On the dominance of art

This is a thought I had a few hours back, and thought I’d put it down in order to see what else I discovered along the way.

Where is art? Art, today, is broad. I’ll save you all the jargon and leave it at “omnipresent”. Furthermore, it is discernible to the human eye not through the straightforward impact it has on the human mind, but through the interpretation it is often subjected to, the kind of interpretation that enables it to yield an inadvertent variety. There is art in a little girl’s frock that I might not see but you might. There is art in what seems like “noisy music” to the ardent death metal fan. One can only opine, but one can’t ever judge on the beauty of things. As an absolutist, I do believe that art has an absolute form, but I also believe that humankind can never produce it. To me, this ‘absolute art’ lies in our creation, our form, our purpose, and the meaning we come to infuse in our respective individual existences.

What is happening? Before I digress further, let me come to the point. The first argument I have to make is on the commercialization of perspective. By this, I have to borrow some ideas from the capitalist economy. In such economies, demand and supply are the primary influencing factors. The best way to vary their effect on the market is to alter the elements that generate them in the first place: the products, and the money. Both the producer and the purchaser handle them in sufficient amounts, but in capitalism, greater power is given to the purchaser. Similarly, in the world of art, we have landed up in an age of inevitable commercialization of all things beautiful (or not). These could have been due to various reasons, many of which I am incapable of pursuing, but it is indeed that because of one phenomenon: art forms of one type seem to have larger markets than art forms of another – as opposed to a reduced disparity some decades before.

Klimt’s ‘Golden Adele’ (1907), sold for $135 million

What is the effect this has had? This has led to the generation of strong influences that, more often than not, decide how many people look at a specific form of art. Take up the example of paintings and pottery. The great auction houses of London, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, are known to have sold paintings for upwards of a few million pounds. Has anyone ever heard of pottery being sold for that much? Why not? Ignoring a possible anthropological difference, the quickest conclusion is that the difference in demands is immense. Why is the demand immense? Because the works are valuable and provide for easy investment options. Why are they so valuable? Because their predecessors too held the same kind of value. And where did they obtain such values? From the people who bought them, the people who existed in that period. Although times have changed, perceptions have been held on to, often not in keeping with the contemporary conditions.

And what has this led to? In order to capitalize on what looks like an eternally growing market, artists will now begin to focus on paintings more than anything else – often irrespective of what their interests are. The utilitarian demands of life do surface at some points, and they cannot thus be blamed. Although what is happening cannot be termed a ‘crime’ and someone taken to task, this biased focus will magnify down the line, ultimately threatening to completely vaporize the market for a form of art that does not yield monetarily.

What can we do? If the effect is widespread, we can only make a difference over long periods of time. However, at the same time, we have no right to tell others what to appreciate and what not to appreciate. If you ask me, what we can do is make people aware of such effects. Instead of subduing the dominant art form, we can nurture the growth of the ignored.

What's left of a feeling…

Have you ever been on a boat ride that’s taken you through different feelings across a few minutes? I just took one myself today. In Dubai, the two most happening areas, Deira and Bur Dubai, are separated by the creek, across which small boats ferry passengers for as little as 50 fils (6 rupees). Me and a couple of friends had gone there for some filming work, and by the time we took the boat ride, it was dusk.

The Abra, which is the whole creek and all the boats with it, separates the city into two regions. The Deira side is sprinkled with all these skyscrapers and headquarters of MNCs. The Bur Dubai side, on the other hand, has managed to retain what’s left of the old Dubai. If one were to stand on the Deira side and look towards the setting sun, a mosque on the Bur Dubai side surrenders a sharp silhouette to the scenery. If you’re lucky enough to have pigeons flapping in the sky just then, you could be looking at the horizon of Constantinople from the 17th century: it’s that beautiful.

Anyway, the boat ride lasts about 3 minutes. We were riding to Deira from Bur Dubai, and it was around 06.30 in the evening. The sun had set but the horizon had managed to retain a little orange, which when blended with the new inky blue looked magnificent. There was a large crowd mulling around us: today, Friday, is when most of the shopping is done. After that, they could all go back home, relax for a bit, and Saturday evenings would again have to be spent getting prepared for work on Sunday. The rush began to increase by the minute and the traffic on the roads almost doubled by the minute. A constant roar was setting in as the Abra ferries began to get busier. We managed to get into one boat and I snuggled myself between Benjy and a stranger on the right side of the boat, the one that would be facing the Bur Dubai shore line along with a temple and some trading shops there. The ferry started off, and I just sat there, gazing into the distance. This was my first time to the Abra, and although this water ride was commonplace to all those around me, I found it fascinating.

