics of aesthetics, in terms of size, had the curator taken a bit more care in selecting the artists. Bhavna has dared to introduce a few new artists. But are they going to stick to the small format? Who decides the size of a work, curator, market, gallerist or the artist? The show could have debated all these issues. May be next time, Bhavna would do it.
The Raza Fever
 Syed Hyder Raza is 85 years old and he is still going strong. That is a great thing to know. Delhi is under the grip of the Raza Fever. Delhi is celebrating Raza’s 85th birthday. There are retrospectives, group show of Raza ‘school’ artists, release of a biography, seminars, poetry reading sessions, dance, music and sessions of philosophical debates. That is a good tribute to an artist, his life and his works. But one question remains, why so much? May be that is bit cynical to ask so.
The National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi celebrates the artist’s 85th birthday by mounting a retrospective ‘kind’ of show of Raza’s works from 1970s to now. A book on Raza written by the poet Ashok Vajpayee is released on the inaugural day of the show. The art fraternity attended the function in full force.
Art Alive Gallery leads the events by conceptualizing and hosting a series of programs. Sunaina Anand of Art Alive Gallery presents a show of ten artists, who are the Raza Foundation Awardees. Akhilesh, Sujata Bajaj, Manish Pushkale, Seema Ghurayya, Ysusuf, Smriti Dixit, Yogendra Tripathi, Rahim Mirza, Saba Hasan and Sanju Jain are the artists. They all have done their best for the show. They really want to make the master happy.
Then there are poetry reading sessions and dance sessions. I have never understood, dance performances in front of works of art. Either the dance is a secondary art form, or the work of art becomes just a prop. Many modern dancers have performed in front of works of art. Navtej Johar has performed using works of arts as his means to interpret violence in Srilanka. Alakananda Samarth has performed in front of Nalini Malani’s works to bring out the Grecian and German dramatic effects. But there is a mutual agreement with these two different forms of art. Here Bharatnatyam dancers or other classical dancers dancing in front of Raza’s works look a bit funny. They are trying to interpret Yoni and Linga, the Yin and Yang, the Anima and animus in relationship with Raza’s works. I don’t know.
I have seen one of the most ridiculous dance performances in Delhi. I don’t want to name the dancer. Her forte is Bharatanatyam. She claims to have experimented with the classical Bharatanatyam. She avoids using the traditional music. She uses recorded, high decibel contemporary music pepped up with the notes of electric guitar and synthesizer. The she does the same acts, Krishna, you come, Don’t you come, I am waiting for you. Krishna, didn’t you steal butter, didn’t you steal the clothes of women etc etc, complete with the traditional Bharatanatyam costume. Interpreting a work of art, that too a work of art like Raza’s using the form of dance seems to be a bit stretched. May be I am wrong and prejudiced.
Post script: I go to see the Raza show at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. It is one o clock noon. Definitely a wrong time to visit any government run premise as it is the legendary ‘LUNCH TIME’. There are two counters at the NGMA. One sells art merchandise. The other sells tickets. I find a person behind the merchandise counter and none behind the ticket counter. I ask for a ticket and I am not the only one. There are three foreigners (Rs.150x 3= Rs.450/-) and four Indians including myself. The man is at phone. He gesticulates at us to wait. Then he disappears into an adjacent room only to reappear a few minutes later. Again he is at the phone. The foreigners mutter the universally accepted four letter word ‘F***’. Our man Friday does not mind taking a few insults. Twenty minutes ‘we’ wait and finally the tickets are issued. There are two lessons: One for Mr.Rajeev Lochan, director NGMA. Please attend to this issue. We Indian are used to the ‘Lunch Hour-ism’. Foreigners are not. They will definitely have wrong impression about NGMA. Two, for people like us. If you don’t want to get insulted by a class four officer, avoid going there during LUNCH HOUR(s). ‘Hours’ because, the Indian lunch hour is not decided by a watch, it is decided by the duration of a game of cards or a siesta. |
