A Hiatus in History

By Ajit Baral

It was probably Narabhaktasingh Tulachan who first started writing on art. His slim book on art
that was published in Banaras was reviewed in Gorakhapatra in 2015 BS by Narayan Bahadur Singh. Assuming that Tulachan wrote the book three or four years before it was reviewed, we are nearing the fifty-years of Nepali art writing. This is an opportune moment to take stock of Nepali art writing. For the stock-taking I have selected three art writings: Sosanne Von der Heide’s "From British Naturalism to Modern Abstract Paintings in Nepal," which was published in the book Anthropology of Tibet and the High Himalaya in 1993; Manuj Babu Mishra’s "Contemporary Art in Nepal," which was published in the catalogue of the 1989 Fukuoka Biennale; and, Abhi Subedi’s "Nepali Art: Nepali Utopia," which was published in Contribution to Nepalese Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2 (July 1995). I have reviewed Heide’s article to assess the foreign scholarly work on Nepali art; Mishra’s and Subedi’s, to find out what the leading Nepali art writers have been writing on art. The cursory review of these three articles, written in different points in time, will not give an objective picture of Nepali art writing. However, it will help us to give a fair representation of what is happening in Nepali art writing.

Anthropology and sociology have been favoured fields of study on Nepal; whereas Nepali art has been a relative area of neglect, especially by foreigners. While there have been few studies on sculpture and traditional painting; there is little on art that comes under the rubric of modernism. Why such a dearth of foreign scholarships on Nepali art, particularly on the modern epoch of Nepali art? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Nepali art is not progressively good. Leave aside western scholarship, even our art, which shares so much with Indian art, has not merited studies from Indian art scholars.

In her article, Heide purportedly explains how Nepali art moved from the influence of British Naturalism to abstraction. That is a perfectly valid subject of study. While the beginning of British Naturalism in Nepal has been explained, the characteristics of British Naturalism and when and how abstract painting began to manifest itself have been overlooked. Hiede has not even explained the qualities that epitomize abstract painting. What she has in the article is two or three short biographic sketches of artists. Surprisingly this incomplete article merited its inclusion in an academic book of some worth.

There are few Nepalis who can match the understanding of world art that Manuj Babu Mishra has. He is au fait with everything- primitive art, Greek art, Egyptian art, European art, American art, and art theories. But Mishra does not bring his vast repertoire of knowledge of world art to bear on the interpretation of Nepali art. We do not find him exploring aspects like the creative preoccupation of artists, trends manifesting in Nepali art or, social-cultural reflection in paintings. He is prone to excessively dwelling on traditional art of which there is a fair amount of record, but not contemporary art. In "Contemporary Art in Nepal" the author does not sketch the then contemporary art scene. He writes, "... attempts have been made through different media to give expression to the powerful feelings of the mind" without mentioning what the "different media" are and what the "powerful feelings of the mind" are. This sort of vagueness is not uncommon in his writings.

Abhi Subdi is one of the few writers who have been giving continuity to art writing. He brings his understanding of literary criticism in art writing, gets in touch with most of the artists and sees how they work. So he is in a position to reflect on the creative preoccupation of artists, what they are trying to achieve and how they play with different media. This, he has done in the second part of "Nepali Art: Nepali Utopia" which deals exclusively with modernism in Nepali art. But Subedi tends to go into the thematic aspects of the painting rather than the process, and the overall effect and subtleties of the painting. As a result, his writings seem more like thematic exposition or literary imposition rather than aesthetic interpretation. And he at times relapses into vague expressions like "visible and invisible lines" and "vertical painting". Another example is: "The paper gives the artist an opportunity to create a dialogue not only between the form and the subject matter, but also between the canvas and the other media–colour and lines." These relapses make his writings abstruse.

In the article Abhi Subedi has sketched the history of Nepali art since the Lichhavi period. In the historical sketch, one would expect the recordings of every departure made by Nepali art and the circumstances and conditions that facilitated the departure. But he has given short shrift to the explanation of how the transition to modernity was made. Modernism in India came as a reaction against stultifying nature of nationalist art and it reached its zenith in 1940s when it got ideological colour. Modernism in Nepal also may have come as a reaction to something. Or, it may have come because of internal compulsions or the desire to move ahead with the changing time. None of these possibilities is explored in an effort to explain the shift in style.

Granted that Nepali art writing was in an inchoate stage when modernism began and no one wrote about how, why and when modernism came into Nepal. But there should have been at least some writing on the contemporary art. Existing art writing is confined to art criticism, which is shallow, uninformed and as the Indian artist Prakash Chandwadkar said, mainly biographic. This lack of informed studies and art writings has cr1eated a void in art history. There is an urgent need to fill this gap to avert the possibility of Nepali art history being irretrievably lost in the warp of time. Anyone listening?

