TAKE on India in collaboration with The Department of Art History and Aesthetics: Critical Writing Ensembles – I – Baroda Chapter
On one mountain peak, towering above
A thousand others, there lives
A cloud and an old monk;
Last night the cloud was blown away, because
It was stormy and could not
Equal the old man’s (quiet) ways.
-From Kimo Duo © 2008 Jean Elizabeth Ward
Homage to — Sharing a Mountain Hut with a Cloud
Kuei Tsung Chih-chih, a monk who lived on a Humble Hut in Lu-Shan (Rozan)
Polemics seem to gather much attention and generate energy these days. It is rare to come across anybody who sits on the fence. Without meaning to champion it, I do wonder if there is something to gain in those moments of indecision; whether it opens up some space for reflection. There isn’t much that a troll can respond with, to an incidental comma. When there is nothing said, we are left to think.
While the Critical Writing Ensemble’s Baroda Chapter’s main objective was to examine the histories of critical writing on art in India, its pertinence emerges in its own subtext of revitalising the space of critical thinking within artistic and cultural discourses in our country. Writing as a practice comes with its own challenges both in journalistic formats as well as in independent writing; time has become a crucial factor for scrutiny. The dream of embedding data with the essence of a place/moment/situation is now everyone’s to pursue, on digital media and social network platforms. However, embedding data with critical thought requires not so much time as it does the practice of reflection. Academic rigour’s ideal design is to provide the right proportions of time, research, practice and reflection to nurture critical thinking. It is therefore not surprising that a conference on Critical Writing on Art was hosted at the Department of Art History and Aesthetics, Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. What must indeed be surprising is its impact on students. The epiphanic response of a postgraduate student exposed the vacuum created by the absence of contiguous critical discourse for almost an entire decade. The nostalgia was unmistakable on one hand, but so was the scholarship of some of the key speakers whose close associations with Baroda have contributed to shaping the cultural legacies of the sub-continent.
As editor of TAKE on art Publishing Magazine, Bhavna Kakar’s vision to take the discourse on critical writing straight into an academic space, was her way of giving back to her Alma mater. The success of the event relied on the basic principle of nurturing a collective history through the personal; to channelise her access to experts and scholars directly into a space of learning; to create an opportunity for exchanges of wisdom and stories with fresh perspectives and new spirit. Heading the Department of Art History and Aesthetics, Jayaram Poduval has undertaken a few proactive measures in extending invitations to practitioners and professionals both within and outside of academia over the past couple of years, in an effort to widen the scope of learning for students. Over a span of three days, the CWE conference held from the 17th to 19th December 2015 presented conversations, lectures and discussions that created connections across its various sessions. Having attended all the sessions, I have broadly categorised some of the thematics and concerns that got shaped.
Access and Anecdote
Access to art, art-history and art writing in India has still not managed to spread its web efficiently beyond urban centres and across vernacular media. Noted scholar and artist Gulammohamed Sheikh’s passionate talk recalled his entry into the world of teaching as a consequence of circumstances that led him to assume more roles within Baroda’s academic milieu. His anecdotes of interactions with students gave us further insights into the problems faced by non-English-speakers or the difficulty with translating western art-historical terminology into Indian languages. These concerns were again reiterated in Piyush Thakkar’s and Kamayani Sharma’s (both art writers chosen as an Open Call participants for CWE-I) presentations, where they narrated the challenges of writing and reading on art through vernacular publications. Bharti Lalwani (Art Critic) widened the landscape of exploring the problem of access to the region of South-east Asia. Her paper emphasised the limited exposure that art from those regions has received in the international context. Sistla Srinivas’ (Academic) presentation was both entertaining and sharp in its critique on the attitudes displayed by art students and the larger audience’s complacency towards reading; arguing that even with access to information or books on art in multiple languages, there are few who are keen on reading its contents. While these continue to be collective challenges for Indian art and art-writing, an art critic like Geeta Kapur epitomises the exceptions of individuals who have not only had access to scholarship and international exposure, but have contributed immensely to existing critical discourses over the past five decades.
The specialness of some of the sessions was the ease in which anecdotes from personal histories became the premise for creating critical contexts of practice and theory. This was most evidently perceived in Vivan Sundaram speaking of his own work within the context of his family archive, and his longstanding engagement with his artist-aunt Amrita Shergil.
