Written by V Nagdas
Days of crisis make one think of one’s creative interiority which has been quelled by materialistic ambitions along the path of one’s own progress in life. Cloistered and quarantined by an unexpected turn of events in the world, be it a war or pestilence, human beings look inward to find solace. Art comes next to god. When people are rudderless in the ocean of pain, they take the lifeboats of art to survive. We witnessed it during those two long gloomy years of the pandemic.
Suddenly, art became alive, at a time when almost everyone thought it was the end of art and its conventions. The Lalit Kala Akademi, too, survived those dark days. Today, standing in the open, under the sun, once again, this great institution of art has become the hope and converging point of artists and creative ideas from all over the country.
The year 2008 was a watershed moment in the history of the world economy. When the international financial market collapsed, the art market, too, got shaken up, leaving many artists scrambling for sustenance. Interestingly, the growth rate of the art market had been fast since the late 1990s and peaked in the new millennium till the grand collapse in 2008.
The Indian art scene withstood the shock for some more time only to succumb to the financial pressures. The Lalit Kala Akademi’s role in the Indian art scene has to be seen against this economic reality. When there were no private galleries and an organised market structure, it was the Akademi that buoyed the hopes of Indian artists. Then the market opened up and many left the Akademi for greener pastures.
The Akademi, being an autonomous and democratic organisation working under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture, cannot cater only to the “preferred aesthetics” propagated and promoted by private galleries and their domestic and international networks. India’s composite and complex cultural expressions cannot be defined by any singular aesthetic practice, nor can the Akademi become an interface for “elite aesthetics” in order to play the role of a recruiting agency for the mainstream art market. The Akademi has to cater to the expressions of the multitude without losing focus and compromising on quality. It has to be inclusive in various aspects, including in the selection of artists from different age categories, genders and regions.
The Lalit Kala Akademi has regional centres and sub-centres in various parts of the country including Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Lucknow, Kolkata, Tripura, Shimla, etc. They regularly do workshops, exhibitions, seminars and other outreach programmes, apart from implementing the special projects of the Government of India in general, and the Ministry of Culture, in particular. These centres, besides doing independent projects, help us in getting artists from various disciplines and genders. The Lalit Kala Akademi is not a discriminatory body — it has projects and programmes not only for folk and tribal artists but also for promoting and propagating these genres among modern and contemporary artists across various platforms.
A cursory look at the recently concluded National Exhibition of Art (63rd NEA) would explain these. All the projects and programmes are documented and preserved so that future generations can make use of them. A well-stocked library and an archiving system are in place and are used by art students, researchers and enthusiasts regularly. Whenever we need an upgrading of systems within the Akademi, we do that in consultation with the Ministry of Culture. The Akademi’s art collection, grown over the years through purchases and art workshops, now runs in thousands. There are many works of the great masters of Indian modernism in this stock. We have been doing masters’ exhibitions in collaboration with various regional centres and art guilds so that people from different parts of India get a chance to see their original works.
With digital technology and AI taking the upper hand in the creation of visual images, fine arts done through intellectual conceptualisation and manual execution have chances of becoming a thing of the past. However, the charm of art done directly by human agency never fades. There may be curiosity around the works of art generated by AI but sooner or later, they will become another tool in the hands of artists to create unique artworks. In the age of digital and AI reproduction, talking about the uniqueness of artworks may sound a bit funny for there are chances of them getting copied, compromised, manipulated and represented by said technologies. Their proliferation cannot be restricted because of internet penetration.
The biggest challenge that the Lalit Kala Akademi faces in the coming days will be the question of authenticity and patenting of a work of art. The Akademi has been trying to catch up with emerging technologies and tech-based art by adding adequate elements to its available infrastructure. While such efforts could accentuate the quality of the exhibition, it does not have the legal means to patent a particular work of art or expression.
Artists who are promoted by private galleries virtually get patent protection through the registration of private ownership of their works of art. But the Akademi, as of now, does not have such patent protecting rights. The only available means are traditional print publications. The question of patenting art and images should not be confined to an issue of the Lalit Kala Akademi alone but of all stakeholders in the art scene. We have plans to organise a seminar on the issue of patenting the images/art, including those of tribal and folk people, too.
The writer is chairman, Lalit Kala Akademi
