Art-Alienation-Artist:
Market God’s Means to Ends

Kolkata is undoubtedly a fertile ground for art now. A linear transgression became perceptible since 2007 after artists from Baroda were featured in a significant show (Beyond Credos) curated by Shivaji Panikker. CIMA, the most noted gallery in the city featured Debraj Goswami, Uday Mondal and Abir Karmakar –the three Baroda based young artists - shortly after the first one, and bedlam broke out. With the advent of such changes, the focus now shifted significantly on the western Indian artists. Nearly all the art galleries in the city now have embarked upon investing on the same. A steady obliteration of the stagnant parochial art trends, so typical of Bengal now began to make its presence felt. At the same time, parallel to such changes a steady rise in alternate trends in art practices – installations/performances/videos/ the very act of deliberately avoiding doing a canvas - by artists belonging Bengal opened up new avenues in the post colonial genre.

Added to these, the launching of Eastern India’s first live auction house in the city, nearly a fortnight ago created a new spur among the art enthusiasts. I was wondering how the term ‘market’ regulates it all and how our paradigm shifts with it. To quote Vikram Bachhawat, the owner of the auction house Emami Chisel Art, “We have introduced first-time artists but only after a thorough research and in consultation with experts. They are Chhatrapati Dutta, Samindranath Majumdar, Shekhar Roy, Arindam Chatterjee.” (The Telegraph, pg 12, January 23/2008) I came to learn from a young curator who was extremely reluctant in including one of the four artists in list changed his mind overnight and is extremely eager to include the same ‘without a doubt.’ The buyers, quotes Bachhawat, are “mainly NRI’s, collectors from Delhi and Mumbai and we will create a new client base in Calcutta. We will give them a guideline. The market has a lot of potential (ibid).”

I cannot help but recall Vasquez’s comments on the situation of art in a capitalist society in his book - Art and Society: Essays in Marxist Aesthetics, in which he points out “far from production being at the service of man, man is at the service of production; man disappears behind a world of things, of commodities and becomes a thing himself. Such is the phenomenon of the alienation (or reification) of human existence.” It now becomes apparent, what Marx referred to act when he pointed out the fact that material production is hostile to the branch of intellectual production. Does the gallery, then remain more concerned with the creative and the intellectual aspects of the art works when it asks for ‘seven (works of) Chhatrapati Duttas’ instead of ‘five’?

I hope that is how capitalist material production prevents man from entering into a truly human relationship with the object of production, such as a relationship between man and the human meaning of an object, which both satisfies a specific human need and objectifies essential human faculties. Vazquez reinforces, “Under capitalism, material production excludes man from the subject-object relationship. The inhuman relationship between producer and product means that the worker denies himself as a creative or productive being. His labor – alienated labor – is the negation of labor as a vital human activity, as an objectification of his physical and intellectual energies, as an activity in which he affirms himself as a free, conscious, and creative being. Labor is reduced to the production of commodities or surplus value.” That is to say, that the multiplicity of human needs connected to a given object is reduced to only one – the relationship of ownership.

I now do not wonder at the fact that so many of my friends and acquaintances changed their individual styles only to produce something that corresponds more to a style/styles that is/are in vogue or has/have a greater demand in the ‘market’. Individual styles have, therefore, often succumbed to the general trends and that explains why so many young artists compromise with their individual/indigenous styles and cater to the demands of the gallery.