Gone are the days of the unreasonable man that George Bernard Shaw said was the cause of all progress. The post-Partition and post Second World War generation was far more progressive, more willing to take risks, more willing to experiment, more willing to step out of the cocoon of the tried-and-tested to explore and hone their creative genius. Perhaps the immediacy and “momentary-ness” of living in those times impelled them forward and was far more acute in their psyche. It is another matter that many of them may have floundered along the way and may never have rejoined the mainstream, but for every genius who never came back, there were many more who did and were like beacons of light for generations after.
If one looks at the trajectory of the artists from this era — be it M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Krishen Khanna, J. Swaminathan — they continue to remain pioneers in their own special way for they dared to walk the untrodden to create afresh.
The more I see this generation, the more I wonder if they will ever have the courage to find their own direction and path. I hate to qualify it, but lamentably, they seem quite content to pursue their careers rather than their calling. The only rebellion one sees is in their appearance. That is as outward as it can get. Many of the younger generation artists I find have got it all figured out. That is nice from the point of view that frowns upon taking risks and instead renders one safe and boring from the viewpoint of those who believe in living dangerously. Experimentation within controlled parameters is like mixing an already known formula — how much new can that be? Or maybe they are smarter than the earlier generation whose path was that much arduous and they have learnt their lessons from the previous generations and don’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel.
Or have we created a selfish “I, me, myself” generation? Having suffered ourselves, we have tried to molly-coddle our progeny from the vicissitudes of the business of life and living. When M.F. Husain or Bhimsen Joshi or Kelucharan Mohapatra died, many of us had regretted that there will be none to surpass their genius. True. But equally true is the fact that the age of icons is over. The individualistic generation is unwilling to accept the supremacy of another’s creative hegemony. As it is, visual arts is such an individualistic medium that unlike folk or classical arts, there can be no real followers. So where does it leave the tech-savvy, super-smart generation? Right here: Where the action is!
But then art is a strange mistress. Those under her spell are ruined for life. For the joy of her forbidden fruit are many. It never ceases to amaze me that considering there are so many impediments on the way, there are still so many takers for it. In so many ways, this is a phase of transition where so many older patterns of working and thought are giving way to the new — for instance the new, fangled way of composing a painting on the computer screen rather than sketching it — who would have thought it possible a decade ago? But this is a reality that is most definitely here to stay and will increasingly find many more takers. Just as the grammar of a language changes with time, so do its metaphors and that is exactly what is happening in the context of contemporary arts across the board. But give me the old fashioned rebel any day — for in them are the seeds of greatness!
Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art curator and an artist