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| Divorced before marriage — media and culture | | | Vandana Shukla | 5/7/2013 11:23:59 PM |
| Post-Independence, when editors were framing new editorial policies, they could have set an agenda for shaping cultural
modernism in India as was done in many Latin American countries.
Media never treated culture as an area of mainstream concern
IN India, media has
a longer history
than the history of art; newspapers and magazines were used for mobilising public opinion during the freedom movement since the middle of nineteenth century. Compared to media’s association with the making of political history of India, the emergence of the field of Indian art history and art - criticism is rather young. Even younger than the contemporary art practices.
Crouching : The giant of Indian culture – receives only juvenile attention Photo by the writer
Perhaps for this reason, the role of media in creation of an infrastructure of cultural knowledge in post-colonial India has been rather abysmal. Today, when almost the entire news space is taken over by the narratives of moral decadence — of crime and corruption, and mainstream newspapers, magazines and TV channels have done away with art critics and culture analysis, it is worthwhile to examine the relationship between the arts and media.
Shedding colonial hangover
Our first art historian and philosopher, Colombo born Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, who created a pan- Asian understanding of the Indian art in the early twentieth century, rescued our much maligned monsters-the many headed gods and goddesses encountered in the caves and temples of India by the Europeans from a negative place in the world art history. As our histories and criticism were largely oral, it was with Coomaraswamy that a disciplined and structured format of art history and criticism began, one that was accessible to the West. Then, there were others, like Karl Khandelwal who played an important role in writing about and talking to artists like Amrita Sher- Gil, while it was Rudy Von Leyden, an Austrian scholar who started writing critical pieces on the Bombay Progressives for newspapers. It was perhaps for the first time, when the Progressives emerged on the Indian art scenario, media got into a serious engagement with arts. This courtship lasted for a while, newspapers and magazines were enthusiastic about the emergence of Indian signatures in the contemporary art world and this movement gave birth to, for the first time, a number of eminent art critics. But, media failed to crystallise certain ways of thinking about art and the art world.
The niche identity
In India, writing on the arts could never break the niche segment. It never acquired interest of the general readership. Art critics contributed to drawing a certain kind of crowd and fostering a certain kind of attitude towards art. They created a completely walled up area that art novices dread to enter. By turning art into an exclusive commodity, art critics did not let art enter the public sphere, where public opinion about art could place the creative arts in the mainstream. Here again we had a caste system that worked well; the common people had folk arts to claim as their arena, which was looked down upon by the gallery and auditorium visiting elite connoisseurs who maintained their exclusivity.
Later, critics like Geeta Kapoor, Gulam Sheikh, Keshav Malik, Ranjit Hoskote, Girish Sahane et. al. took art criticism to a new height with their erudite commentaries, it did not appeal the common men and women, and readership on art remained lower than four percent.
Art activity rarely ever inspired editorials or serious opinion writing. At best, it offered an informed critique of the events, but engaging readers in a serious discourse on art — its role in influencing individual and society, in education, need for better art infrastructure, trends and genres-never became central issues for the media, the way other subjects that entered media space much later could. It so happened that art became personality oriented, it created its own star system, aping the trends of Bollywood reporting. So, Husain became larger than his art, Tayab Mehta’s art became secondary to the jaw dropping price his works fetched at Sotheby’s or Christies.
The missing nucleus of modernity
Post-independence, when editors were framing their editorial policies, they could have set an agenda for shaping cultural modernism in India, as was done in many Latin American countries, where poets and thinkers became symbols of change rather than the politicians, with their red beacon flashing cars. Media never treated culture as an area of mainstream concern, relegating powerful tools of cultural modernism like theatre, poetry and visual art to entertainment. The post- independence Nehruvian modernity, with its simultaneous emphasis on a self-critical national renaissance and an internationalist expansion of horizons should have included culture at its nucleus- the way it included science and technology, and media should have played a major role in shaping cultural modernity, as it did for a while to bring IPTA or the Progressives in focus, but that space was soon usurped by trivia.
That, production of art is not separate from larger political and cultural questions, that, in the absence of cultural modernism, true modernism will remain a mirage, escaped the focus of our editors. Somewhere someone clubbed culture with entertainment, and no one questioned the veracity of this decision. Serious issues that relate to the cultural fabric of a society were either relegated to the columns on entertainment, or, were put on such high pedestal that they became undecipherable for common men and women. The validity of such editorial decisions was not debated when a new media was shaping up in India. The way mass media has treated complex issues of culture; drastic changes brought about by globalisation, consumerism and migration in the cultural arena that triggered serious issues of alienation and identity crisis have been equated with naach gaana. And, for some strange reason, reporting on art and culture acquired feminine tone, it was not as macho as reporting politics or defence.