Critic and Critique
The session titled “Entangling and Disentangling Printed Matter” tackled the position of an art writer in the context of journalism. Sadanand Menon (Critic/ Curator) took an anecdotal approach to speak of his own journalistic experiences and the political responsibilities that an arts editor had to own. Extending the discussion on the role of editors, Hemant Sareen (Art Critic) spoke of his experiences of being on an editorial team and the nature of exchanges that develop with contributing writers. Girish Shahane (Critic/ Curator) presented his own reflections on the role of critics in the contemporary art scene and how art writing has evolved in curatorial practices as well. Kavita Balakrishnan introduced the audience to the quaint relationship between text and image in Malayalam literary magazines and their illustrations. These popular publications became a vehicle for sharing art and illustrations with larger audiences, while simultaneously influencing social attitudes, tastes and even gaze.
The fecundity of chatter and exchange between all the critics created a perfect setting for some of the younger participants who were selected through an Open Call to present short papers in the CWE-1. In addition to a focused critique on all aspects of their papers by Diana Campbell Betancourt and Hemant Sareen, they also received valuable suggestions from all the senior writers, critics and artists. The critique of Premjish Achari’s and Nilofar Shamim Haja’s papers offered constructive inputs in research methodologies, positioning a central argument, and the choice of citations.
Brevity and Scholarship
For most academic students of art-history or critical writing, the fundamental questions of what to write and how to write are confronted everyday. The methodologies of constructing an argument, the vocabularies of language and the nitty-gritty of weaving rational analyses to deconstruct processes that might sometimes deal with intangible values can seem overwhelming. As much as art-practices have needed to be demystified, the precincts of theoretical practice also tend to intimidate young students. The conference opened with a conversation between art critic Geeta Kapur and art-historian and researcher Sabih Ahmed which in many ways served as an ice breaker as she reflected both critically and personally on her own works. Her comments in other sessions were found to be greatly useful for the students in understanding concepts with clarity- for instance, the distinguishing factors between an artist-curator and critic-curator, where she said that the former would be concerned with affinities and the latter with a theoretical premise forming the thematic concerns for curation. Emilia Terraciano (Academic/Writer) presented an extensively researched paper that unfolded interesting perspectives into looking at Nasreen Mohamedi’s art, by contexualising it through a referencing of French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard’s work. Diving further into the discursive nature of writing and thought, Katya García-Antón’s paper examined the dynamics of performance and its relationship with an audience experience. Her paper proposed a self-reflexive approach to examine writing through the lens of performativity; to possibly open different ways of discursive thinking that challenge the “distance” created for critical thought.
Narrative and Nuance
For practicing artists like Rekha Rodwittiya and Pushpamala.N., who spoke during the session “Why we write”, writing seemed to extend their intellectual explorations. Much like their visual artworks, elements of personal association and ideas related to gender politics are celebrated and stay central to their writing, as opposed to an analytical approach taken by any art-writer. The practising artist seems to use the form of writing to create an illusion of direct access to thought and expression, and less to thought processes. On the other hand, Sanjay Kumar. V (Writer invited as special observer to CWE-1), explores the world of art through fiction. His reading of an excerpt from a novel he was working on, left the listener firmly in the hands of a story-teller, drawn into the imagined world of the writer.
History and Pedagogy
The session on “Art Writing within and beyond Art Schools” generated an enthusiastic student interaction at the end of the session, moderated by Rekha Rodwittiya. Deeptha Achar’s talk looked at the problems of representation with regard to stereotyping race and gender in the instruction material of primary school education. Jayaram Poduval spoke of his approach to teaching art-history in the faculty of fine arts and how he introduces students to study contexts of parallel and multi-disciplinary practices. Prof. Deepak Kannal made a brief and personalised presentation on his experiences as a teacher and art historian.
The CWE-1 conference ended with a workshop by Diana Campbell Betancourt for artists and students to be guided through the process of writing artist statements and developing their resumes.
TAKE’s initiative to sustain malleable dialogues between the professional world of contemporary art, art writing, research, art-practice and educational interventions needs to find more hosts and locations both within India and across south-Asia. The CWE Baroda chapter struck an interesting balance of academics, practitioners, writers and critics. It would be interesting to see how every chapter of CWE evolves; whether it might eventually provoke a meta-discourse on conference structures that can adapt to different contexts, locations and audiences, to operate in the very spaces and communities that it has begun to identify as being deprived of art discourses.
Malavika Rajnarayan
Published in TAKE on India, Volume 2, Issue 1, January-June 2016
Malavika Rajnarayan 