The artist in the public sphere

Rajeev Bhargava

NOVEMBER 25, 2018 00:10 IST

UPDATED: NOVEMBER 25, 2018 00:11 IST

In being compelled to continually comment on society and politics through their art, artists like T.M. Krishna are true to their calling as responsible public intellectuals

It is a truism that our actions are determined by what we believe ourselves to be, by our self-understandings. Each of us carries a picture of what we are, a model of ourselves that guides us through the world, shapes our motivations and makes us behave one way rather than another. If so, what are the dominant self-understandings of artists in our times, particularly in relationship to state and politics?

Not long ago, in strongly traditional, hierarchy-ridden societies, even great artists saw themselves as beholden to their rulers. Deference and submission were crucial ingredients in their mental make-up; after all, a ruler was the primary source of patronage. Today, two very different self-understandings of artists are dominant.

Two kinds of self-understanding

Most modern artists see themselves as producers of cultural or aesthetic values which, by using imagination and thought in their chosen medium, they embody in their work. Since this complex process takes place largely in the study, the studio or the aangan, some artists see themselves as intensely private beings playing little role in public, except while performing or exhibiting their work. Deeply inclined to mind their own business, they may even develop a cultivated indifference to public issues. Yet, as creators of aesthetic values, they are also their custodians. So, when these values are threatened by the practices of the state or by oppressive social forces, even they, unless living in fear, don’t stay quiet. Therefore, in relation to society and politics, they are watchdogs. The great, quietly conservative, Upanishad-influenced poet T.S. Eliot said succinctly that “we should be vigilantly watching the conduct of politicians and economists for the purpose of criticising and warning, when the decisions of politicians and economists are likely to have cultural consequences”. When cultural values are adversely affected, artists must go public, Eliot said.

Alternatively, when general conditions necessary for the functioning of all cultural institutions are undermined and norms of minimal decency are violated, the outraged artist must confront the state — simply as an ordinary, decent human being. An obvious example is Rabindranath Tagore, who, after the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre, returned his knighthood. Remember how artists took to the street when in 1989, theatre activist Safdar Hashmi was bludgeoned to death by political goons? George Orwell put this point well: “When an artist engages in politics (joins the resistance, fights fascists) he does so as a human being, but not as an artist.” The implication is that when artists eventually throw themselves into political struggle, they discard their social persona and return to basic humanity. When elementary moral sense is consistently violated, they join hands with others to fight it without insisting on their exclusivity or difference.

Pure artist, pure citizen, or both

This first largely apolitical self-understanding developed in pre-democratic societies with little political liberty, where popular participation in political decision-making was virtually absent. Without a proper public sphere, an attitude of indifference to state and politics was built into the self-understanding of artists. However, a new kind of artist with a second, very different self-understanding emerged in democracies where citizens entered a newly constituted public domain with views on the whole society. Such artists do not separate their social persona as artists and their political persona as citizens. They are always artist-citizens, acting sometimes as pure artists, sometimes as pure citizens, and often as both. They belong to a newly evolved social category, the public intellectual who, as the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously put it, necessarily “fails to mind his own business”. 

Artists feel responsible not only for what happens in their own field but for just about everything in the world and try to fulfil this responsibility by constant social and political engagement. Inextricably linked with the public domain, they feel incomplete without it, and enter it to express themselves in the language they know best: the language of art.

And without always intending to do so, they enlighten their public. The greater an artist, the deeper her insights, the more she is expected to see further than most others, enable people to understand what left to themselves they do not. Doing so through their work and example becomes an important part of their self-definition. They begin to hope that, mediated by public opinion, art may bring about a change in civil society and state institutions. So, by gentle instruction or dialogic exchange, artists seek to mould public opinion too. They see themselves simultaneously as sophisticated pedagogues or co-participants in the production of a shared culture.

It is absurd to expect artists such as T.M. Krishna to be servile to the state or be indifferent to wrongdoing in society and politics. They simultaneously embody both kinds of self-understanding. Though their art demands that they be intensely private and get massive swathes of time to themselves, they speak out in public on moral decay, social injustice or political impropriety, as decent human beings. Equally, as public intellectuals, as artist-citizens, they feel compelled to continually comment on society and politics through their art. They protest. They criticise the government of the day. They oppose social oppression. To be sure, acting on both self-understandings is not every artist’s cup of tea. One’s childhood and temperament strongly determines one’s attitude to persistent public engagement. Nor is it an artist’s moral obligation to express politically. But it cannot be anyone’s contention today that the primary duty of the artist is to mind her own business, to confine herself to ‘non-political’ art. In doing what he does, Mr. Krishna is not being an ideologue nor showing a narrow political bias. He is being true to his calling as a responsible artist.

Rajeev Bhargava is Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/the-artist-in-the-public-sphere/article25587259.ece?homepage=true