Being a slave to ones own style

Everyone knows how S.H.Raza’s paintings look like. You can easily identify a work of Adhimoolam, even though you have never seen that particular piece before. Every painter has a signature style and a level of abstraction. They use same set of colours in most of their paintings. I really wonder why.

One reason is that the potential buyers want to flaunt it off to their guests. But do they painters paint for themselves or for the buyers? Why be a slave to a style just because you have already locked into it.

By definition a creative person should be restless and be easily bored with doing the same thing again and again. There are innumerous styles of art and each can easily inspire an arty person. An abstract painter needs to explore realistic art once a while, at least to keep in touch with perspective and anatomy. Serious painters should do a series of caricatures to develop a sense of humour. May be they don’t do it because they are afraid of exposing their inadequacies in other forms of art.
I saw the recent series of acrylic paintings by K.K.Raghava. I may have my own opinions about the talent of Raghava. But hats off to him. He has to guts to break this centuries old madness. I hope other artists too dare to exhibit their versatility.

Pedigree in art

There are colleges that teach music. There are colleges that teach film making and there are colleges that teach art.

Name the top 10 actors and top 10 directors in Hollywood/Bollwood/Kollywood or any other wood that you know of. How many of them are from the neighbourhood film making institute?

Name your favourite music composer or your favourite singer. which college did he go to?

Maniratnam was an MBA. Ramgopal Varma was an engineer. Shankar Mahadevan used to be an engineer in Oracle Corporation.

Now how many MBAs or chartered accountants do you know among the top painters in the country? think. to my knowledge zero. There may be some exceptions. But the truth is a successful artist has to be from a successful art college.

Why is it so? Is art more complicated than music or film making ? why are people obsessed with a painter's almamater so much?The answer lies not in what a student learns from a school, but in what the consumer doesn't learn.

The consumer in the case of a film or music is absolutely well informed. Informed enough to make choices. Informed enough to listen to his heart and shun the poor quality stuff. But hardly anyone understands art deep enough to weed out good art from bad art. So the best way to judge art is through other surrogates. One of the best surrogates is the alma mater.

This is evident from another fact. Going back to the case of movies- often we see a film from a top director or a superstar being panned by the critics as well as the movie goers. The audience evaluate each piece of work on its own merit, regardless of the track record of the movie maker. Variations in quality happens to everyone in any profession. But in art once a benchmark is set for a painter, all his subsequent works are suppposed to live upto that market.

So people seldom invest in Art, they only invest in artists.

When investor stop thinking "how much will it be worth 3 years later?" and think " will it look good on my wall?" truly impressive artworks will emerge from unexpected quarters.

Till that point, the emperor's cloths look fabulous on canvas