Appreciating Shocker as Artwork or Accepting Disgust

I was determined to complete translating one chapter of the 19^th century novel I was struggling with since last two months. Not because it was a great work of literature but it gives view of the ideology followed by people – educated Bengali upper crust in the colonial period. But no, there are a lot of elements in the world to distract me – I am not Lord Shiva!

As I opened my laptop last evening to start typing, I found a pop-up message – I was happy that a new magazine tracked me from somewhere of the world which my antivirus didn’t find to be a threat – these bring the world to me. I opened and its language was unknown - some East European language which uses a script I cannot read. So there was no way to read. Then I looked at the pictures and the first thing came to mind was: do I look like a man in my social media profile pictures? Numerous pictures of male photo models told me it was a gay magazine. Irrespective of gender, most of the model’s bodies, being creations of gym trainers and cosmetic surgeons, seemed very unnatural to me; neither have I found dressed-chicken like human-bodies to be sensual. And this lead me to another thought: Why don’t I find a photograph interesting or pleasing which probably many others in the world do? Some of these photographs of different postures created by human bodies are artworks for sure!

What is art? Does every language of the world have a word equivalent to English “Art” or German “Kunst” or French “L’art” or Sanskrit “Shilpa”? I am too ignorant. But every geography of the world, every community of the world, be in the Singapore skyscraper or in stone-age Andaman-localities, acknowledges the idea of art and produces some or other artistic creation. Difference is – “civilized” humans know that “art” is an idea interwoven with “aesthetics” whereas “uncivilized” – I don’t know whether they are all aware of the term. At least the potters and village painters I had a chance to interact with, don’t.  Did the prehistoric people of 35000 years back, who left some sample of ancient artworks for us, had an idea of art and aesthetics as definition? Probably yes, probably no, we will never know the answer. But do the photographs of the ancient Shamanic works or some ancient sculptures, those I find pretty attractive, arouse the same feeling to everyone in the world? No and never – I am sure. Whereas I am amazed at some simple lines drawn by an artist using plain pencil and paper, my friends are not. That makes an artwork different from manufactured goods of utility. Both the goods of utility \ craftwork and artworks involve some amount of imagination. But a manufactured product is created with certainty, that it would attract the attention of all users and potential users of the world whereas in case of an artwork, the artist never knows who it would reach and when. Creating artwork is driven by artist’s urge of self expression, not necessarily with a purpose of remaking the world as seen, but may be re-creating the world through their imagination. And when it comes to artist’s imagination, linking the artist’s imagination to the audiences becomes important. And here lies the difficulty in reaching consensus. 

Creating artwork is retelling personal experience through personal imagination. But the moment the artist looks for a validation of his\her experience and imagination from the viewer\ audience to give a meaning to the creation of artwork, he exposes himself to the risk of being rejected. We gather personal experience from the surroundings we are brought up in – and this environment differs a lot depending on geography, community, race, religion, economy, period and everything those define our cultural ethos! Even if we consider a person’s ‘imagination’, this develops as the person grows – again in particular geographic, social, political and economic environment. Isn’t it really difficult to impress a middle aged Indian lady brought up in middle class East Indian family environment with the picture of a post-modern European body art? Is it so easy to convey the culture and learning of post-modern civilized world to those whose sense of aesthetics tell that the most beautiful people of the world are to be found on the walls of numerous temples scattered in India?

Critics say, it is limitation of our knowledge that prevents us from praising things we didn’t experience before. Hence one needs to learn to view artwork – preferably from a modern western viewpoint and develop an open mind to appreciate radicalism in art – to find beauty in the disgusting. Question is – is it really needed to appreciate the disgusting? Indian commoners do not fail to appreciate Altamira’s bison or Michelangelo’s David or even Degas’ dancers. Now is it a must to find a sensual beauty in a dressed chicken on the table? Or modern aesthetics is about creating some shocking or disgusting experience – and the viewer have to accept a new definition - whatever upsets is an artwork?