Indian Contemporary Art

India is an older cultural identity. It is a small world in itself with much diversity. It lives amidst many time spans simultaneously... in the past, in the present and in the future.
Because of its geographical location and physical features, India has always been open to external influences, cultural attractions and interactions. India has the capacity to generate its own thought process and it has the flexibility to receive, imbibe and use external influences and cultural interactions to enthuse vitality and relevance in its creative human endeavors.
Indian contemporary art, after independence in 1947, has passed through a period of derivation and a period of retrospection, to arrive to mean, an individual artist's creative expression in his own creative visual imagery. Both, the period of derivation and retrospection came into being as reactions to the prevailing situations. The compulsions of creative expression in the artist's own creative visual imagery evolved out of these two reaction situations and the expanding grasp of global perceptions.
Freedom and democracy created a liberation hysteria, a desire to equal, even surpass, western standards of material and creative human endeavor. Artists coming on the scene at this juncture were exposed, to the already established and recognized art directions of Europe & later American, mostly through reproductions and art books while studying in the British type academic art schools in India and not by direct contact with the works of art and the artists there. Because the Indian artists of this period had no direct access to the emerging contemporary thought process in the west, they fell a step behind the contemporary art scenario there and this one step backwardness could not be redeemed.
The application of the gospels of western art appreciation and reference in judging contemporary Indian art further stamped this status. Each one of the western inclined Indian artist picked up the technique and the thought process of a western artist of his choice and began to revolve his work around it. Most of them chose works of those western artists whose creative directions had imbibed Asian or African or Mexican sensibilities and began to feel them selves at home. Some fell for those western creative directions which they felt matched their angry-young-man or liberated or leftist personality image which they wanted to project.
During the west-attraction years, still in and out of their formative years, with wavering faith in their own thought process, many artists reached Paris, London and other art centers of Europe on cultural scholarships. Most of them returned after two to three years, converted. Some came back disillusioned. Some got married there to stay back along with some others who had migrated there to practice art as freelancers. They preferred to uproot themselves from the nourishment of their cultural resource & cultural inheritance.
There were many who did not choose to go. They adopted western mediums and techniques but searched for creative directions from within, around and from the ever regenerating creative visual resource in the country. They did not however close themselves from the world winds. They were sidetracked for some time by fashion-wave and hearsay art connoisseurs and university English honors’ graduates & M.A English, art historians. But these artists persisted and became the first Indian Contemporaries after independence.
When the creative compulsions and needs of expression could not be satisfied by picture-making only with borrowed ingredients, the Indian artists started re-searching indigenous and traditional creative visual cultural resource. Some adopted it in their work and some interpreted it for their expression. This period of introspection arrived because of the reaction to the western derived art and in search of an indigenous identity.
The exponents of the introspection did not suggest withdrawal or isolation from the currents of the world art scenario. Some of the artists, who had already established their creative visual identity in pursuit of western creative directions, chose to search again their creative visual imagery for expression, realising the validity of introspection.
In India the creative visual directions of the past, present and future coexist despite a reaction stance that may prevail against any one of these. You will still come across adherents of Bengal school which was more inclined to traditional directions available in India and the East. Such tolerance and coexistence enrich and smoothly fill the gaps in the continuity in creative visual imagery.
Francis Newton Souza, I believe, was the prodigal son of Indian Contemporary Art in its formative years after independence. No Indian contemporary artist, after independence, had so much creative energy, revolting personality, capacity to work & flight in his imagination & expression. Unfortunately, for Indian Contemporary Art of formative years after Independence, he left India & migrated to U.K to become a western artist. I wish, he had not formed ‘the Progressive Group’. I wish, he had remained in India. I wish, he had, also, opened his eyes & creative sensibilities, instead of taking a reaction stance, towards the creative visual directions evolved by Indian artists from their soil, like Nand Lal Bose, Rabindra Nath Tagore & Binod Bihari Mukerjee & the like, who had, in their journey of evolving their creative visual imagery, experienced the British Rule in India, observed & amalgamated, the Asian nuances of creativity & the fragrance of independent India. Had it happened, Indian Contemporary art of today had been abreast, with its own independent personality, any contemporary world art. The best supporting example for this point of view is that of Tyeb Mehta. Most of his life Tyeb Mehta’s creative visual imagery was western oriented. By chance, few years ago, he was invited to Shantineketan to stay & work there. The result was a series of his paintings, ‘Mahisasura’. He will always be remembered for this series of his paintings.
At a given point of time, most of the artists work following the established creative visual directions. Some artists have a compulsion to explore and establish new creative visual directions. Near about the period of introspection, some women artists, some self-taught artists and some prodigals, entered the Indian contemporary art scene, each expressing his/her creative compulsions and concerns in his/her own creative visual imagery. Indian Contemporary art, with all its faults, became Indian contemporary art, thereafter. A confident and more self- reliant, second generation of artists after independence are now taking over the contemporary Indian art scenario. But sometime, one gets scared when a second generation artist is always in search of an indigenous visual experience with whose first time exposure, he wants, to attract only western art connoisseur.
In my analysis above, about the emerging Indian Contemporary Art scenario, I have not taken into consideration, that abstract art achieved with the help of evolved establisted technique of the artist which fills the needs of hotel decoration & home decoration requirements

