Kolkata Sketchbook - Oindrilla Maity

Of Misreading and Other Things

Browsing through the pages of ArtConcerns, I came across a newly launched regular column written by Meenakshi Thirukode, titled, ‘Air Guitar and the Masters of Art History’ (issue: January 2009). Clearly, I had no clue about this new columnist and all I came to know about her is through an exhaustive list of details about her educational qualification. It reads (I keep the form and spellings unchanged): ‘Meenakshi Thirukode is a US based writer. She holds a bachelors in Art History from Stella Maris College for Women, Chennai, Post Diploma in Marketing and Advertising from Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, Bangaluru. A masters degree in Modern Arts, Connoissureship and the History of Art Market from Christies Education, New York.’ (I guess few in Art Concerns had the privilege of displaying a record of their achievements so widely). 

Now, I point this out of a sheer feeling, which is aroused by the second paragraph of the write up following this and is which is seemingly self –contradictory. Meenakshi Thirukode justifying her reason for bringing up the issue in concern with a sarcastic undertone, writes: ‘ The reason why I bring up Hickey and his role as an art critic  is because  there is a lot of talk about what the current state of art criticism is,  in India and how we need to develop the quality of it.  But somehow I get this feeling (and I know I am absolutely spot on) that quality means you need to have a degree, an MA perhaps or most preferably a PhD, you need to make sure you have a list of six syllable words you use every four sentences in your essay which should not include slangs or any hybrid language of the masses and everyone has to talk about how badly every other critic writes and thereby implicitly establish how great you are as a writer.’ This is where I have something to add. I am not sure if they encourage you at the Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan or at Christies Education to use slangs or hybrid language of the masses to enhance the quality of your write ups, but I am certain that the Stella Maris College for Women, Chennai, they don’t. And that, Ms. Thirukode loathes so much the concept of earning ‘a degree’ and yet allows a didactic display of her own list of achievements. This , I guess, largely violates her ostensible austerity about the redundancy of institutionalized degrees. Her idea of the world’s being too flamboyant about such trivialities only makes her appear a little too much of a silly snob. Does it not? 

Meenakshi Thirukode’s piece is primarily based on the status of art historical writings today. For the purpose of doing so and in order to lay down the rules to good art writing, she has picked up articles by two individual authors. The first one among them is a book titled ‘Air-Guitar – Essays on Democracy and Art’ by Dave Hickey, reading which, writes she, ‘I relived the memory of an adrenaline rush I felt when I was 14 and discovered Backstreet Boys, coupled with the deeper emotional tinge running up my spine when I saw my first Rembrandt 3 years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.’ Well that qualifies her to the position of being not only the an extraordinary being with a great memory, but also the possessor of an adequate dosage of adrenaline that rushes up her spine from time to time. The second piece of writing that she chooses for her piece is a review   on ‘Vanity Fair’, a show, curated by Bhavna Kakar in Kolkata, in 2007. It came out in the Art and Deal magazine (Vol. 5, No. 3, Issue No. 25) in 2008 and is written by ‘a certain someone’ to quote Ms. Thirukode. Now, that ‘certain someone’ is none other than me and the phrase itself suggests that she is pretty unfamiliar with my name, let alone my modus operandi, my ideas and my write ups so far.  By that I certainly do not mean that you have to know me all the while. The point is, that she has meager knowledge of my write ups has added to her confusions considerably about all that I have voiced out time and again through my writings so far. 

The purpose of this article is to focus on the fact, how one can unnecessarily problematize a situation by failing to read a piece properly and contort the meanings of the original write up. I literally mean ‘reading a piece properly’ and without rushing to jump into conclusions through half phrases and paragraphs and make a farce of oneself by writing out an entire column based on one’s own lazy generalizations (as it is in Ms. Thirukode’s case). The danger of such half-witted writings is that they lead the reader, who is quite unlikely to have read the original work in discourse, to grasp falsified meanings as based on the author’s conclusions. To quote Ms. Thirukode: ‘Maity’s take on art critics et all - “Owing to the fact that nearly none of them has undergone an institutionalized training rigorously, what has resulted of theoretical practice in art is purely newspaper criticism (and not discourses coming out of institutionally trained/untrained uninhibited brains). Vanity Fair, a show curated by Bhavna Kakar, the young art historian and independent curator (she received her education in Art History from Baroda), set against such a background, had left a deep impression in the minds of the viewers of this city.”’ Now, here I have something to clear. Apparently, one is likely to be under the impression that the phrase “Owing to the fact that nearly none of them has undergone an institutionalized training rigorously”… that I have held the entire genre of art historians all over the world together and accused them of not having rigorous art institutionalized training and that that is a real vice. This is what happens when one picks up excerpts from paragraphs/texts arbitrarily and decontextualizes them in an attempt to contort them. Their meanings undoubtedly get a twisted meaning, become uselessly ambiguous, grossly misleading the reader. 

