Why is Gender Issue so much Gendered, Endangered, Aborted & Fragmented?

Posted January 18th, 2010 by Andrianq

 

 

 (Article about Indian Woman Artists and Visual Culture, published as the lead essay in the latest, 10 anniversal double special volume of “Art & Deal” magazine on Indian Woman Art, Editor: Siddharth Tagore, Issue Editor: Rahul Bhattacharya, New Delhi, 2009, Published by Art Konsult Gallery)

(i)

Two incidents:

When an artist is a woman she is called ‘a woman artist’. On the other hand, when an artist happens to be a man, he remains to be just an artist. The ‘man’ in him seems to go for a toss!

When someone addressed the pertinent question—which was in the waiting for a while, at the centenary symposium about Ramkinker Baij, a couple of years ago—as to why there have been no woman artists at Kala Bhavana (Santiniketan, Visvabharathi Univeristy, 2007), there was an answer which was immediate but not comprehensive. The authority of the institution, a male and an art historian, explained that there was an announcement regarding a post for woman artists, yet nobody applied for it! In another incident at Delhi that happened after this, regarding one of my write-up that was published in Bangalore, much before the said symposium, a Mumbai based woman artist (Shakunthala Kulkarni) had reacted, ‘complementing’ a specific point: She said that my observation that “Indian woman video-performance-artists ‘shy away’ from an application of their complete physique” was a “good one”. In another context, a well known writer in Kannada (Prathibha Nandakumar) alleged that despite being established as a woman writers, she was excluded from being included in the compilation of ‘Woman Writing in India’ just because she was not a ‘feminist’ writer.

 

(ii) ‘Politics of projection’ (p.o.p): between ‘self’ and ‘other’:

Between these three seemingly mundane incidents lie the relation and rationale between Indian woman artists and the visual art’s notion towards the gender issue. It is a gendered issue as well. The body, its representation and issues related to the feminine body acquired a clearer frame work since 1990s in India and Indian art. Some might argue that woman art ‘in relation’ to feminism was born in the 90s. Interestingly, (i) self, (ii) feminine/female bodies (iii) their representation; and (iv) absent male body are the four elements that (alone) gained prominence within. Women, as artist, seem to have equated ‘self’ with ‘gendered physical body’ and vice versa as if they are inseparable. Why did they dare do it (Shilpa Gupta, N.Pushpamala, Anita Dubey, Sonia Kurana, Surekha, Smitha Cariappa, Shakunthala Kulkarni, Archana Hande among others)? Has it become that easy to ‘identify’ a woman (video-performance, for instance) artist, through their representation, even without meeting them, because their ‘appearance’ is already made visible through (mainly) photographs, video and even (rarely) paintings? The ‘actual self’ and the ‘projected appearances’ tend to synchronize through the ‘politics of projection’ (p.o.p syndrome).

Amritha Shergill, Husain, Tagore, “Bharathmatha”, India map, Karnataka map, Akkamahadevi, Phantom, Sherlock Holmes, Mr.Beans (but unlike Kannagi and Modesty Blaise)—are visually familiar entities, be they real or fictional, constitutional or otherwise. Certain immediate aspect just around them might be ‘mis-projections’. For instance, the painting “Lady with the Lamp” by Haldenkar is, even to this day, mistakenly recognized as a painting by Raja Ravi Varma in the popular imagination! The latter’s face is not yet so popular in popular imaginations, in contrast with his works—authored and alleged—are. These kinds of streams/threads are the basic weaving elements of the ‘politics of projection’ (call it as ‘p.o.p syndrome’) that I am hinting at.

Woman artists have become more visible due to this, since 90s, both within the aesthetic premise and the political space around it. ‘Underprivileged’ is that category which many (even) non-white men and women artists—irrespective of the mutual gender difference in-between—are equally subject to. The p.o.p-syndrome, for instance, subdivides across the problematic relation between the contemporaneous postcolonial woman art and gender/feminist/feminine issues. At one point some artists were subject to this. Now gender-issue, specifically regarding the feminine gender has offered itself to this. Like breathing itself, the previous two sentences do not inculcate a standpoint as much as they are factual designs. ‘Kathyayini’ mode, as against the ‘Gargi’ mode of feminism evokes a closer relation between woman, feminism and femininity, which, I believe, has much to do with the visual expression of Indian woman art. The Kathyayini prototype believes in the relevance of the ‘male’, doesn’t treat ‘him’ as the one who should be contested, and works from within the male-patriarchal construct, as if to be in tune with the discourse from which it intends to deviate. Arguably, the proposition that woman artists are recently more consistently visible (and ‘identifiable’) compared to their predecessors, over the last century, and the reason for that, can be two matters of immediately scrutiny. Another view of Surekha’s Video Installation “Un-Claimed & Other Urban F(r)ictions”, 2010, Bengaluru, with five videos being played in a loop (”Mudde Maadappa Mess”, “Nobody’s Wall”, “And Another Day”, “Not All Towers Fall” & “Reflections”.