When we were at the middle of the creek, some lights that came on just then caught my eye. The back of those trading buildings were being lit by green, pink, blue and red lights. It was dark by now (the sun set is quick here in the Middle East, especially in late winter). The whole stretch of land in front of me was dark except for this psychedelic patch. It was so beautiful, I can’t tell you. It surely was a welcome change from the yellow of the sodium vapour lamps thats lit up the roads and highways, and more of a welcome change from the drab and blunt white of the tubelights inside the shops. Some new colours for a newcomer.

I wanted to look at those lights forever. I knew the feeling I held within me just then would not last long; it would in all probability fade as soon as we got to Deira City Centre, with all its perpendicular and unimaginative modernities. I wanted to hold on to that feeling. The stranger beside me was almost sleeping – his head was nodding unmindful of the rocking of the boat. He should have been a tired labourer enjoying his week end roaming around the city, and Benjy was silent, thinking of something to himself. I was undisturbed, and the lights were there, lighting up what would otherwise have been a pale yellow wall. There not just the shadows you get that are black, but also different colours born from them mixing with each other.

Just then, there was jerk. We had arrived at Deira, the unabashed concrete jungle. I don’t how many peoplehad seen those colours like I had, or even better, but I’m sure they would only have been a few. Most of them are busy with their own work anyway, and I don’t think many have the time to sit back and devote a few minutes of their lives to enjoying the hidden beauties in their lives. We all say we have no time when asked such questions, but I don’t time is the problem. If only for a moment we realise that we have let some routines dictated by our bosses at work dominate our lives, we will also realise that we need not surrender what’s left of those lives to money and materialism. True joy lies in being able to appreciate what nature has given us, not what we have made for ourselves.

If I were given one more chance to ride the ferriec across the Abra, I would. I’d like to see if I can get those feelings. Whatever’s left of that feeling, I’ve put it down here so I can come back some other time and reminisce.

The Silent Rhetoric Of Salvador Dali

The only thing I like about paintings is how I can interpret them in so many ways if they do leave room for that. Not many works of art can inspire such a feeling. When you see something, you usually believe it for what it is. You don’t want to investigate, you don’t want to spend further time on your part trying to contrive a different meaning than what is perceived the first time. If you look at the ‘Mona Lisa’, the background and the use of colours brings out the ordinariness of the subject, but on further retrospection, her smile seems to stand out: it is mysterious. Is she up to something? Such power they have, to not say a word but speak many. Anyone who has seen the ‘Mona Lisa’ will not forget it – and that is not only because Da Vinci painted it. It’s an image that transforms into a memory, which enables you to build a picture out of it. So also for that matter, ‘The Persistence of Memory’ by Salvador Dali. His surrealism is unknown to me, so also his devices and his intentions. I don’t even want to be taken as a commentator on this subject, but I’d like to let you know what I feel when I see that painting. The bent clocks and timepieces are Dali’s signature, and they may represent the timelessness of the images we have in our head. Like I said, when you see something, it stays built as an image in your head. When you see the ‘Mona Lisa’ again, you can recollect, you can map them, you can analyse and compare them.

This is not a pipe

With Dali, the painting doesn’t only represent the timelessness of your imagerial history, but the imagerial history itself. Not like Rene Magritte’s “this is not a pipe”. Dali has recreated a memory itself, and has used it to showcase the immortality it has inherited by being, again, a memory.
When I see the clocks, I think they must be useless now, since they seemed to be so out of shape. But would the clocks still work? Maybe, like Magritte again, it is not to be construed as a clock but as the image of a clock. Even if it were the image of a clock, such a thing would have a hard time working. Or probably it’s the image of two clocks intersecting one another while Dali erased out the other half of their non-intersecting parts.

The Persistence of Memory

Further, if you were to assume a more simplistic approach towards it, like a kid would, you’ll have more to think of. By thinking like an adult, you look at the painting either with the assumption that is, after all, only an image and not to be confused with a snapshot of reality, or with the assumption that Dali is crazy. A child doesn’t do that: children don’t yet have the capacity to attribute the creator with some traits by perceiving his or her creations, as it were. Anyway, from a simplistic point of view, what do you see? There’s a bent clock on the edge of a platform, upon which a leafless stub of a plant stands. On its one twig hangs another bent clock. What looks like a table can be seen in the left background, and some sort of a cliff on the right. The skies are apparently clear. There is also an elephant-like crumpled piece of, probably, cloth on the ground with another bent clock lying on it. A water body in the distance completes the image, or I think it does. Is there an elephant underneath that cloak? If so, what is an elephant doing there? And why are there so many bent clocks? What happened to the normal clocks? Or did someone do this to them? Is this an image from Dali’s memory? Or is this an imagination> And what is that table doing there if no one can be seen around? Perhaps someone left it behind. If you asl me, I see whole lot of things. I see things that don’t have a meaning! Consider this: semiotics, which is the study of symbols and their usage in language, also tends to take into account the symbols in nature that are there but cannot be seen. For example, consider three identical trees standing in a line.