The review on ‘Vanity Fair’, by me, was written  specifically in  a  context  of art writing in Kolkata ( roughly till 2007), and I did not ever in the article mention of art historians abroad or the status of their writings. Let me quote myself from the text how it originally appeared in Art and Deal (Vol. 5, No. 3, Issue No. 25): Curatorial projects in a more parochial realm of art as in Bengal have a relatively short history (not even a year perhaps, although there are instances of barely a couple of curations in the past, such as Amit Mukherjee’s own on Chhatrapati Dutta’s, titled Iconoclash, some three years back, but such efforts are only arbitrary and sporadic). Despite the city’s own art critics taking their turns in such a practice, which, pragmatically speaking, is more out of a sheer compulsion driven by the times, serious curatorial practices are hard to find. The reasons for this are many. The only known faces dominating the realm of art criticism at present were born in pre-independent India. Owing to the fact that nearly none of them has undergone (art) institutionalized training rigorously, what has resulted of theoretical practice in art is purely newspaper criticism (and not discourses coming out of institutionally trained/untrained uninhibited brains). Vanity fair, a show curated by Bhavna Kakar, the young art historian and independent curator (she received her education in Art History from Baroda), set against such a background, had left a deep impression in the minds of the viewers of this city.’  My write up was centered around those writers who were born in pre-independent India. Two of the  city’s  oldest and colonial art institutions  - The Indian College of Art and Draftsmanship and the  Government College of Art and Crafts still do not offer specializations in Art History. The only institution which does so is a post –colonial one, and has a relatively small history. For, the Faculty of Visual Arts in the Rabindra Bharati University is the only institution that was established in the1960s. Anyone who is aware of the art practices and writings in Kolkata till the mentioned date will agree to the situations we had around that time. Nearly all who had written about visual arts so far have simultaneously contributed to columns about music, theatre as well as films in the major newspapers.  This certainly is not to say that one should not write about the other arts if one were to become an Art Historian, but the point is that we did not in Kolkata have authors specialized in the fields. The consequences were drastic. Students from the art institutions in Kolkata suffer a marked difference in their ideologies as compared to students of the same field from the other states such as Gujarat, Delhi, Maharashtra and the South Indian states. And I shall not go back to it all over again now as I have mentioned of such consequences fairly exhaustively, time and again ,in most of my write ups that have been brought out, more so in ArtConcerns. It is not until very recently that things have started to take a different course. 

Why an Art Historian of Ms. Thirukode’s stature would do that mistake of using a quotation so wrongly, is best known to her (to my mind, it is probably again a result of adrenaline getting the better of her; for someone at her twenties, this certainly is a natural phenomenon).
However, I was, in my write up in Art and Deal, was stating facts about the scenario in Kolkata and had found out that Kakar’s curatorial did bring about fresh changes and her choice extremely selective. The show was not a run of the mill, as was usual then. Very few shows in the recent past (in Kolkata) had given the audience a direction – what to see and why at all one should see. The piece was not one written for the purpose of stating how to write about art but rather to locate a show against a prevalent backdrop. The purpose for all write ups is never really and cannot be one – i.e. to instruct one how to write about art. And we in India are capable of appreciating write ups that are not always, necessarily pedagogic (for instance, if you go through most articles in Art Concerns, you will know for yourself, the kind of breezy write ups we bring out every issue are mostly the best essays of their kind). Nor do I support the fact that it is fair enough to consider two different write ups, poles apart in their nature, to have the same ‘AHA feeling’(as she puts it) on the same reader. I mean it would be quite foolish to desire the same effect generated by, say for instance, two movies of our time – Ghajini and Taare Zamin Par (I do not know if Ms. Thirukode is aware of them. My sincerest apologies for bringing up such remote examples, in case she does not ).  

My articles are certainly not classroom lectures. I do that kind of things in my class every Tuesdays and Wednesdays, where I tell my students how to write out critically, and compare and contrast between two given pieces; and why they like/dislike a certain piece. My write ups aim at lettings my people know where we actually stand and why we need a change, drastically; seriously. Does that make sense, Ms. Thirukode?