• 1. It was in tune with a certain style of (art) historicisation through heroic narratives—to assess woman art by making it gender-centric, chronological-surveying of the forbidden and forgotten woman artists. For instance, when artist Savithri displayed her self-nude oil paintings at Venkatappa gallery, (Bangalore) in 1980s, she invited the ire from the right wing supporters and the Indian press sensationalized it—both the popular reaction to nudity and the ire towards it by a section of people, who, actually represented the press! The ‘woman’ in her art and an assessment of her ‘art’ are two aspects that her art is yet to be taken into consideration for.

• 1. Not the Indian woman art in itself but the discourse about and around it strictly evades any possibility of the male-contribution to feminism as well as the women’s contribution to the construct of patriarchy. The ‘marginalized of the margin’—as a contemporary postcolonial issues specific to Indian in terms of caste-class divide pitched against an easy solution of administrative reservation– was an issue that was waiting till the arrival of woman art for a certain dialogue to happen. Sadly it continues to be marginalized, despite a fragment of this marginalized (woman art) acquiring sufficient attention.*2*

• 1. The legalization of the silence regarding the simplistic male-female categorization, in tune with the constitutional ambiguity, by refusing to represent it — i.e., Indian art history is yet to explain its non-addressal of the ruling class’ attitude regarding the queer theories and the like. The discursive background to address ‘selective’ attitude from within the gender issue was perhaps imminent. The open market of the 90s, woman protagonists in Indian films, novels and a deconstructive attitude on political heroic-narratives coincided not so coincidentally when woman art was subject to the premise of this kind of discourse.*3*

(iv) Demarking the aggressiveness of a vague feminism—reordering Nostalgia:

The historicisation of gender concern of being (Indian) woman (art History), intending to relive the Indian modernist past by ‘mimicking’ a certain art history–post Indian independence–doesn’t out rightly reject the past-as-precious. Many (artists and critics) have made a living on such lived traditions. If a survey of all the writings about Indian woman artist of the last two decades can be considered—which should compulsorily be considered–the summary implies that woman art is attached to feminism—as if by default–while it drifts away from being (merely) feminine. Interestingly it is the patriarchal protagonist who is honored by dealing against it, but not the queer issues. Doubled with the intention to render its subject as ‘gender-specific’ to the body, the physical body of representation makes the whole new awareness very existentialist. It implies that there is no enlightenment for Indian woman art, without its physical depiction and appearance! Perhaps this is the reason why there are no (genre of) abstract woman painters around us, today!

Interestingly, what is not as clearly defined as the representation of the ‘reactionarily fragmented woman body’ is the definition of feminism itself. Every woman artist is cautious when it comes to (re)claiming that they are feminists. The origin of this caution, which was not there at a certain point of innocence (say, before 1990s and after 1980s!) is a curious case. Feminism and feminine are split, the former as a unique category and the latter as a taboo, for, it has been man-handled for long, in the art public’s imagination. Woman art desires for an aggressive dealing of itself as the ‘subject’, but opts for a democratized ‘methodology’ for doing so. There was a certain nostalgia which was the beginning point of woman’s art in India, just as nostalgia had come handy elsewhere, in another context, for male theoreticians and practitioners.

Beginning from the writings of the Orientalists, Ananda K Coomaraswamy to K.G.Subramanyan, those who had used ‘nostalgia’ as a point of origin for certain critique and discourse of nationalist concern, had reworked upon its circuit and recruited the contemporary avatar of a past. Past was (has been) considered inevitable in the cultural nation building process of India. For Indian woman art nostalgia was already, always given, to be addressed as if its own genealogy exists within it. Before, earlier, it was all man’s art. And woman’s art, now, was to re-address them, not in order to restructure them but to re-claim its genealogical continuation. Why, for instance, was the image of ‘self-as-woman’ depicted through representation of Akkamahadevi (Nilima Sheikh onwards)? During such an addressal, the devotional poetry (‘vacanas’) of the medieval times (of say Basavanna) also acquires a deviant meaning, wherein one of his phrase, that draws equation between a temple and a ‘body’ could now, arguably, becomes a ‘male’-specific body (in N.Pushpamala’s work). Curiously, in her recent book on feminism, Dr. Asha Devi argues that Basava was merely ‘sympathetic’ to the woman’s cause which is a kind of inevitable distancing from the act of actually trying to ‘become’ a woman, unlike Ramakrishna Paramahamsa who had tried to ‘live through’ another religion, for a stretch of time. *4*