(A. Baral occasionally writes on art)

An Editor’s Life

By Manjushree Thapa

For near fifty years, Diana Athill was a director and editor at the reputed London publishing
house Andre Deutsch. She saw the company begin, in pell-mell fashion, under the leadership of her once and romantically unmemorable lover, the charismatic but maddeningly arbitrary Andre Deutsch. By the time the company succumbed to the pressures of the market in 1984, it had grown to publish fiction, non-fiction and poetry, boasting authors such as John Updike, Jean Rhys, Jack Kerouac, Philip Roth, VS Naipaul, Elias Cannetti, Gitta Sereny and Gore Vidal. Stet is Athill’s biography of the publishing house where she spent much of her life and made her career.

For anyone curious about the writing life, Stet offers a rare glimpse into that most mystified of arenas, the publishing house. Athill’s account is divided into two parts: the first comprising a chronicle of her time at Andre Deutch, and the second comprising accounts of her personal relationships with authors she liked, loathed, and found worthy of remembering.

The first section begins with a chronicle of Athill’s more-or-less chance arrival at the field of editing. She was working for the BBC during the Second World War when through friends she met the Hungarian émigré Andre Deutsch. At 26, Deutsch had just begun publishing. After their insipid romance the two of them became good friends, and eventually Deutsch asked Athill to join his publishing venture, which was then called Allan Wingate to ward off any anti-German feeling that the name Deutsch might rouse.

Athill’s account of the first slapdash years of the firm’s work, and the slow growth of the organization, and the long list of office tensions and squabbles is eye-opening for anyone curious about the kind of personal skills and tolerance needed for institution building. She never mystifies the staff or their capabilities. Rather, she offers many details that speak of the self-made nature of the firm: the Volkswagen bug that Deutsch himself drove to make deliveries; the bathtub that doubled as a packing table; the manager who hid books in neglected corners rather than mailing them out; the love affairs that disrupted office life.

Deutsch comes off as passionately involved in every aspect of his work: "He read books; he hunted books; he thought books up; for several years he did all the selling of books, and the buying of book rights; he bought paper; he dealt with printers, binders and blockmakers; he made all the decisions about the promotion of our books; he checked every detail of their design; he checked copy-writing and proof-reading, important letters; he soothed and cajoled the bank; he persuaded suppliers to give us unprecedented credit...." He was a businessman, but an intellectual one, someone who cared deeply about books. He was skillful in attracting star authors. Yet he could be imperious, despotic, and extremely difficult to work with. The firm eventually had to be sold, thanks to his chaotic mismanagement.

Of her own skills as an editor, Athill is modest: "...The only part of the [publishing] business that I could ever bring myself truly to mind about was the choosing and editing of books. This is certainly a very important part of the publishing process, but without all the rest of it, it would amount to nothing." Before she became a full-time editor, though, she did such things as booking advertisements-something she admits to disliking, and being very bad at. And she had to look after some of the managerial aspects of publishing-the negotiating, bargaining, administration, and selling that comes with the business. Yet despite her modesty, Athill’s high standards-for authors, but also for herself-come through: "...It must always be the author’s voice that was heard, not mine, even if that meant retaining something that I didn’t much like. And of course it was an absolute rule with all of us that no change of any kind could be made without the author’s approval." Athill is not afraid to criticize writers, or her colleagues, or the industry-and this makes for a very refreshing read.

The first part of Stet ends with the rise of huge conglomerate publishing houses in the eighties, and with the demise of Andre Deutsch. In the book’s second part Athill writes of her friendships with Mordecai Richler and Brian Moore, Jean Rhys, Alfred Chester, VS Naipaul, and Molly Keane. Of these accounts, her chapter on Jean Rhys is the most riveting. "No one who has read Jean Rhys’s first four novels can suppose that she was good at life; but no one who never met her could know how very bad at it she was," Athill begins, and goes on to chronicle the author’s struggles with failed marriages, depression, drinking and financial problems. Writing about VS Naipaul, Athill expresses ambivalence about his arrogant demeanor and what seems to be latent racism in his writing. With a similar ambivalence she portrays his loveless marriage, his mood swings and writing cycles, and his abrupt departure from Andre Deutsch. Her ambivalence seems not just to come from her or Naipaul, but also from the relationship between editors and authors, which can feel warm, even intimate, but which is, in the end, structured by business interests on both sides. Athill writes: "Generally, the writer likes to like his publisher, and will do on doing so for years if he can; but will feel only mildly sorry if the publisher’s poor performance, or what he sees as such, causes him to end the relationship. When the ending of a relationship causes no serious personal disturbance it cannot be called a friendship. The only Andre Deutsch authors whom I count among my real friends opened the way to that friendship by going off to be published by someone else." Stet is a great book for anyone who cares about books. For those involved in the pell-mell publishing industry in Nepal, it offers guidance, empathy, pragmatic solutions and hope.

