Diamond encrusted human skulls, formalin preserved genitals of a zebra, rotting human excreta on a swing, oozing menstrual blood, scalloped out insides of dolls dipped in human blood, mounds of stinking trash…the list of such revulsion inspired art seems to be getting longer by the day.

Call it vibhitsa rasa, shock art, depiction of reality, reflection of our times, whatever you like, but the stink lingers and like all horrible smells, spreads too. Ugliness seems like a malaise that has spread its ugly tentacles into the creative impulses of the artists’ mind. Makes one wonder as to where we as people and artists are headed? Admittedly, art also means depiction/reflection of reality, but is there all that is left? Whatever happened to the old adage of art being synonymous with beauty? When did we forget that one of the roles of art is to inspire and energise? Or the fact that when a civilisation is judged, it is evaluated by its art? Is this what we wish posterity to remember us by? Contemporary art has always cocked a snook at classical arts — dance included, calling it pretty pictures caught up in a time warp, but who can forget or deny the sheer power of beauty of Yamini Krishnamurty’s depiction of the ashta nayikas? Or the intensely exquisite poetic depiction that culminated in Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Nights? Or closer home, the simply fabulous albeit stylised imagery of Jamini Roy’s village belles? Is that not moving? Or contemporary? Why must art be ugly to be contemporary? A case in point are Mithu Sen’s works with oozing semen and menstrual blood that guarantee revulsion. Shock too must have a reason or at least where it is a means to arrive at an end. Populated with bananas and flowers woven together with body fluids, her paintings are disturbing but with no end in sight. In the Indian context, the fact that there is an outlet for every aberration and revulsion too is no big deal. It finds outlet in the Aghori sects, who it is believed, practised in samashans late in the night and even eat human excreta. But this is not an end in itself but the means to get over revulsion of anything that is God’s creation. And is more a means of worship of a different kind.
When B. Bodh highlights the genocide of the Tibetans by using actual human blood flowing through dolls whose insides have been scalloped out, he is attempting to shock the sensibilities of the rest of world to highlight the seriousness of the Tibet situation. The stench from the human blood makes it impossible to stand in the gallery for too long but at least there is a point in the exercise. Again one can’t help thinking that the lot of the folk painters are not easy and yet they are able to find positive and beautiful imagery to populate their art, so why must the contemporary Indian artist search to depict ugliness in art? A closer look at many of the traditional and folk forms of painting reveal that its creators have moved to include contemporary imagery and concerns into their work, it is we as the so called city-bred urban elite who choose to see them in traditional straitjackets. A case in point is the depiction of a polluted Ganga in Madhubani paintings as she flows out of Lord Shiva’s hair or a Bermuda-clad Lord Krishna playing the flute in the papier mache sculptures from Bihar or for that matter airplanes and trains in sculptures of Molela.
Enough damage has been done already — some of it irreparable. The situation is like the Emperor’s new clothes. Who will have the courage to bell the cat and call off the bluff? High-faluting juxtapositioning of jargon has been the mainstay of the ignorant. It is the same approach that wants to shock to make a statement a la Lady Gaga wrapped in raw meat clothes. Indian art has made that transition where its reference points were rooted in the West. No longer. Then why ape the West in shockology?

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an author, artist and art curator