A compilation of women’s contribution to Indian culture, be it literature or visual arts, followed a certain ‘selective’ chronological historiography while it was the very male-construed nostalgia that enveloped these two seemingly inevitable elements of history. In a recent issue of “Namma Manasa” (magazine for woman and culture in Kannada) Prathibha Nandakumar, a popular writer, alleged that when the book on Indian woman writers were being compiled by Susie Tharu and Lalitha, twenty years ago, her (Prathibha’s) writings were not taken into consideration or publication, though she was already an established writer (with various accolades) just because “she was not ‘feminist’ enough”.*5*

Thus the democratic caution that woman art applied to the radical phase of feminism, after being equipped with the apparatus of nostalgia, historiography and certain male-constructs–was a sophisticated web that woman art weaved itself into in the 90s.

A Chronological re-survey of woman creating art in the past drives a feminist enthusiast to a catch 22 situation. It considers all women as potential member of the gender(ed) category, while the ‘other genders’ category will be shooed away even before it is legitimized. Titles like “Woman writing in India”, “Woman artists in India” face this problem of ‘conclusion preceding probation’. The difference between Indian woman in visual art and in literary discourse should be the degree of discourse to which each of them is subject to and/or the facilitation of the parameters that are availed and spaced out within the confines of the respective creative fields.

The politics of the sponsoring agency and the intention behind this enthusiasm might finally categorize woman art as a special yet ‘reserve(d)’ category, creating categories from within rather than ‘in relation to’ the other categorization elsewhere.*6*

Humiliation attested to reservation (caste-wise or otherwise) of any sort is awareness haunted by ambiguity amongst those who demand for it. The history of events of ‘Mandal commission’ fame, endorsement, might (or might not) be repeated in the case of the gender issue as well. Why it is that feminism is lured into the addressal of a pre-existing module of a patriarchal variety but when it comes to addressing an issue understood to be so close to its own gender (class and caste), it holds a certain reservation. Remember the statement, “the middle class woman is a ‘woman’ while a Dalit woman is a Dalit”. Similarly woman art in India implies the creation of the urban-middle (or privileged)-class-newer-media-woman-artists.

This is the difference between the believers and non-believers of feminism as an intense tool for cultural appropriation and the ‘tools’ availed for such a venture. Art could be one of them.*7*
(v) ‘Silenced’ male bodies:

Equally and dramatically important is the fact the there was a silence and more so a visual silence about the male body, or the male artists ‘body’ of works in relation to gendered issue, by and large. The decision to bracket (a woman’s) art from the predominant Indian, urban, culturally privileged ‘man’s art was also to:

(1) Evoke a ‘silence’ about a third gender,

(2) Remain ‘silence’ about the issue of Indian male artist not sharing the same/sufficient exploitative power with Euro-American man; and

(3) Criss-cross problematic of gender v/s class social issues.

(4) If one can play by ‘highlighting’ each of the words, one after the other, in the phrase ‘non-white, non-urban, non-Eurocentric, non-Brahminical, non-academically visual male-artist’ and position it in a straightforward dialogue, next to Indian woman art, superimposing it with proximate issues like human rights, class-caste categories, bundled in that silent wrapper that envelops only the Indian ‘visual discourse’ (unlike, say, literature and political science)–the demand for a rigorous dialogue indicates that, perhaps, a re-evaluation of revaluation becomes inevitable. As far as Indian woman art is concerned, it is not only the re-evaluation but also a re-structuring that is required. A re-structuring of the severity of the gender discourse in relation to visual culture is mostly a luxury within the premise of those theoretically inclined.

(vi) Known Nationalism addressed by new Genderedness:

Thus Indian woman art–particularly that which was involved with the new media (in general)–began to focus more and more towards the creation of a novel premise, in the last decade of the last century: Its addressal was primarily through an ‘existentialist-self’, for, it was all realizable (a) ‘through’ body, (b) one’s own ‘body’, (c) through ‘the artists’ body–which erased the difference between and dissolved the issue of sexuality or sexual tension, that historically prevailed between artist-model nexus.

