Critical creations

By M. Ramachandran

Creativity means critiquing ability of a human mind resulting in the production of works of art or other such endeavours that directly interact with cultural practices of a given society. That means, the human mind accepts, rejects, changes, evaluates, or condemns all elements and experiences of life while it comes to a conclusion on any sensory perception and finally expresses it as a signification on which the other human minds can respond and recreate. Criticism, as a discipline is a response to work of art but, a work of art also is a kind of response to other works of art or experiences in life.

Every artist’s creative urge is developed by responding to the various facets of life. A poem or a painting does not emerge simply out of the emotional faculty of human mind or of the imaginative one. On the other hand, the faculties of human mind, being relative they are, have a capacity to critique and respond creatively to any situation, comment, sound, or visual image.

As a product emerged from the human capacity to respond and review, a work of art has an inherent quality of critiquing the human situations, emotions, images, colours and sounds. But, when we discuss on criticism of a work of art, the idea looms large on such a text is that it is subservient to the work of art on which it is written and its significance is only decided on the basis of the works of art it deals with. Till date, the prevailing idea of creativity is antithetical to criticism as a discipline in the field of arts. We have been always bifurcating the dialectical aspects of creativity (the inherent critical aspect of every work of art and its ability to generate emotions), and giving prominence to the work of art treating criticism as a by-product or as a secondary one.

Complimentary

Even while one theorises and equates the reader/viewer/listener/with the author/artist/musician as they are complimentary in nature and the reader reaches the mental position of the poet in the process of enjoying a poem, the emphasis is given to the person who makes the cultural product rather than the consumer. Such a positioning of the artist above the viewer is the outcome of an author-centric view of art. Giving prominence to author as an individual, as a person who owns the world that he created through a work of art such as poem and painting or a piece of music, is in a way propagates an individualist notion overlooking the fact that a work of art is a cultural product.

Medium

Moreover, an artist is playing only the role of medium that holds the society together, and in front of a work of art, artist is only a viewer/reader/listener. It is through the critical faculty one becomes creative or productive because while one formulates one’s style, the subject matter and the approach to imagery, one’s creative faculty enables one to accept or reject the innumerable permutation combinations of colours, shades, words or images or umpteen views of life that are flooded in the society.

Criticism

What I have been arguing so far is that criticism as a discipline and works of art as another are the outcome of the same kind of workings of human mind. In the case of an artist, his/her experience or thought that evolved as a response to a phenomenon, idea, or image comes out creatively.

Criticism is also a product of a responding human mind and the magic of words in such formation of the prose proposition and experiences have equal footing of a work of art.

Take the case of Marcel Duchamp’s work of art titled Fountain (1917). Consecrating a readymade object as a work of art with a false signature “R Mutt” Duchamp made a vehement criticism on the idea of art, the values it cherished such as the signature value of the work, the notion of originality and the idea of a work of art created by an artist-individual. It was simply not mocking at the art practices of the first quarter of the 20th century in Europe, but it gave a direction to the future course of art movements in Europe.

Perhaps, this could be stated as the one of the most significant pieces of art criticism in modern art in Europe. Similarly, the treatises Kandinsky wrote on abstraction and art made impact on the cultural practice of picture making more than a work of art.

The arguments in Kandinsky’s theoretical papers changed the way of looking at a work of art and understanding its meaning. One can even observe that the paintings of Kandinsky after 1911 were only the visual examples of what he was arguing in his theory of art.

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Look at the painting titled Miss Cornflakes (1964) of Mel Ramos in which advertisement of the product corn flakes is made use of as a tool of criticism. While Marcel Duchamp used a readymade to criticise the notion of art Mel Ramos uses the ‘ad’ imagery to critically examine our visual culture.

It not only speaks of the commodity/consumable status of woman in the society and the superficial language of advertisement but also of the popular taste and the then contemporary state of art.

Whether it is piece of criticism written or expressed through another medium, it affects the society and its potential to intervene in the cultural process is the fundamental function of a work of art. The recent theories of art foregrounded the creativity of reader while experiencing a work of art, upheld the autonomy of a work of art from the hold of the author’s objectives or ideas, and gave a new life to criticism as a creative expression.

Expression

A piece of critical text may elucidate a work of art and enable one to delve deep in the work of art to recreate it according to one’s experiences and views of life. At the same time, criticism has a separate entity when distanced from the work of art on which it is evolved.

It takes a reader to various dimensions of aesthetic feelings as a text and as a proposition. It is this autonomy of criticism as a text makes it a cultural product and gives it relevance in the landscape of art practices.

Criticism is a metatext. That means, a critical text is evolved or emerged on the basis of a text that can be either literary, musical or pictorial one.

But one other hand, a text, whether it is literary, pictorial, or musical one is also a metatext because it also is evolved from the existing range of texts scattered all over the world. Similar to the works of art, a piece of criticism on any work of art reworks on the existing pattern of the linkages of the imagery, ideas and emotions and engages the reader to make use of his or her mind creatively.

(The writer is the director Indian Cultural Centre in Colombo)