:: Farrukh Dhondy

Nudists and other art installations

Farrukh Dhondy

"Astrology works,

The stars can think,

Two is three,

The sea is pink,

The lined palm

Can tell the truth,

Love is hate,

And Age is Youth"

From Kya Baath Hai Surr?

by Bachchoo

July.11 : Javed Akhtar, master poet and entertainer, read his work at the time of the London Book Fair at the Nehru Centre and very entertaining it was too. He subjected himself to questions from the audience and someone asked him what poetry was. He thought for a brief moment. The audience anticipated mischief, but he came up with a serious answer, one he had perhaps formulated and used before. "It’s the dream of language", he said and then, shielding his eyes from the glare of the spotlights illuminating the stage, asked, "Is that right Farrukh?"

I was taken unawares. I was sitting in the first row and didn’t realise that he had noticed that I was there. Of course, I was a bit embarrassed to be picked out of an audience that filled the hall and lined the wall. Why me?

"Yes, Javed, an original and very workable definition", I ventured. And I have often thought of it since. I’ve come up with a few definitions of my own. Javed’s applies to John Keats but not to Lord George Gordon Byron, to bits of T.S. Eliot and not to other bits, to John Milton but not to William Shakespeare, except when the metaphors come darting out of the subconscious and compel the senses as you listen or read.

Poetry, though it does inhabit this peculiar territory of arresting or enchanting language, is still language and language can always find definitions for itself. It’s when one comes to visual art and music or even wine tasting that words have to grope around in the mysteries of the other senses and try and make vocal, conceptual, articulate, what the evidence of the senses conveys.

Perhaps not absolutely with the visual arts. If one sees an exquisitely balanced Nataraj carving or a Caravaggio one can talk about the intent, the technique, the effect and evocation of the piece. But with "abstract" art this… Hey! Hold on! I stop in mid-sentence because just as Javed saab produced a definition on the spot, I have discovered the template of definition that professors of art schools have been struggling for since the advent of the Impressionists. (Readerji, don’t be intimidated by the name dropping. I actually know almost as little as you about it — but I have seen once, some pictures by Van Golf).

No, I have it! With abstract art one can talk about intent, technique, effect and evocation!

The formula works well for the latest Installation Art Work by the British artist Antony Gormley. Mr Gormley is known for making actors pose in different locations in and about a gallery in London. His art spills into the street and people wonder why a man in a peculiar not-quite-contemporary London street-wear costume, or wearing body paint, seems to be stuck in a pose on Blackfriars Bridge. Mr Gormley won’t explain, but the art professors will and will with intellectualisation and press coverage induce foundations and funders to pay for his next jape.

So it has come to pass. In Trafalgar Square, which as any Bengali schoolboy knows (Punjabi schoolboys know Times Square New York, US) is in the heart of London town, there are four plinths, platforms on which statues stand. The fourth plinth has lain traditionally empty for years and through three Mayoralty elections there have been plans, competitions and arguments about what to do with it. Some were in favour of putting a statue of the late Queen mother on the fourth plinth and others in favour of a statue of Nelson Mandela. Nothing was done and the plinth stood bare.

Now the Mayor of London, one Boris Johnson, has handed over the plinth to the arts and Mr Gormley has conceived a live installation which will occupy the plinth for the next 100 days. It will consist of living people who for 24 hours a day will stand on the plinth for an hour each and, being representatives of the people of England, will say and do what they like on the plinth for their hour of fame, will strut and fret upon the stage and then will be heard no more.

In fact, they will be taken off by a cherry-picker, a sort of box on a truck’s mechanical limb that takes the pluckers of fruit up to the branches and down again. And then the next candidate mounts the plinth. The people for all 2400 hours have been picked by computer to be a sampler of today’s Britain. Some of them will advertise and speak for causes, some of them will stand with their hands in their pockets or click cameras from the plinth and others will give speeches for their one hour of "being Art".

Already in the first day the plinth has gone "multicultural" and given Ishvinder Singh Matharu, 31 from Chigwell, East London, his hour of fame. Said Mr Matharu "I really believe that this is a brilliant opportunity for the general public to be involved in art. To me, the fourth plinth is important".

His pronouncement is not as impressive as that of Javed or for that matter as useful as my own test of art. (Forgotten what it was, but am what-do-you-call-it-ing back on the computer screen to check).

Yes! The formula is ITEE — intent, technique, effect and evocation.

Mr Gormley’s intent was to get a commission and some cash using a simple idea. Great. The technique we’ve explored already — get the extroverts out and choose them by computer, the effect is to provoke some newspaper coverage of the bizarre happening — I mean no one, not me guv’, is going to stand for a hundred days in Trafalgar Square watching the whole thing, like someone sitting through a Wagner Opera or a sitar concert! But the evocation consists in seeing ordinary people being self-conscious or shameless and that tells us something about ourselves and surely that’s, sort of, ART.

I wonder if there is an empty plinth in Flora Fountain, Chowringhee, Mount Road, Chennai or Connaught Place. And could we put representatives of our India on display? There has to be one dynastic political clown, one religious fanatic from each sect, two industrialist brothers fighting it out on the plinth, a native nudist, the man who writes to me about the "Walking Incentive Traffic Scheme", a demonstrator of urine therapy etc etc. For that display I would sit around for a hundred days. If plinth art has hit London can Indian "artists" be far behind?