Is art an emotional experience or a rational one? Can art be both? Isn’t it mysterious that we go to school and by that definition are ‘taught’ to think, no one sends us to school to feel, we just do. Can our thinking influence our feelings? It probably does, which is why it perhaps is imperative to question the very notion of schooled thought. Ken Robinson states dramatically that schooling, the way we know it in modernity, exists to strip mine thinking/doing, to perform industrial tasks, in other words, to conform, but simultaneously we are growing out of creativity rather than into it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

You would not want your brain to be operated upon by an unschooled surgeon, or for that matter the plane to be flown by an untrained pilot. But we might want to begin questioning the schooled artist, musician and dancer, writer, poet or philosopher.

The problem is that we all agreed and made a pact  with Descartes, and assumed that our very existence is a function of thinking, homo sapiens and all that rubbish. ‘I think therefore I am’ is a neat but purulent thought. Rather a more enabling vision is ‘I dont think therefore I am’, and in that association is implicit going beyond thinking, to feeling. I think therefore I am, might distinguish us from the animal world, though dont have this conversation with a dog lover, but feeling therefore I am, might want to associate us with the sacred or divine.

The senses and intuition, that wonderfully indescribably quotient, that hovers and approximates between the senses, are nature’s way of providing inputs for learning, growth and fulfilling ones true potential. Societal pressure and the politics of the state make ‘schooling’ not learning mandatory, make teaching not educating implicit, make medi-care not health; and security not safety an issue. (Ivan Illich – De-schooling of society)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIqLX1VsWI4

A German curator today mentioned that an indian artist she interviewed in Delhi told her something she found meaningful, that while in art school in Scotland he had to learn to be Indian in his aesthetic, and when he returned to india, he had to unlearn that. Is it possible that while abroad he had to learn to be Indian but back in the environment he had simply to Be? Invariably the environment itself will dictate your nationality and your mythologies. Aren’t we all aware of, with some irritation, the recent NRI with an accent. The environment is not necessarily a geo-political state, it could be a state of being and like Rupert Brooke, in the Patriot, let where ever he is buried be forever England.

In addition is the new rubric of the cultural theorist, the academic, the intellectual who attempts at ‘making sense’ out of chaos, drawing vectors across the art firmament to establish equations, inscribing, intention, influence,  interpretation and meaning. First came the professionals then came the professors, that might seem quite in order till you discover that the professionals are influenced heavily by the professors, the conundrum continues.

There is a new buzz in art, its called Conceptual, which in other words means, I can think, I can write,  I feel, I can read, I am literate, I have a great fucking idea, but I cant draw, sculpt, paint or dance or install or photograph to save my life, so my catalogue will be art, but what you pay Rs 10 million for I cant be bothered with. Put this rubbish canvass or shit on your wall or in your estate; close your eyes and have total recall of all the spell binding associated gyan  that enticed  you to shell out that sort of lucre, and intellectualize your pleasure. Its  masturbation, and fittingly you have to shut your eyes when you cum.

Its a bit like nouvelle cuisine, its all hyped to be the new IT. So when you go to this swish (read subdued lighting) restobar, and fork out enormous sums of money for a little bit of twig and drizzle over a microscopic bit of salmon or mouse, and you come out of that place late at night totally hungry and too embarrassed to say so, you raid the fridge and devour yesterdays left overs. In the morning though you will boast of this fine dining place you visited. Its a status thing. (Thosrtein Veblen described it ascerbically well in The Theory of the Leisure Class)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWbUU9CUcf4&feature=related

Its the emperor’s new clothes scenario where the marketing tails wag the dog. Now everything is art, you have simply to will it.

James Joyce in Portrait of the Artist as a young man, has some interesting things to say about art and its callings, he sees a messianic role for art.

If Art is the manifestation of Being, that gerund, that present continuous, conjugation of To Be, it sort of then summarises existence and identity. Who am I, where do I come from, and where am I going are as Transcendental as creation itself. That one sits at the computer in 38 degree heat with a deciduous pipal tree shimmering back lit in Mumbai and chatting simultaneously to 10 different people in different time zones and weather conditions makes one as Global as in the days of snail mail when one licked stamps and sent them off to 10 international pen pals. No different than when you can have streaming video pouring in at broadband speeds from different sources. Its only convenient now, not global at all.

How and who looks at Art, might best be examined at who and how we look at spirituality, science, literature, medicine, music, architecture, agriculture and language itself. It might be appropriate when entering someone’s home to take off our shoes, for who knows we could be treading on the sacred.

It is about Being and Nothingness eventually.