Shrinking Space For Art Criticism

Uma Nair

Space in newspapers all over the country seems to be shrinking in terms of art criticism. The only newspaper that carries art criticism in its honest integral format is The Hindu (though its best critic Gayatri Sinha seems to have a silent pause for some time) and to a small measure The Asian Age that carries a page every Tuesday.
Going back many years to the late 80's and the mid 90's it was Sadanand Menon who created a case of burgeoning narratives when he began Artscape and the Design page in Economic Times which in those days advertised themselves as `The Pink Edge'.
Artscape became the commentary of the arts in the nation. With brilliant essayists like Kamala Kapoor from Mumbai and K.B.Goel from Delhi the page had in depth insights into artistic practices and you could on a Tuesday or a Saturday lose yourself in cerebral synergies. The Hindustan Times in those days had a Saturday supplement that had between its covers reviews of art, dance and photography. When The Pioneer began S.Kalidas moved from Times of India to head the arts page and did a stupendous job of creating pages for art aficionados to read. However over the past one and a half decade art writing seems to have diminished into what one could call the current cathartic Page 3 culture.
Now photographs and pages are tuned into what an artist wears, what they say about someone else, what someone else says about them and what he/she was sporting. In the race for capturing Page 3 the poor reporters are desperately trying to out do each other in the `ME FIRST' scenario. In an age of maximal mileage, with ad agencies also piping in and raking in the moolah the art scene has reached a crescendo with no brakes, and art do's also are looking  like a bazaar where one looks for networking agents, and finds new faces to tap for gallery practices.
What is sad is that the scene is rather a loud gharana where the babble and cackle of cocktail glasses and the whispers of `watch what's happening' all become a part of the circuitous scene of deception. It doesn't matter whether there is no space what gets written isn't so important, what is important is the photograph and the Page 3 revolution come to life. Strange how the television crews and channels have actually also taken over the Page 3 culture but I guess no one can beat the masterminds of Zoom, they are able to translate the substance and the glitter of the art world better than any other. With the others it's a case of waiting for certain stories to come out and then they go for the overkill by just pretending their art stories are original when it's all there in the Internet.
On a satiric stance one pictures monetary mathematical forms springing up on their own, or even multiplying in real time, taking on the complexity of life itself. Well, not this time. Rumours suggest that collectors are getting worried and possessive, they do not want to lend works, (upcoming Raza retrospective at NGMA) their fear is in the handling of works, it seems one work of Jehangir Sabhvala got torn in the Retrospective, and collecting old works is an experience that is more of a mess, and it asks one to see the choices people make, as artists or consumers, or as gallery people and that is as messy, too.
Of course, some messes go down more easily than others. Amidst all that noise and hubris one does admit that art shows are welcome, even though there isn't space, and every show in some way also taps a burgeoning segment of art, the repurposing of consumer culture as aesthetic overkill. In many ways thank god, for the Internet, at least one can write freely.