ABJECT DART

Those less inclined to court controversy fall back on evergreen anodyne nationalist nostalgia,such as representations of Gandhi. In Delhi,artist Krishen Khanna is planning a mural of the Dandi March at a 14-ft rain shelter. Along with Gandhiji,Id like to include the 90-odd people who walked along with him, says Khanna. Its important to remember the effort of the common man too.

In Chennai,previous dispensations have put up statues in accordance with votebank opportunism or party philosophy. While J Jayalalitha erected statues of Thevar leaders,the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam DMK honoured Tamizh culture all the way down the scenic Marina Beach promenade,with statues of epic poet Thiruvalluvar or epic heroines like Kannagi. The DMK has also made several additions in their current reign.

There are two visible beautification drives weve taken up, says Chennai Corporation Commissioner Rajesh Lakhoni. Over the past year,we installed 15 sculptures celebrating old dance forms of Tamil Nadu on traffic islands. Also,weve got murals on many walls,depicting folk stories and traditional dance forms like Bharatnatyam.

In Bangalore,the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike BBMP has hired about a hundred local artists to paint on about 60 walls and underpasses murals depicting mythical and wild animals,idyllic landscapes,Karnataka temples and people lounging about in traditional attire. SS Khandre,PRO,BBMP,says ex-commissioner Bharat Lal Meena selected specific themes to go with specific locations: He conceptualised paintings of heritage sites and tourist spots along the airport road,environmental themes along Bannerghatta Road,patriotic messages on school walls and health information on hospital walls.

Lakhoni thinks such sentimental representations of rural idylls,traditional culture and folk art have a dual purpose. They remind urban people about their heritage,and help avoid all the political graffiti or posters which would otherwise be there, counters critic Sadanand Menon. This is just the creation of historic nostalgia in a manipulative sense. Its tacky,its kitsch,theres no logic to it. Why just folk art,why this outdated realism?

Hyderabad-based architect Shankar Narayan has similar misgivings about the politician-endorsed funerary art taking over Necklace Road around Hussainsagar Lake in the heart of the city. While NT Rama Rao had installed statues of Telugu luminaries along Tank Bund Road there,subsequent regimes each added memorials to deceased leaders: NTR,D Sanjeevaiah and,most recently. PV Narasimha Rao. A memorial is also being planned for YS Rajasekhara Reddy,who died in a copter crash last September,but Narayan dropped out of the committee,which was to select the art,in protest of its location. This prime public space is being usurped by a political class, says Narayan. Its rapidly turning into a necropolis,and we should not allow that.

The essential difference between these spectacles of political opportunism and public art as it is practised in the West can be encapsulated in a single word: Chicago. It has,among other gems,Joan Mirós stunning abstract earth deity,a dramatic Picasso which looks strangely like a baboon in a head-dress,Alexander Calders spectacular blood-orange flamingo contemplating itself on the glassy buildings around it and,of course,Anish Kapoors shiny Cloud Gate,warping the horizon along with the faces of many a gleeful self-portrait taker. Its a star-cast of sculptors,while wed have a nameless artist who happened to be signed up by the lowest bidder to a PWD tender. More crucially,all of it is selected and maintained by a public art committee. Its ridiculous for a city to embark on public art projects without having a public art commissioner, says Menon. Without that,it is just whimsical political propaganda.

Artist Bose Krishnamachari,whos engaged in small-scale public art projects with Mumbai police stations,agrees: The PWD should have art consultants on their board,they should hire someone without bias someone who will not promote an artist just because he or she is related to someone in the government.
Some might argue that nationalist propaganda is all our museum-shy public is capable of understanding. That,or fountains and fibreglass pineapples. The latter can be seen in the kitsch wonderland thats NTR Gardens in Hyderabad,while fountains are commonplace,particularly in cities with chronic water shortage such as Chennai,Delhi and Chandigarh. Public art-as-amusement is often our city planners idea of accessible,popular art. Many pieces of public art are placed in the midst of water bodies,approached by happy couples and picnicking families in pedal-boats. The monolithic Buddha lost in the middle of Hussainsagar Lake is popularly viewed via ferry.

In Mumbai,Thanksy Thekkekara,principal secretary,PWD,says the proposed Shivaji statue is intended as a tourist spot like the Statue of Liberty,replete with water sports and trips to the artificial island. Meanwhile,to continue with the water theme,busty mermaids finned versions of Savitha Bhabhi in clingy Puranic bandeaux appear to have slithered out of the sea and stationed themselves on Juhu Chowpatty beach.