(Manjushree Thapa is the author of Mustang Bhot in Fragments and The Tutor of History)

Is the Future Women?

By Jovan Ilic

Sadie Plant powerfully and evocatively portrays the changes brought about by technology and digitisation in the Western world. She deconstructs the legitimacy of strict causal links between the Artist, tools and raw materials, and likewise between scientists, tools and raw materials undermining in the process the belief that the Artist is in control of his tools. This promotes not just contingency and irony into our understanding and response, but most interestingly it undermines the notion of mastery, and of control.

Electronic music, for example, and most specifically dance, took off in the 1980s. It changed people’s perception of music in that they listened to it as an end project and not specifically as the work of a favourite musician. A more physical and visceral response was invoked, especially in clubs. Music has always been slightly beyond representing something, has always been engineered to elicit strong human responses, primarily emotional, but what differentiates the electronic music boom of the 1980s from, say, that of jazz in the America of the 1920s, is that this time round anyone can make the electronic music because the technology is cheap, available and easily used. It still remains that "good" electronic music is difficult to make but with the proliferation and diversity of electronic music not only has it become increasingly problematic to keep tabs on who is producing what, but it has become increasingly irrelevant to do so. The emphasis is no longer on the Author/musician but on the music as end product.

Likewise, from the moment Marcel Duchamp deposited his ready-made urinal for exhibition and proclaimed it as art, what art piece (and equally what science piece?) doesn’t involve the use of ready-made materials such as paintbrushes? Where then does the moment of authenticity associated with the Artist come? Where does the original spark come when we are always using ready-made materials and tools? How then, to be creative without being the "Artist" with a capital "A." All along, Sadie Plant brings new ideas and ways of thinking to bear on the role of women, and of the description of women, what they mean, and what they constitute. She shows that digitisation in undermining the capital "A"–the role of originality, that has typically been assumed by the white Western male– can be seen therefore, as empowering to women. From a reassessment of "hysteria" to a plain presentation of the changing nature of the role of women in the work force, Sadie Plant argues that women have proved and are proving themselves to be more successful in adapting to temporary and fluctuating situations whether in the work place, at home, or in social relations. The male, especially as epitomised by the white western male, is seen as too heavily dependent upon a world of absolutes and strict gender roles.

She argues that in order to be creative without being the "Artist" or "Author" with a capital "A," you work with materials rather than "on" them. As in love, there are the mechanics: when to phone, how to dress, what to say, timing; but no matter how proficient one becomes in using the tools it will never guarantee mastery or complete control, for the particular outcome of any love always remains beyond our control. She shows how computers, technology, the tools and the raw materials have a liveliness of their own in addition to that of subjects; whether we find this in the stories of Frankenstein and Blade Runner, or in love, or in the making of art and music.

The danger of what Sadie Plant argues, is in giving a common platform to subjects-tools-raw materials. By giving them equal importance she invokes soft-relativism where judgement (what is a "good" piece of work?) is replaced by everything is permissible, and therefore anything is as worthwhile as everything else. Even if there is no identifiable author or musician, surely we will still want to judge the piece of work? It is easy to say that in clubs, tracks evidently work or don’t work by the response of the "clubbers," but we need more than this; we still want to be able to say to our friend that the music or the painting that they are making, either works or doesn’t. Does it all come down to power then? Power of manufacture, of distribution, of exhibition and promotion? Is advertising the art form of our times, for this is where the power is increasingly residing?

In answer to the question of judgement, Sadie Plant rightly identifies (as Baudrillard has pointed out): that we are not experiencing a revolution or the emergence of a new world, but simply the decline and ruins of the Western world as epitomised by the white male of a certain class and education, i.e. the Author no less. Postmodernism does follow Modernism and Humanism but it is not a revolution of sorts bringing about a new epoch, a New World. Rather, Postmodernism simply highlights the end of Western Culture as we know it, that is, as a culture based on absolutes. Postmodernism is in ruins, and to see what comes in its wake we may have to look elsewhere, beyond the Western world. Sadly, she doesn’t do this here, so the book as it stands doesn’t address judgement but implies a new dawn of feminist digitisation.

But what does remain and what is amazing is that from simply critiquing and deconstructing the notion of the Artist being in control, using his tools to his ends; you end up with legitimate questions over judgement, ethics and morality. And by having ethics and morals called into question you bring into crisis the whole of Western Culture.

(J Ilic, a Czech currently based in Hetauda, is working on a novel)