Arttists Speak is a pluridisciplinary blog that includes interviews with contemporary artists, reviews of art exhibits and literary and art news translations. Arttists Speak is interviewing artists about the state of art today, and how this condition relates to society and the artist as an instigator.
10 September 2010
Malati Shah
1. Where and how would you display your work in an ideal situation?
Different works show well in different spaces, of course. There is not that one gallery that would always work. For my recent watercolour paintings, I would like nothing better than to show all twenty of them in a natural light-filled atrium gallery, but I don't know of any, and 'any' don't know of me. Not yet.
2. If expository writing is good at elucidating and proving a point and
descriptive geometry gives us the tools by which to map objects in space
in relation to one another, what kind of an apparatus does art afford us?
What does art do best?
Art does so many different things; mainly, it triggers a cerebral or emotional response from the viewer. Sometimes it wrenches the gut, sometimes it soothes a broken spirit, sometimes a work of art challenges all that has gone before and opens a window to other possible ways of expression. So, the apparatus that art affords us is this: it allows us to be in touch with our most distinct human spirit.
3. What can you expect from your audience/fans/viewing public? What would you
like them to know about your work?
If someone appreciates my work, I feel on top of the world; what else could I possibly feel? If someone wants to buy one of my paintings, I feel - good heavens - do they like it that much or is it just me they like? Oh, it must be me, I tell myself, and then I don't feel as bad as you may imagine I should. I feel - heck - there are reasons and reasons to buy art, and if liking me is one of them, so be it! Then, if they display the picture they bought in their living room or some favourite place, my heart leaps up like Wordsworth at the sight of a rainbow. On the other hand, when I see it behind the toilet seat, I beg the buyer to please hang it in front of the toilet at least. This happened to me once. And - oh - that was such a subversive move on my part. Sitting there on the toilet seat, the buyer saw the painting everyday - every day. Low and behold, now it hangs over the fireplace in her living room in the high Himalayas. Ah, my heart leaps up, it does!
Another nice thing is when someone I don't know and who doesn't know me buys one of my paintings. Then, it is as if I have communicated in a larger way, somehow.
4. Marcel Duchamp said - "Enough with retinal art!" What is your reaction as an artist to this statement?
I feel dazed and confused reading what Marcel said. He must have been having a 'bad retinal day' or something. Excuse my ignorance - I am just making pictures here and minding my own business.
5. Do you think that there is still room for art movements in today's
pluralistic climate?
Yes, I think there are. Indeed, there seems to be a movement to expand the vocabulary and tools of art to include the many new means of expression there are nowadays - from Lascaux to Adobe. Moreover, this pluralism itself is a movement, as I see it. This doesn't mean everyone has to engage the latest trends: one just does what one has to do and is compelled to create.
6. What is one question you wished we had asked you about your art? Please
feel free to answer it.
Ask me the question: What do you think of Art as a commodity?
My answer: It is a tragic loss of independent assessment that people purchase and admire art because someone else told them to. Real art embodies the spirit of freedom, and for people to love it for reasons such as investment, or 'the Jones Effect' as I call it, well, that is the very reversal of what the work set out to do, or should have set out to do. The best purchase of art is when it is bought or acquired because there was something in the way it moves you and you don't want to lose it now, don't want to lose it now, to quote the Beatle's song.
The End.
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