Having a ball with the canvas

There hasn’t been an evening this week, make that some of last week as well, that hasn’t seen the opening of an art exhibition. Sometimes there is a cluster of them, from the heart of Delhi to its furthest outreaches, including in unheard of havelis.

Whose Recession is it anyway? One begins to wonder, what with the amount of wine swirling about and fancy nibbles doing the rounds, not to speak of the latest batch of wide-eyed socialites (of both sexes) pursuing the path of being famous for being famous and providing the background music of oohs-and-aahs as they swan past canvases and the increasingly ubiquitous installations.

Never do they allow a furrow to appear between their brows to let on that they don’t know how to react to this strange stuff that they see hanging from the ceilings, looking no different from what children make in school. After all, there is not too much difference between one mobile hanging and another.

It’s not just the onslaught of hyperactive artists — including a few new ones on the block who’ve reached the critical middle age, both in their lives and careers — in this cruel month of April with soaring temperatures that is getting to me.

It is not even the buzzing young and youngish crop of “hot” curators in search of the Next Hot Thing that is sending my BP up. (Yes, you got me right: the operative word is hot.)

I suspect it is the pretentiousness with which all this is being served. Something shown at some international art fair somewhere in Western Europe gets “derivatise-ed” here. At the risk of being tagged passé, and even worse philistine, I just want art lovers and art writers to stop for a moment and raise the question: is what we are now seeing-increasingly-really art?

I know, it’s a big question, and pundits (and their female counterparts) of the art world would say a foolish one. But it’s a necessary one, given the fact that we now live in an anything-goes world. If the world’s most expensive living artist Damien Hirst does something it has to be kosher, and we have to follow, goes the reasoning among many here.

This canny ageing enfant terrible has just “spin”-painted a Harley Davidson Cross Bones motorcycle: he expects to raise 70,000 pounds sterling for it in a charity auction. Hirst pours paint over the bike while it spins around on a platform.

Art is also getting sporty. Celebrity sportsmen and women now realise that there’s life after exiting the playing fields, and not just as models in ads. A former captain of the English cricket team Michael Vaughan will soon be exhibiting his “artballing” canvases at Smithfield Gallery in London.

Vaughan is not quite the pioneer of this new form of action painting. Last year Martina Navratilova showed her ‘tennising’ canvases. While Vaughan uses his Gunn and Moore bat to “whack” paint-daubed balls at canvases hung on walls, Navratilova “paints” with a racquet and tennis balls dipped in paint. Tennis (with paint) anyone? 

Hang on, there’s more: apparently Lee Westwood may come up with golfing canvases and Frank Lampard may oblige with footballs. Gosh, I can almost hear Jackson Pollock turning in his grave. All that drip-drop was so slow and tedious: just think of what he could have achieved if he swung a bat and paint-daubed balls at his canvases. Some sixers they would have been!

I wonder if our sportspersons have begun to see the light — and paint-in our anything-goes art world. Kapilji, are you reading? Well, it might not be quite cricket but there’s some action at least! I can almost visualise Sania Mirza, some years on, following in Navratilova’s footsteps.

Perhaps, Mandira Bedi may end up being crowned the czarina of the art world. Well, joh jeetha woh sikander. Howzatt?