Sumit Kaur,chief architect at Chandigarhs Department of Urban Planning,says the new Disneyfied public art is merely a response to the taste of a new generation. Things are changing. Tastes change,requirements change,materials change. One has to adjust to what the new generation wants, she says. In a city so defined by Le Corbusiers spare,classical aesthetic,as reflected in his Open Hand sculpture,this new attitude might explain the incongruous fibreglass sculptures of rustic Sikh farmers in festive garb,the dolphins frolicking in a fountain beside the IT Park sponsored by the Haryana Urban Development Authority HUDA,and the lit-up replica of the Eiffel Tower in the sculpture garden opposite the National Museum that is used as a climbing frame by kids in the evening.

There was also a dummy windmill near the lake,and one is glad the eyesore has since collapsed, says MN Sharma,who became the first Indian chief architect of the State of Punjab and Chandigarh in 1965. He was behind the bird fountain at the City Centre,made in harmony with Corbusier-style architecture. However,they have started putting up tile murals all over the city,entirely out of consonance with the classical,simple decor of Chandigarh.

Thousands from around Andhra Pradesh flock to NTR Gardens in Hyderabad everyday. They squeal down the water slide snaking around its fibreglass tree of life,bedecked with monkeys,bats,bananas,and papayas. They photograph one another in front of the reptile-covered fountain at its entrance,and the outsized pineapple-house in its garden. Blissful couples hold hands as they stroll past gigantic toadstools and splay-legged beetles. Some people may find all this tacky, concedes BP Acharya,commissioner,Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority HMDA,but its pleasant,and sometimes you have to choose between whats classy and whats good for the masses,who would not be able to relate to Picasso and other such great art.

While this intent-to-entertain justifies the choice of Nitish Roy,Bollywood set designer,to plan the parks fibreglass fruit bowl and plastic menagerie,architect Narayan thinks even kitsch can be linked to politics,with many filmstars turning politicians. Film is wrapped in politics in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, says Narayan. In Chennai,you have grotesque,out-of-proportion projections of culture,and in Hyderabad,you see 80-ft-tall billboards of movie stars before film releases and elections. Public art by set designers is an extension of this.

Acharya,an IAS officer,may be indulgent towards film-set art,and will refrain from commenting on the popularly vandalised granite dogs and roosters on dividers beneath flyovers,installed during YSRs regime,but hes made some more international additions of his own. Were behind the YSR memorial project,for which weve appointed a committee to shortlist proposals,and we have also launched the Eco Art project in Sanjeevaiah Park this year. This features the LED-lit work of local artist Manohar Chiluveru,who confects human figures out of scrap-metal. There are also,of course,fountains,which lie empty and eco-friendly.

In Chennais spanking new IT corridor,three years ago,the Tamil Nadu Road Development Company TNRDC commissioned about 15 pieces of public art,across the road from a lonesome Ambedkar statue,locked away in a cage. But the project was abandoned halfway,and many of the pieces lie incomplete,dirty,and are draped in faded underwear by passersby. They funded all these in the patronising manner of old rajas intending,no doubt,to showcase their pretensions to modernity along this new IT corridor, says critic Sadanand Menon. But afterwards,they have shown no empathy for whatever theyve sponsored. The art works are untended,unlit and uncared for. The paint has peeled,the metal has rusted and people piss on it. Much of it has also been left incomplete. Like artist Dashrath Patels homage to agni,a 30-ft-tall concrete sculpture whose red and yellow plumes were supposed to flicker like flames in a beam of light thrown from a trough of water at its base. Theyve insulted the artist by neither respecting the work nor executing his intention. First,the square trough,which had a tilt and couldnt retain water,was broken and remade. Then the water was used as a pool by street children. So the authorities got worried,and drained out the water. Nowhere would a leading artists work be treated so shabbily, says Menon.

As dire as this landscape of kitsch and propaganda may seem,there are ample funds to fix it. For brave,new public art to be commissioned,though,somebody needs to find a brave,new auditor. It is mandatory that any government building should direct 2 per cent of its funds towards public art, says artist Anjolie Ela Menon,however in my experience there is never any accountability for these funds.
Hope may yet be on the horizon. For the 2010 Commonwealth Games,the New Delhi Municipal Corporation has commissioned a number of projects by a range of artists,including Faridabad-based artist Gagan Vij,senior Delhi-based sculptor Latika Katt,the internationally acclaimed installation artist Anish Kapoor and even possibly a bristly metal tree of life from Khagauls finest,Subodh Gupta. Perhaps that will persuade us to look beyond amusement parks and spectacles of cloying nationalism._ With inputs from V Shoba in Bangalore