In 1934, Bertold Brecht wrote “ the courage to write truth , although it is being suppressed; the intelligence to recognize it, although it is being covered up; the judgment to choose those in whose hands it becomes effective; the cunning to spread it among them” as an essential responsibility of artist in his socially conscious aesthetical argument.
Nearly 82 years after these words, interestingly it still remains valid and resonate among the cold corners of human life, where socio-cultural integrity of artist as an individual is now becoming more and more a complex paranoia of a social elitism and its aesthetic manifestations.
Historically in western art, post war Dada artists onwards, the rebel individuality as an artist remained a complicated negotiation of individual aspiration among social hierarchy and its appropriation. Even as many pretended to be carried the expressions of reactionary or revolt in terms of form, media and exploration against social conventions and structures, unfortunately all these expressions were historically resulted in creating more and more structures and hierarchy by way of negating the socio-cultural egalitarianism, something these movements were envisaging. Elaborately speaking these isms have only resulted in creating more heroes, more powerful and more discriminatory structures through opportunistic appropriation of aesthetical construct of society by individuals to advance his or her aspirations for elite social mobility. Here art was not even a medium but was a handy method.
The scenario was not different in India as well. Except for progressive art group, most of the modern art movements in India were originated or sustained within institutional establishments and its socio-political priorities including academic interest. The loosely formulated Radical art group of Baroda though had it's strains rooted in an anti- establishment idealism, the way it was operationalised unfortunately turned out to be a copy of DADA mode of practice, something in the west by then it was an established pop culture - a moderated and theoretically contextualised historical individual that an average urban elitist considered as an ideal ' cool rebel'. Progressive art group also got dissipated as fast as it was formulated, as most of the artist from that group got into their own streams of establishments. An important point to be highlighted about this group is, even at the thick and thin of art and market turmoils, they were successful in maintain their aesthetical integrity till today.
Today, as art is considered as an investment - it’s validity is yet to be established as a sustainable economic model, the artist as a manufacturer or designer of aesthetics certainly has reached an unethically enormous dilemma. Considering the tectonic shifts that are shaping up public morality and ethics across the world-something a contextual negotiation of individual priorities and needs; today if one can discard the notions of public acceptance as a socially relevant individual, one needs not remain part of the established idea of rebel or socially conscious artist like those post war DADA moment artists.
Since aesthetics can not be a monopoly of a particular socio-economic strata or political argument considering its universal relevance and human priority, every strata of society has the right to demand their idea of aesthetics in a democratic society. Considering it is a human necessity to be aesthetically relevant and conscious to be a functional individuality in a complex social order and citizenship, there has to be artists of every jeunere from embellishments to protagonists being relevant in society.
But unfortunately, the socio-cultural and historical baggage that art practices carry today is way more than a mere aesthetic need than one could overlook or disengage . That is the reason, inspite of the wishful thinking of artists and its patrons are becoming louder and louder to the scale of shriek, the post seventy investment driven economy of aesthetical market today stand failed and remain desperate. Their push for dislocating the basics of human location and cultural identity from art under the garb of a larger emancipated global sensibility and market capitalisation, art today stands traumatic under the present global scenario of socio-political chaos and economic decline.
Interestingly keeping in line with 20th century artistic movements and engagements, even if they had the inherited structures of hierarchy, today art should have responded and resurrected humanity like in those difficult days human tragedy.
But art today is not a messiah but it stands accused as culpable and artist the perpetrator
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