1. If you were to look at them head-on, you will see only one tree.
2. If you were to step a little to the side and look, you will see the three of them, but understanding that they are one behind the other, you will ignore their difference in heights.
3. If you were to step to the side and forget that they are one behind the other, and if the tress are in the distance, you will see three trees standing one beside the other in a straight line.

If you were to argue like this, each symbol will have a hundred different interpretations, and hundreds of symbols can be construed to have the same meaning in one form or the other.

Similarly, if ‘The Persistence of Memory’ were to be considered just as an image, and all the elements in the image as belonging to one larger component, then Dali’s masterpiece has a clock that is not actually dangling from a branch but is crawling on the ground with a part of itself forming an umbrella over the branch. But why?

However, if you take the images in the painting as independent of each other, then maybe the clocks went for a swim in the water and are now drying themselves. Or maybe someone wanted to wash them, so that someone soaked them in the water and let them to dry. Or maybe that someone was there until a few minutes before Dali himself arrived the scene – that would explain the clock lying there on that cloth, the clock being used to wipe the clocks clean. On second thought, that would explain a lot of things. That would explain the table (but a tree growing out of that platform?), the shape of the clocks, the cloth on the ground, and probably even the sky.

And if you were to place this whole image/story that we’ve built into your heads, another story can be expected to stem from it, one that is morally, pictorially and metaphorically related to what is now a memory of yours. I enjoy working on painting like this, unlike my college textbooks, which if wrongly interpreted spell doom for me! The freedom of expression, if you ask me, are only useful if you can imagine. If you can’t, if you want to stick to what seems normal and finds approval with the society in general, than you don’t deserve the freedom. Dali’s painting deserves to be interpreted in many different ways not because it allows for it, but because each interpretation is unique.

The Year So Far

THE YEAR SO FAR Today is the first day of December, my favourite month of the year. The most important reason for this is that it is the month which marks a periodic checkpoint in my life, giving it a sense of progress and growth. In other words, my birthday falls in this month! But if I were to widen my view and look down the various alleys of my life, I would still find December to be most favourable, the one month which brings a smile to my face. The year may have begun in January, but that is one month which only gives me a sense of time. I mean, January. So? It’s a new year. So? You gotta add 1 to the year you thought you were living in. Nothing more, or less, to that. Apart from telling me January was done with, February gives me a sense of freshness and rebirth. It is as if I were trapped in the all-pervading and ruthless claws of January, confined in the memory that time is just passing. Living in January is nothing like this, but these are the only things February tells me off. It must be angry that it couldn’t to be the first month.

March! March has always been white (swift), red (bloody), and blue (inspiring mania) to me. The days seem to just pass me by, even if I lay in a stupor in my room. Since I haven’t completed my education as yet, all these could be because it’s the last month before the examinations set in in April/May. I mean, March seems onomatopoeic to me. Away from the grasp of January, away from the melancholy of February, a new beginning to set us all off in the new year. March should have been the first month, even if it then poses a threat of assuming the overbearingness of January or the pride of February. To say March is here brings to mind the hammer and sickle of the Red Army, the eagle of the capitalists, the towering fortresses during the Dark Ages, a ceaseless clamour that is the voice of the people. Having lived through the first two months, the third one seems to say, “I am your King now! And I am a just King!”.

But all good things must come to an end. And they do with the advent of April, a queen so fair and deceitful that you only risk the possibility of betrayal. The summer is promised, but warm days don’t seem to prevail. You wait for the sunrise to begin sooner in the day, but the nights only yawn away even as you stand guard over the eastern horizon. April defeats the white of March, and brings it down to being the colour of a lily. April makes you sink into your couch in hopelessness – you have now lost the will to push on no matter what. Don’t you hear the name? April. So soft. Eight more months to go till you can hope for it, but in twelve, you will wish it hadn’t shown up. April is a tautology that speaks otherwise only in the puppetry of fate.

May. Ambiguity? I don’t know. The summer is hinted at again, but when warmer days do show up, you can mark the difference between this benevolent month and its vile predecessor. I can wake up in a morning of May, and walk out the door, into the streets, on and on till I am prompted to turn back for breakfast, lunch, or whatever it may be. “I understand what you have been through, but you will have to forgive me for my silence. I am just a month in twelve, and all I can hope to do in good faith is leave you alone”. Aahhh… don’t you think those words inspire a belief in you, a belief in yourself? In leaving you to deal with your wounds, May has so magnanimously offered to be around for thirty-one full days, while at the same time only coming to define the margins of the pages of your life: the month when you can think of scripting your own future.

