In my post on ‘MoDARN Art’ I criticized
the way the Cholamandalam painter was splashing the paints on canvas and
claiming it to be a work of art. But to me it was just a mix of colors… and
personally I would have appreciated a cocktail ice cream with all its colored
layers as a wonderful piece of art! At least it quenches something.
Such so called ‘work of art’
leaves you in a state of bewilderment at best (and of course of bankruptcy at
worst if you happen to buy it). Modern Art has become little more than
"commodity production, investment portfolio and entertainment.”
Art is to have aesthetic
validity, cannot be arbitrary and accidental, but must stem from obedience to
some worthy constraint. But modern art's "anything goes" attitude
signals trouble. One Japanese artist, I believe, was throwing bottles of
paint at canvases; another, Kazuo Shiraga, was painting with his feet.
In 1960, the French artist Yves Klein used women's nude bodies as paintbrushes, and in
1965, Shigeko Kubota squatted over a canvas to create "Vagina Painting". It is just decadent,
debauched, depraved and degenerate. I am lost for words.
In 2001, a high-priced gallery in
London exhibited a work by Damien Hirst consisting of discarded coffee cups,
empty beer bottles, candy wrappers and other detritus. It was valued at six
figures. But a cleaning man, not being an art connoisseur, tossed the whole
thing out with the trash. The cleaning man in my opinion was clearly the right
critic!
I think most of the time the
critics are more pretentious than the artists because they, in turn, have to
validate themselves! When an art critic says, "Look at his/her work and you will be
compelled to look inside your own soul for the answer to our destiny...blah
blah", does he really believe in what he is saying?
Picasso openly admitted that he
fueled the fire by pumping out meaningless work one after another, playing to
the audience and the critics--and laughed all the way to the bank. In his own
words, “In the arts, people no longer seek consolation, nor exaltation. But the
refined, the rich, the indolent, distillers of quintessence seek the new, the
unusual, the original, the extravagant, the shocking.” The God of modern art (incidentally he was earlier a traditional artist with high skills) admitted he was a fraud. What more can we say?
I can go on and on, ranting and
lamenting, about the Modern Art. Instead let me wind this up on a lighter vein
by sharing an experience of mine. When I was on my own (in ad business), a very
reputed edible oil company’s MD used to seek my inputs, almost on anything that’s
to do with designing. One day in the evening when I was with him, he showed me
a framed modern art painting that was recently bought by him, but yet to be
hung on the wall, and asked me where he can place it in the room. I could not
fathom the theme of the painting and it was lying on the floor and I felt it
was kept upside down. So I asked him, “Are you sure it is right way up?” You
will not believe this! He picked up the painting, looked at it from behind and
said, “Yah… the hook is here on top. So it is right side up only”. So much for
the art aficionado’s taste! And mind you he spent close to 20k on it in 2001.
Now relax and see the beautiful
paintings of John William Godward. This is ART. But he committed suicide at the
age of 61 almost a pauper and is said to have written in his suicide note that
"the world was not big enough" for him and a Picasso (who had by then
minted money on Cubism paintings).
