Muhammad Maroof Shah
One might be excused a remark that there is hardly any culture for art in Kashmir. Leaving aside mass ignorance regarding such art forms as painting, sculpture, architecture etc (how many people can enjoy or deeply appreciate a painting from any historical period or have a taste for good art works?). I wonder what has happened to our artistic sensibility. How we have let consumerism or commoditizing ideology almost destroy our tradition concerning art and art criticism. Our traditional understanding of art demands escape from personality. For it an artist has no self. An artist is simply a medium through whom the great artificer expresses himself. The muse demands moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues in the artist. A genuine artist may hardly care if anyone knows him or he is given that or that award or recognition, especially by the State’s institutions which are often though not necessarily tailored to promote a certain brand that doesn’t infringe on its power structures. The great rebel artists are exiled rather than recognized by the academies representing the state. What both religion and art demand is transcendence from the self, the personality, the narcissistic pathology that demands seeing one’s photographs in print, the syndrome of being called award winning writer. Sartre didn’t accept even Nobel Prize as he thought it would give undue importance to whatever he said and thus make him politically count for more than he truly deserves. Other French writers refused awards for the work published during the World War 2 on the ground that they thought theirs was not a quality work that deserved award or recognition. One may also ask regarding the motives for exhibiting/selling works of art as Ananda Coomaraswamy asks. We have accepted the imported culture of producing paintings for market and have no problem with such ideas as organizing art exhibitions. But underlying philosophy of art exhibitions is quite problematic. It implies artists are special individuals who are selling a special commodity called art works and these are to be consumed as decoration pieces or status symbols by certain elite consumer. The greater the cost of art work sold, more successful is the artist. The artistic community of the state has interiorized these assumptions and is seeking market for art works. It is not even imaginable in their case to erase their identity in art work as required by our tradition or value structure. They have special ways of advertising themselves and can’t be expected not to sign their art works. One can ask from them what value structures do they embody or seek to express! Are they cognizant of the vital connection between art and the sacred? Are they educated in philosophical assumptions underlying modern and postmodern art and divergence between them and traditional understanding of art? One thing is clear – they are selling the idea of elite art. Masses don’t understand them or appreciate them and I don’t blame the masses for the same. Modern/postmodern art is wedded to a worldview that rejects symbolism of traditional art and its mass connection or rootedness. We must interrogate individualism, elitism, ambiguity, narcissism, commoditisation and art exhibition ideology that have nearly destroyed art in Kashmir and replaced it with alien imported idea of it that is intellectually vacuous and morally questionable. Needless to wonder that it is awards and lobbying for awards that matter today and not giving education through art, edifying through art and salvation through art that great Kashmiri art critic Abhinavgupta propounded. There are artists selling art works and not sacrificing themselves in creating art that ennoble and sanctify.