In class 12, I had attended these IIT-JEE preparation classes, and we had an eccentric professor of inorganic chemistry handling one of the sessions. He said he thought the periodic table was a table comprising more than just metals: he said it had musical notes! It was never Iron, Cobalt, Nickel. It was always “Iron-Cobalt-Nickel”, with a little uplifting lilt in between to imbue a feeling of impending joy. And so is June-July-August! One for all and all for one, Athos, Porthos and Aramis have not only found themselves preserved in literature, but in time as well! June begins just like its name: a consonant neutral in its standing, not like the ‘M’ in ‘Mordor’ or the ‘I’ in ‘Imladris’, but just a silent, poetic, reasonable, and just ‘J’; going on to inspire a continuity with an end in ‘E’, an extension of the peace of May. July, which, for all I care, is the brother of June, prefers not to disturb the system, instead choosing to concede another month of ‘J’! However, August does not wish to portray a difference. August. Hmm… the name. Like the winds of change. A preparatory phase before you enter the sorrows of September. August demands that you stop and consider, but only for your own good, the road upon which you will now begin to travel. For the next three months do not ordain well.

The month with the longest name, September will always come to represent the beginning of an attempted contrast between itself, the orange of October, the green of November, and the dawn of December. Don’t you see it? The cunning that February couldn’t show in the disguise of its sorrow laden days, the deceit that April couldn’t guard in the folds of its betrayal, come forth in all their glory in the stretch of September. In my mind’s eye, I think you would see a dark smear on the pages of these thirty days. But there is something you should know before you move on to defile the ninth month: September doesn’t mean any of the things it happens to be the cause for. They happen because of the misguided expectations of man. When he is allowed a reprieve in the form of May, and a fulfilled promise in the form of the summer months, he only always asks for more. Schools have reopened, offices have reopened, life as it is has reopened, and mankind only ignorantly drowns in the utopia that is life as it should have been. But there is no such thing as a free lunch!

Did I say the ‘orange of October’? Interesting. I don’t know where that came from. But if the year were a parchment of old linen lying idly on my lap, the section that is October would have appeared faded. But I do know the reason for this fading: it is a decline of glory, a surrender. October has thrown up its arms in frustration. Time can no longer handle the foolishness of man. Something must be done. And in walks November, amidst drum rolls and crashing cymbals and roaring lions.

November is here, fool, and you will now learn your lesson! Despair not, for it is the will of Magnanimous Time that you deserve a second chance!

Remember the scene from ‘Lord of the Rings’, where Gandalf rides down the dunes with Eomer, leading the Rohirrim, beside him? And then the Uruk-Hai gather at the base with outstretched pikes and spears? And then Gandalf flicks the switch on his staff, whence pours forth a blinding light whose brilliance is stacked with the rising aura of the eastern sun? And then, the Uruk-Hai withdraw their pikes while they shield their eyes? Well, just cut out the light and aura parts of it, and you should quite a few horses succumb to the pointy sharpness of the pikes. That is November for you. You did not heed August; you must heed November. Stop to reconsider. Just once. At least once. One more month to go, and God knows which other month you eagerly wait for, but now, only December stands between you and the point of time that will make this year history!

But, you might argue, why November when December should have held these sessions of reconsideration? Why can’t December bear the brunt of the follies of man, and thereby also project a more sharper contrast with January? That way, the first month of the new year can boast of a new face. Let me tell you why.

December is here!

December is the end. How many ever starts there may have been in your life, each one happening after a fall, there will only be one end. If you were to observe the flame on the wick of an oil lamp, the fire will gain one last breath of fuel and go out not with a flicker, but in an appreciably small and daring fireball, only to leave you dangling in the ensuing darkness. The analogy? The fuel is the reconsideration of man, the fire is the dawn of December, the darkness is the change imposed in your life by thrusting you to the face of January! December will bless you for what you have done, December will punish you for your sins, and December will vindicate you in the end that is itself. The glee of the triple ‘E’, the impish pranks of but one ‘C’, the wholesome curvature of ‘D’, the imprisonment of ‘M’, the buoyancy of ‘B’, and the conclusivity of ‘R’. What more would you need? A peace loving soul in the hearts of growth, December has not only made itself to be so, but in the ignorantly chosen destiny of and by January, December is your last refuge.

And welcomes you with open arms!