How did it come about?
Indian media largely viewed creative arts as a leisurely activity that hinges on personal vagaries. We did not witness art activism per se, nor did we throw up a movement in art. Most art remained influenced by what was happening in the west, it is only very recently that Indian artists have found confidence in their distinct Indianness in the choice of subject matter and style, primarily with their exposure in foreign galleries that enhanced the ‘rate’ of their art works. Major landmarks of Indian history-like the partition of 1947, remain almost unrepresented in our art, artists have largely been looking for inspiration elsewhere. In theatre, a few instances that could come close to some kind of ‘activism’ were witnessed in West Bengal and Maharashtra, but they died their own death. In creative writing, small pockets of forceful writings in vernacular remained subservient to English, and failed to receive the required media attention. Therefore, reporting on arts could never find its purposefulness for society. Art activity in India never reached that level where it could create excitement that would involve masses and could be of relevance to people outside the domain of art. Like Nicanor Parra’s poetry was written on bill boards in Chile. Or, even Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s couplets blew a siren for change in Pakistan. In our media it acquired the week-end space for leisurely reading, inching towards entertainment. No art is created in a social and political vacuum. Art is a mirror of society and so is media, if art is not happening in a social and political vacuum then how is it that media continues to reflect that vacuum in the context of art? Why has media failed to contextualize art with the larger socio-political issues that it is supposed to be voicing?
Perhaps an answer to this dichotomy is offered in ‘Life is Elsewhere’, wherein Milan Kundera, the Czech author narrates an anecdote where the poet, Jaromil, is called to read poetry in a Police Academy. It is a comment on the status of artists, writers and poets in a civilized society. The artist must always seek approval of the bureaucracy or aristocracy, whatever be the case. He must conform to their ideology to practice art, or remain inert. The artist can have a license to create ideas, but not ideology. If he fails to do so, his art dies for lack of support and recognition. Or, it is viewed as a weapon of destruction, from which the society must be protected. Media takes interest only in the latter part. One is also acutely aware of the fact that, India could not produce a Bansky or, a P183 or not even Ai Weiwei to create buzz around art activity that would make a general reader sit up and get involved in a process of cultural change that comes through the route of arts and literature.
The unproductive culture
In the absence of a well drawn policy for culture and a developed infrastructure for culture promotion, artists and art academies remain dependent on the government grants for their sustenance. The government apathy to art and matters related to culture is well known. They support art and artists with an attitude of extending a favour- for funding an ‘unproductive’ activity.
The difference between Broadway and Mandi House is simple; whereas all the 40 theatres in the centre of New York earn millions for their professionally managed shows for which tickets are sold on an average $100 per seat, and premier shows could go as high as $350 per seat, our pass seeking culture, promoted by the subsequent governments in the name of promotion of art have kept the artist community dependent on approvals of all sorts.
It is worthwhile to know, by an Act of Parliament in 1759, the British had decided to give British citizen an idea about his place in the world by way of promotion of art and culture. The British government made a commitment to funding the arts as an inspirational statement of who the British wish to be. Despite serious economic constraints, the British stick to this commitment, which was underlined in the way the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games -2012 was conducted.
Arts and culture offer economic potential- both direct and indirect, that has not been understood by our arts and culture management. Investment on arts is not an add on; arts are fundamental to the success of a nation. In a report published by Nesta (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), in UK , the creative economy employs 2.5 million people and makes up 10 per cent of the overall economy. Growth in employment in the creative sector runs at about four times the average. In a report published by Financial Times this July, the US economy will officially recognise an extra $70 billion as the capital value of “artistic originals”, a category that in itself will contribute an extra 0.5 per cent to the GDP of the world’s largest economy. In other words, the US is recognising the full value of its own creative and culture sector.
When culture is treated as part of the nation building activity, which indirectly creates a delicate balance between diverse forces; the Japanese stoicism is well celebrated - a product of their cultural fabric, directly it contributes to an important segment of economy, if only it is treated as mainstream activity and thus receives media attention it deserves. |
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