This last week has been a whirlwind of art activity. Many solo shows were opened and I, who has been such a believer of the dictum of art for art’s sake, wondered why they were launching shows when the buyer base has eroded thanks to lopsided ways of the art market. But then I kicked myself — for surely there is more to art than merely selling it. After all, artists also want to share their creative impulses with audiences — preferably rasikas or connoisseurs who understand the raison de etre of their art.
Having said this, I truly wonder where are the rasikas? Odious as it may be, if art is equated to a commodity, then its consumers too would be people who know what they like and why, but I find that often it is not the case. The most acceptable (read understood) art is the one that is able to reach out to the largest number of people. By that logic, the success of calendar art is the perfect corollary. I remember during early years, my mother, mother-in-law and other people of that generation all had some calendars of Gods and Goddesses in practically every room of the house. Then it became photographs of specific temples or at best landscapes that adorned the walls. It was as late as the 90s did they finally allowed paintings of subjects other than religious icons or landscapes to be hung in the house.
If art has managed to upgrade its status, it is thanks to its “producers” and the media, which has made the effort to create a “consumer” base that in turn has broadened considerably over the last two decades. After all, like music preferences of each generation that sets them apart, so is it with art. This generation of the urban middle class and upper class, which may or may not be able to attend dance concerts or music recitals or art shows, still wants to keep in touch with what is happening, and surely makes time to read about the arts.
But what have we done with this base? Instead of nurturing it and educating it further, we have dried up their cultural need by not giving them enough to read about the arts. Everyone may not necessarily want to go through the jargonised writing that is the hallmark of most art catalogues, but will want to read an intelligent and reasonably worded piece on the subject. But then most national media has either no space or no readable reviews that de-code the arts for them.
This paucity of space in the national media for art criticism has resulted in breakdown of serious evaluation of merit. Result being that society columns are used as watermarks for evaluations. But this is also like the proverbial egg and chicken syndrome — there is a paucity of serious writers on the arts, and so no point in devoting space for the arts. Having seen this from the vantage point of being an art critic/writer, followed by training in art curating and now as an artist — one can say categorically that all these factors are long-term problems and need long-term solutions if Indian art has to take the next leap forward towards making a wide audience base and one that eventually leads to global positioning of our arts.
The other large support base for the arts is its students. This is an area that is not addressed by anyone in the art sector. Visit any gallery during the week and you will come across a large number of art students making the effort to visit shows. They come and study the works, sit there to do sketches, take pictures in their phone cameras — though I wonder what they do with it — and sometimes even make a nuisance of themselves by asking pesky questions, but still they do it. Galleries could do their bit by either making pamphlet-like write ups available for them, perhaps put it on social media for wider dissemination or take requests for emailing pictures or texts — these are baby steps, but will go a long way in tapping into the next generation of art “consumers”.
All of us in the arts sector — creators, consumers, sellers, buyers, gallerists, private and public patrons, curators, critics, media barons who allocate space for the arts must do our bit towards sensitising the existing rasikas and make new ones. The idea is to create an art movement that is self-sustaining and not dependent only on government patronage; it is instead able to forge private-public partnerships that firmly put us on the global art map — as proud inheritors of our regional peculiarities and heritage.

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com