There is a silence about those woman artists who have been silent about gender issues. The difference is that woman ‘in’ art has been replaced with woman ‘as’ artist*8*. The divide between male and female Indian artist is actually not a divide between patriarchy and feminism.
(vii) CONCLUSION: A suggestive framework for gendered artists: ‘Being’ Collective:

What do woman art want? When this and such questions are posed, the reaction always comes from a specific gender, it is predictable, as if it is none of the other gender’s business. It’s a matter of great concern whether the enthusiasm of one gender is more than the indifference from the other. Indian woman art, by and large, work within this premise of a rather constrained passage. Arguably, the very ‘redefinition of art collectives’ is the best contribution of Indian woman art. It has everything that a contemporary collective requires. Before that, let us cross check the historicity of Indian art collectives, in relation to woman art.

The Indian art collectives, (the way the p.o.p syndrome has made it and in turn been made up of) have always dominated over the individual contributions. Some of the protagonists—which mean almost all of them—have emerged from one or the other collectives: Santiniketan, Progressive Art Group(s), Cholamandalam, Radical Group, Group 1890 and the like. This also constitutes the main discourse in Indian art history. The relation between the individual artist heroes and the collectives are interwoven—actually or/and as an after thought.*9*

Often it seems that the way these and similar books are written, are about being democratically political and politically democratic. They will to be so, perhaps due to the pressure/pleasure of institutionalization. There is no known individual artist personality who is not connected to a collective. “I connect, therefore I am” seems to be his/her mantra. And now, the question that needs to be addressed—if at all there is a requirement to safeguard woman art as a special category, which, I believe, is in the affirmative–if the ‘focus’ upon it through the last two decades of activities like curated shows, focus in writing, aptitude and attitude is to be taken note of—it seems to legitimate the same ‘methodology of optional’, that ignores not only the privileged (male art) but also the ignored (queer, Dalit art, for instance), evoking a ‘fictious equation’ between the two, which is anything other than true. The problem of Indian woman art, thus, is not a matter of becoming a specialization but of the methodological kind.

 

 

 

• 1. This ‘being-a-collective’ (Indian woman art) is ambiguous in its historical revision or regarding the question of living tradition—a past need not always be absolutely chronological or chronologically absolutist. Prioritizing of ‘biological’ genealogy over an ‘attitudinal’ one, regarding gender issues, evokes such an ambiguity. The p.o.p (Politics of Projection) is a result of this. Interestingly this draws visual and pictorial similarities with the problems that the Indian class/caste issue is facing, sociologically.

• 1. A general liquidation of a serious question of the gender issue that spills over to the very apparatus of addressal itself—what woman artist thought is the lightness with which men addressed them, also seems to be the way in which they themselves treat ‘feminism as a theoretic premise’. Does woman art address issues given by other fields or does it define its own premise of gender related issues, mainly due to the autonomy of ‘visual representation’? ‘Borrowing’ from other fields (Political History, Sociology, Gender Studies, Cultural Theory, Psychoanalysis and even Feminism!), interestingly, also amounts to the formation of a certain genre which can be said to belong to visual art’s own self—the category of Readymade!

• 1. Uncritical acceptance of the past, as if it is inevitable, and an inevitable endorsement of what seems to be the patriarchal construct. One should keep in mind that there was no ‘patriarchal construct’ before the birth of Feminism, in the history of lexicography and theoretical premise. In other words, note the irony. If Feminism itself was born in protest to the male-dominant-world, ‘patriarchy’ (the nomenclature) was born as a formulation of that exploitative world, formed due to, for and by Feminists!

• 1. The Politics-of-Projection (p.o.p), multi-dimensionality/disciplinarity of Ready-mades and the patriarchy that defies historicity due to its formulation of a “woman’s time”—as explained in point (i), (ii) and (iii) –leads to a kind of nostalgia that form the four pillars of an ongoing, Being-a-Collective, generally understood as Indian Woman Art.

 

There might be many a woman artist who say that “I am not a Feminist”, but not too many would say “don’t even mention that I am not a Feminist”. The difference is that it is the latter that aborts any elaboration. The difference is that those who are ‘cautious’ about the framework are better than those who are ‘aversed’ to it. The best thing that happened between this caution and aversion about gender is that the very frame of visual representation was multiply positioned, thus evading the cliché of academic clichés.//
NOTES:

*1* Manu Chakravarthy in the inaugural paper presented in a Chennai institution,( 2004) in a symposium on “Woman and Spiritualism”.