The Emerging Face of Global Contemporary Art

Our world, from the recent past, has started becoming smaller, more approachable and more graspable. It has started to reveal more and sometimes all. With the information technology advances and increasing speeds in the modes of transport, the rate of change on our planet has become faster and this rate of change will accelerate in future.
Consequently, a global face for every creative human endeavor will emerge. The global face of contemporary art has already started taking shape and can be sensed at the international contemporary art events, especially in the West. In these international contemporary art events, sometimes one is overawed by the scale, magnitude and the freedom of the creative experience, sometimes one feels intimidated, sometimes shouted at, sometimes, like a miniaturized disciple, listening to a commandment and sometimes one encounters altered contexts, human scale and placements. The creative experience appears to be the celebration of material, technical virtuosity and sequences of the physical world. Most of these will exist till the event lasts and shall go into the information technology stores for existence. In these events, the conventional format creative visual experiences, hang in unobtrusive corners, like scolded children.
Artists will continue to use conventional formats for making paintings and sculptures. In search for new directions, sometimes sensational new directions, in the creative visual imagery, theatrical installations, ritual, information technology and altered biological code will be explored. In the international expositions of contemporary art, where a large number of artists from different countries will participate, more and more conceptual installation projects will be seen because these have better capability to establish the individuality of the creator and the identity of the work.
The age of art movements prolonging for a long time is over. Contemporary art in future will be an expression of an artist's creative concerns in his own creative visual imagery. His creative concerns will establish his point of reference in history and his creative visual imagery his identity. To be relevant, the artist will be under pressure to produce a substantial body of work before the world moves on.
Contemporary art in future will reflect an aggregate of the artist's local, regional and global consciousness. It will be relevant to the time and will reflect the perceptions of the future. Local, regional and global consciousness will enrich each other and start blending in many permutations and combinations to generate new creative directions. These will provide a balancing human factor and the possibility of immortality to the creation.
The initiative to shape the global face of contemporary art seems to have passed in the hands of the West. The older cultural identities are playing a minor or no role in its shaping. When complete, the features of the face will not represent an aggregate of all human conscience and creative aspirations.
India, China, as well as other countries of older cultural identities, have immense creative visual resource available for use and interpretation in contemporary and avant-garde contexts. These countries and regions have been contributing their share in the World's depository of the creative human endeavor. They have the capacity to generate their own thought processes and have the flexibility to receive, churn and imbibe in their own streams of thought, the alien creative influences and interactions to enthuse vitality, relevance and contemporariness to their art forms.
West has over-utilized its creative visual imagery and is looking around for new inspirations and directions. Older cultural identities can provide inputs for new directions in contemporary art. West is required to alter its codes and references to judge and appreciate creative visual directions of the East. Such and similar happenings will keep the global face of contemporary art creative, human and alive, representative of our past, our present and our future and of this world and beyond. These interactions will help to rationalize creative visual tendencies, emerging on the horizon, to alter and use the nature’s biological code.
Ved Nayar
(This article was printed in the book, Indian Contemporary Art, published by Masanori Fukuoka in 1993. Some additions & modifications have been made in the article)