THE POLITICS OF ART The National Exhibition of Art has a strange record. What the judges did and sometimes what they said, however object such acts might have seemed then, appear to be extremely contradictory and curiously motivated, when seen in perspective. What they did not have was a set of critera, an objective and informed attitude to contemporary art trends. The heterogenous character of the panel, and the judges own diverse affiliations tending to pull in contrary directions, was always a grave handicap. -Richard Bartholomew, Thought, August 3, 1974 When Richard Bartholomew had started to establish himself as an art critic, the government-run but ostensibly autonomous Lalit Kala Akademi, set up in 1954, was at the heart of the art scene. It had established the National Exhibition of Art a year after its founding, and in 1968, it inaugurated the first Indian Triennale. Given the absence of private galleries at the time, the Akademi was possibly the only road to recognition for artists. But the LKA was state-run and bent to suit the power structure. Its practices and misguided ideals left much to be desired. For years, Richard took upon himself the responsibility to expose the Akademis malpractices and questionable standards concerning art. Despite the evolution of the contemporary Indian art market, politics persist. Existing hegemonies define what is seen as mainstream, while un-fashionable artists are sidelined to the margins, their legacies forgotten, until a new auction record gets set for their work. In fact, in hindsight, the days of the LKA Raj seem almost innocent in comparison to the current scenario, where the art world is driven primarily by commerce and where the economy is geared towards preserving the interests of a select few who control what is considered collectible. There was, simultaneously, a further politics in the distancing of artists from the South, keeping them at the margins of the national mainstream. The idea behind the present panel is to invite senior artists like S.G. Vasudev and V. Viswanadhan to speak about their experience of such hegemonies, given that they have each emerged from the formative experience of an artists’ collective and have witnessed the pre-commercial and post-commercial phases of the Indian art market. Sadanand Menon, as an artist and writer, has been privy to much of what has transpired in the story of Modern Indian art and the emerging contemporaneity. The intention is to unearth some of the questionable practices that continue to plague the art world, and to better understand the politics behind them by drawing on Richards writing about the LKA era and dialoguing with it through our contemporary perspective.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Feb 2014 16:59:31 +0000
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