*2* For instance, consider the case history of Shankaragowda Bettadoor, the first artist from Karnataka who studied at Kala Bhavana, in 1950s. (Read: the monograph published by Karnataka Lalitkala Academy and PDF format available at www.anilkumarha.com.) The paradoxical location of the marginal-within-marginal becomes obvious. This kind of approach might help us evade woman art from the straightjacket argument of the gender-specificity and position them in par—or position the ‘other’ in part with them—with the equally subsidized category.

*3* 1990s was the time when “Gandhi v/s Gandhi” theatre play deconstructed Mahatma Gandhi’s image as the uncontested ‘Father of the Nation’. Vijayashanthi, a well known woman protagonist actress in South Indian film occupied the ‘hero’s space’ in most of her films, starting from the mega-buster “Prathighatana” (like “Dhamini” in Hindi) . This was a revision of what Kalpana; a Kannada actress had done in the movies based on novels by woman writers, mostly directed by the well known expressionist director, Puttanna Kanagal. All the three instances—three representatives of the new genre born in the 90s—promised one aspect: a cross-section revisitation into the past to deconstruct, revoke and claim authority over the male’s space. Actually the ‘woman’s time’ over the ‘man’s space’ is the most genuine gender appropriation possible.

*4* Read: anthology of critical writings by Dr. Asha Devi “Sthreemathavanuththarisalaadithe?” (meaning “Can Woman’s religious be answered/addressed at all?” (Kannada), 2007.

*5* Prathibha Nandakumar in a dialogue conducted by B.N.Sumitrabai, published in “Namma Manasa” (Kannada monthly magazine for woman issues), September 2009, Ed: H.S.Champavathi, Bangalore. Prathibha argument hints the possibility of ‘certain patriarchal forces from within feminist discourse’.

*6* Seemanthini and Tejaswini Niranjana point out at the dilemma of woman in relation to Indian NGOs, when their concerns went against their own agendas, particularly in the case of Mandal Commission protests, wherein a cultured woman was a middle class-urban “woman”; while a Dalit woman was a “Dalit”! (‘Problems faced by Contemporary Gender Theories’, translated by L.G.Meera, page: 50-83, Indian History, Society and Culture (new discourses in postcolonial contexts) Ed: Dr. Rajaram Hegde, Karnataka Sahitya Academy, Bangalore (2004).

*7* Ibid, Seemanthini and Tejaswini Niranjana raise this pertinent question in yet another context of usage of anti-pregnancy capsules as a ‘resolving-apparatus’ to the woman’s ability to decide her own off springs, beyond the hegemonic control of their family. Or is it that it has already been represented but not identified by its critique? Arguably, it is worth re-stating that ‘allegations precede identification’ in Indian art criticism.

*8* I have four articles in mind, as representatives of ‘four different traits’ of representing woman artists through writings, by and large, in India, from past two decades. This sort of representation is an ‘institutional empowerment’, beyond which, I am afraid, those who are leftover are, first of all, not even ‘represented’. In the very first place, these are re-representations which have become ‘the’ representations. (a) Ashish Rajyadhyaksha writing about one of Pushpamala’s photograph, referring to Ravi Varma’s “Lady by the Moon”, contemplating on the tricky notion of original and suggestiveness, (b) Susie Tharu’s mode of addressal (article) in the same book (c) Gayathri Sinha’s preface to the special Marg issue which is a collection of short monographs about woman artists as few chosen writers see them (“Expressions & Evocations”) and (c) Geeta Kapoor’s celebrated “Body as Gesture: Women Artists at Work” (in the book ‘When was Modernism?’).

*9* The ‘sub’ within the subaltern requires an immediate damage-control operation because of this kind of immaculate structuring of history. For instance consider the ‘text-book-like’ Indian art history books (like, say, Gombrich’s ‘History of Art’) : ‘Indian Art’ books by the likes of Edith Tomory, P.N.Mago, Parta Mitter, Vidya Dahejia, books on Baroda school (G.M.Sheikh and Cholamandalam (by Joseph James). Those who did not belong to the collectives or the urban institutionalization which the collectives either turned out to be later (or were subject to such similar institutions) were also not subject within the pages of these books. Indian woman art as a collective is a different, metaphorical take on such predecessors, but with a difference. This includes Gayathri Sinha’s “Expressions and Evocations” but not “When was Modernism?”, due to reasons other than those argued above.