Art & Depart

By Vishal Tondon

I just lay my hands on the July 2010 issue of the art magazine Depart, published by Art & Bangladesh, and I have to say I was floored. To begin with, the magazine is very stylish and it has an impeccable design and layout. And it is not the regular A4 in size. It has a bigger format, which appeals to me, and it certainly helped that the cover looked unusually whacky with the picture of a stricken boy staring back at me with a rather confounding glare. As it turns out, the image is from a photo series by Munem Wasif and it depicts a victim of the Cyclone Sidr.

Well, kudos to Manan Morshed, the art and design director of the magazine for getting the best out of an obviously talented set of designers. 

The magazine opens one’s eyes to the diverse and myriad interests and sensibilities at work simultaneously on the Bangladesh art scene right now. The enthusiasm is also palpable, and it is significant when seen in the light of the fact that Bangladesh is a very young country charged with the will to create and identity for itself. The recent spurt of activity on the art scene might be looking at making the most out of the relatively liberal political scenario in the country right now.

In fact, one can see from some of the writings in Depart that while many young artists there are looking outside for sources for visual vocabulary, art criticism in Bangladesh is getting a bit of a hard taskmaster, putting critical theory to good use. There is a sense of self-introspection and self-criticism, and the critics there clearly want the younger generation to push the envelope. Let us consider a review by Shakhawat Tipu. Writing on the 17^th Young Artists’ Exhibition – which according to him reveals a hole in the structure of praxis – he manifestly says that the exhibits are poor on the level of praxis. Giving due consideration to the rawness of youth, Tipu holds institutions at blame for the inadequacies. One issue that Tipu brings up is pertinent, as it applies to many young artists passing through Santiniketan as well. Charged with the intent to prove their ideology and take sides, brash youthful artists often come up with short-sighted reactions to modernity. They are polarized between either an unabashed appreciation of modernity as progress, or a downright rejection of modernity as evil. Tipu also finds it problematic that many young artists paint and sculpt with an intention to ‘excite empathy’, and this is in young Bangladeshi art becoming a trend. Tipu also comments on the oppressive influence of Indian as well as deshi predecessors. His criticism of consumerism as an enemy of creativity is unambiguous.

Then there is the obituary to Shovon Shome which is penned down by Syed Azizul Haque. To a reader like me, who hails from Santiniketan, writings like this obituary are a revelation in their unearthing of conflicts of ideologies that mapped the scene when Bengal was one and luminaries like Zainul Abedin were very much a part of a larger heterogeneous Bengali culture. The obituary mentions that Shome appreciated Zainul Abedin’s work in its situated knowledge and in its representation of the mufassil man. Shome, on the other hand, was not comfortable with either the high priests of Bengal School or the Ravi Varma kind of modernism. Shovon accused both the schools – Victorian academism as well as Revivalism – of securing the support of the Indian bourgeoisie. 

Depart has some inspired and insightful articles that make for good and rigorous reading. The issue carries a longish essay by Syed Jamil Ahmed on interventionist theatre. The essay, to begin with, deconstructs the meaning of ‘intervention’ itself, and it goes on to establish ‘intervention’ as a consummate site of political struggle. The insightful essay walks you through the recent history of the ‘progressive’ interventionist theatre, exploring the views of personalities ranging from Marx and Engels to Feuerbach, Brecht, Benjamin, and finally to the interventionist methods of Paulo Friere and Augusto Boal. Going through the impressive writing, it hits you how so much of interventionist theatre – as is the case with a great part of the corpus of recent work in literature and other intellectual fields – is leftist in its stance.

The essays and reviews on photography were also revealing. Ebadur Rahman reviews the exhibition ‘Soulscape’ showcased at the Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts in June 2010. He muses over the complicity between the representation of the systematic violence of poverty and its perpetuation by photography for fun and profit. He wonders about how “…Art Photography in Dhaka – reinforces the Orientalist hermeneutics that confuse fascination as critique, voyeurism as empathy and profit as exposing-of-social-wrongs…”

In another assessment from this issue of Depart, Quddus Mirza contextualizes the multimedia works of Pakistani artist Rashid Rana in anticipation of the show ‘Perpetual Paradox’ at Musee Gimet in Paris. Mirza’s insights into Rashid Rana’s works are illuminating. He ascribes the success of Rana’s work to its visual constructions of multilayered meanings and to his social, formal and conceptual concerns. But one might also want to remember the workings of the biennale-galleries coalition that is right now almost exclusively promoting art with a certain ‘international kind of look.’

The magazine Depart has quite an eclectic mix of writings on artists from the East as well as the West. As a gesture of paying homage to Sigmar Polke, the issue includes an assessment of the life and work of the important German artist, who passed away just a few weeks before the publication of this issue. The Goethe-Institut Bangladesh had just then honored the artist by bringing a collection of 40 of his original gouaches to Bangladesh.

The July 2010 issue of Depart also includes an essay by Shawon Akhond on the writing of art history. It speaks about focusing on location specific realities, and the author removes layers of dominant narratives to chart the terrain of history of the Dhaka art scene.

Another authoritative essay by Dr Paula Sengupta presents art en route to postmodernism in Kolkata. What I found interesting was the disclaimer that ‘depart’ issued along with this essay, which reads as follows:

“Depart’s position on typifying art through Western categories such as Modernism and Postmodernism is that Modernism is actually multimodernism through its selective interriorization, and Postmodernism has primarily been seeped into the art scene through exposure to the contemporary practices around the globe.”

So, reading Depart was overall an enlightening, and might I add pleasant experience. I would recommend the journal highly.