The art of the matter

The criticism that we live in an unartistic age is unfair

‘All art is quite useless,’ wrote the man who made art that enthralls and encourages people over a century after his premature death. Oscar Wilde, that frilly-sleeved, dreamy-eyed, wickedly funny, prodigiously gifted writer, was the quintessential aesthete – a person whose words and life are inextricably linked with the pursuit of beauty. Every age has its own artistic standards. Its own ideas of art and ways of experiencing it. If Wilde lived in the fin de siècle of withering drawing room dramas of the late Victorian era, the early 20th century gave us Modernism in all its complexity. How then would we describe art in our own oversaturated age, which for many is a kind of post-artistic digital wasteland?

#Memetoo

I follow an FB account called Classical Art Memes. It gives me my daily dose of high art looked at derisively, through an ironic post-modern lens. It’s a one-trick formula: take a serious painting done in a classical style, often with a religious or other serious theme, and add speech blurbs or captions that subvert the intention. It works quite well. When it comes to art, ours is the age of subversion of anything that is overly high-minded. Where art across the ages has mocked dated systems and personalities, it now takes down other art as well in a far more brazen fashion.

Every age has its own artistic standards. Its own ideas of art and ways of experiencing it... How then would we describe art in our own oversaturated age, which for many is a kind of post-artistic digital wasteland?

It’s everywhere on the Internet, this culture of irony. These days celebs are afraid of turning into memes. Or not turning into memes. Superhero films spawn serious conversations on gender and race making pop culture smart. Art rules the mart, at least in this golden age of digital platforms like Netflix and Amazon. Some of the most visually stunning work I’ve seen I’ve encountered on websites and other social media accounts – a network of artists and sensibilities made one through the web. It could be a Japanese artist with a crocodile fixation. Or an Andheri schoolgirl with a dark poetic streak. A Berlin musician using tin cans and rubber tyres as instruments. It’s mindblowing. And it’s all happening together, right in front of us. We might be accessing it though black mirrors, but our epoch cannot be clubbed into a single artistic category.

Art and resistance

Banksy, the political graffiti artist, is London’s vigilante Artman. He creates art where it is not expected or allowed. It is art that upsets the status quo, also known as just art. A video from earlier this year showed a Palestinian dancer doing the dabke within range of Israeli snipers. Even Hollywood has gone all out in its rejection of Trump. Some believe it is the duty of the artist to fight the good fight. Against social injustice and other human failings. That an artist must take a stand. But all art, like every other act, is political. Whether it comes from a place of wisdom or ignorance, courage or fear, appeasement or rebellion. It’s just that with art, politics is in the manifesto, irrespective of the level of wokeness of the artist.

Here in India, we’ve had people give back film awards as political dissent. On the other hand, we have actors dance at weddings to keep corporate paymasters happy. Of course, our meek film industry capitulates far more often than it stands up to bullying and silent threats. Even so, there have been triumphs. Despite indiscriminate film censorship, a film like Mulk – mainstream and openly dissenting – somehow gets released, speaking truth to power. The struggle is on.

Art in every cell

My friends’ eight-year-old daughter recently wrote in an essay that art was her favourite subject even though it was of no use. I contemplated arguing this with her (Naina is a superb logician) but figured it’s perhaps her discovery to make. Maybe someday soon she’ll chance upon Oscar Wilde’s famous epigram – issued tongue in cheek – and defy it in her inimitable style.

On a recent visit to our ancestral home, we were invited for dinner by a family of doctors. From surgeons to paediatricians, they were particularly enamoured of my sister’s film lyrics, while she brushed off the praise saying how doctors were the true artists. “But it is songs like the ones you write that keep us calm through all the stress of work,” said the head of the family. Hanging on one of the walls I noticed a picture in blazing red that looked abstract yet familiar. It was a red blood corpuscle as seen under a microscope. Pure science. Pure art. Utterly useful.

From HT Brunch, September 16, 2018

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