The Anxious Artist Today

Speakers: R.Sivakumar, Gieve Patel, Sudhir Patwardhan, Rakhi Peswani, Prajakat Potnis and Kaiwan Mehta
Discussant: Ranjit Hoskote
In collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai

November 9, 2012 | 6.30 pm
Auditorium, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai

Being anxious is second nature to being an artist. This is so in any period and in any place. But every particular period and place gives a specific form and content to artists’ anxieties. This panel discussion proposes to address certain of these anxieties in relation to our own times, and see how different generations of artists are affected by them. Changing economic conditions, a rapidly expanding art world, multiplying choices and superseded forms, all give an increased urgency to these issues.

Specifically, the panel will try and explore the anxieties at three levels – professional anxieties like career woes, the difficulties of finding a niche in the art world, making a name, choosing one’s ambition level etc; secondly, psychological anxieties arising from trying to match one’s personal aptitudes and attitudes with curatorial and art market demands; anxieties about being left behind by the ‘avant garde’, not making it into art history, becoming passé and redundant. And thirdly, and most importantly, anxieties about real artistic choices being made in the studio, and how professional and psychological factors affect, or do not affect these artistic choices.

Artists of different generations presumably respond to the pressures of these anxieties in different ways. Are there characteristic differences between art by younger artists and art by older artists? What artistic gain comes from preoccupations held steady over a period of time? Or, do older artists lose out by not responding to the pressure to change? And conversely, are younger artists finding it difficult to give themselves the necessary time to discover their own vision? Or is a new model of urgent reactive creativity more appropriate to our times? The panel will try and discuss these issues by focusing on the core issues themselves rather than on personal stories.