INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW OF ANIRBAN MITRA WITH ART HISTORIAN Soumik Nandy Mazumdar

    Interactive dialogue with art historian Soumik Nandy Mazumdar (discussing about my work).

Anirban – What is a sign and how does it operate in my painting?

Whenever I am using different kinds of sign in my canvas it leads to different kinds of problems because when I am showing a sign, I want to denote something, but when the viewer sees the painting he may not have the vocabulary in mind and therefore may lead to some other kind of interpretation which I do not want, which is leading to all kinds of problems. A gap is widening between his understanding and my way of viewing.

Soumik da- You just now told me that the way you are trying to get the signification of a particular sign, but sign at that point is not merely a sign, or it is not merely a sign language, but sign becomes a signifier and then it signifies something. Now the problem lies in the signified. I have doubt in the fact of when a sign goes to a signifier to a signified, whether it has any absolute value or not.

         It can begin with a very simple sign language like the index finger pointing up. It can signify that I am scolding or threatening someone. It can signify to someone that please wait one minute for me because I am talking to someone. Or say to someone that ‘I will take revenge on you’. So right at the outset this should be according to my opinion made clear that when you are dealing with a sign (not a very sophisticated, refined and conventional signs like as we see in traditional culture and art then it is not called a sign but it is then called an iconography) you are not talking about iconography but about popular signs. Different kinds of existing popular cultural signs and they are not necessarily meant to be signs but you are reading them as signs. Signs signifying certain things, signs continuously emitting certain messages, sensation, certain ideas, certain ideas, certain gestures, cultural gestures, cultural flavor and in many other different ways. So if the signs come from popular culture then let us use the term popular semiotics. I am not talking about the sophisticated or aristocratic or much more scholarly semiotics because it has a different domain and it has a different discussion periphery. So when I am talking about popular semiotics like road signs, popular signs in the popular culture, the way you have collected different objects in your room like cheaply produced, sold and manufactured items like plastic toys, popular posters and books. Abundance of these signs is continuously floating in the air, floating in our culture, floating in our time and space. When I am talking about them, I think in my opinion we should retain this idea that these signs are potentially able to emanate or emit infinite possibilities of signified(s). It has an immense signification power. Power not necessarily vertical power but horizontal power, that is how many possible meanings that can these signs generate. Possibilities are immense and endless. To keep this idea in mind I would contradict you right at the beginning that when you said that the sign with the signifier to the signified that you are expecting from the viewer, the viewer is not getting the exact meaning you are trying to convey. You are expecting the viewer to get that meaning only. Firstly you said “I want this particular kind of reading”, which I am opposing. Because you are dealing with certain signs which by its own Wright of existence of circulation and its origin is inherently powerful and potential enough to emit a whole lot of possible signifiers/ many meanings/ many ideas. So you as an artist expect one kind of reading to be read by the viewer because you are dealing with signs which do not have single reading but which always have multiple reading at least in our culture or in our general life. Now you can always argue that I am Anirban and I am an individual artist, I am not another sign board painter who is adding to the culture of the signs, I am doing ‘Fine art that is a kind of individual artist who fall in the domain of individual practice, specially made, specially conceived and executed for not really frankly speaking any or every public on the road but for the initiated, a little educate, a little interested kind of public.  Now you can argue that Saumik da, why I will keep my signs so much open in their readings. So this I find the most interesting contradiction, a very interesting aspect that can be dealt within your work.

                I have seen your last year’s works and I have felt that there is a very interesting contradiction (not in the sense of confusion). ‘Contradiction’ can be a major subject in your art. May be you are addressing this ‘contradiction’.

Anirban – What do you mean by that?

Soumik da –  Contradiction in the sense that you are working with very popular signs. I have just said all these popular signs have multiple significations. But you as an individual painter may not want such a large openness or you may not want such a large multiplicity. Through further discussions I will try to understand what you really want in your work. You are trying to convey that particular meaning in the way you are using them. You are not making another kind of sign poster. You are not making another popular sign. For this is not a part of an ad or commercial art. It is a part of your individual expression. That is the world of multiple signification with which you are working and finally the work you are doing (this piece of canvas) which is an expression of a certain idea, or which is an organization of your idea. This expresses your intention, which has been deliberately juxtaposed and organized. What you have reached in your art and what you have picked up from your popular culture; there is a transition, there is a journey. You have already traveled from one world to another world. The world from where you have picked up your elements, that world necessarily and inherently offers multiple readings and the world you are creating, I won’t say it will offer only singular meaning. Even in your work also, there is a possibility of multiple readings. But these ranges of multiple reading will not be as vast as it is there in the real popular world. It will be more in a sense controlled, doctored, maneuvered, and your intention will play a very important role. Not necessarily the intention of the popular culture but your intention as an individual artist.  Now the contradiction that I am talking about lies here, that is the signs you are using have multiple readings inherited in them. The way you are using , the thing you are making, that is the piece of  art work to be shown to the public ( those how go to the gallery). Till now you have not shown your work by hanging them from a tree or on the road-side but it is meant for the gallery for those who are interested, where a kind of an educated people will go and see your work. There you quiet naturally, I am not blaming you. You are perfectly right in expecting certain kind of reading you have intended to deal with.  Now the contradiction lies here. Is it possible? If it is possible, then there is a contradiction in this possibility. There is a contradiction in this journey.  I think in your work this contradiction can be addressed.  Not necessarily you have to solve it. See that I can do it; I am starting from a multiple reading and leading it to a more singular, deliberate reading. But these kinds of process have been done by many artists like Atul Dodiya. But I have always thought particularly when I have shown Atul Dodiya’s works to people not like us, those who have studied in art schools, but to those people who do not have an idea of what is happening in this new art world, particularly in a postmodern era of art language. When I have showed it to them, Atul Dodiya in the way he has used these signs with a certain kind of intention, these people are not being able to understand the deliberate or intended meaning or reading. They are always going back to the original popular significations, and thus returning to the signified. This means that if I use popular signs and signification and there is nothing wrong in that but when I am using them as an individual artist for a much more kind of cultured kind of expression, then the signs undergo a certain kind of dissociation, displacement, a kind of decontextualization ; that takes place in my process.  The artist utilizes or exploits this kind of de contextualization.  If an artist says that I am using the signs from an original meaning, up till now as far as I have seen other artist’s works and that includes you also as I have seen your works in the previous years.

        Now let us not claim that we are actually dealing with the original reading or meanings. At least you as an artist is working out an intended reading, a manufactured, a produced and a reworked meaning. It is a kind of remix or reworked and you are playing upon the decontextualization. A popular sign/popular motif is most apt in their original context. Not only with popular signs but also with well known, well accepted popular items like say for instance terracotta horses which I have collected in my house. When these village people they use this terracotta horses as votive offerings and they place this offering under a tree and when I pick them up, pay them and bring them home and keep them on my show case decontextualization has taken place. I should not repent on this decontextualization. I am utilizing it and exploiting it on the other hand. I am taking the advantage of decontextualization.

              Similarly I think art language when it is built up from the popular sign language, then this art does not circulate or disseminate in the popular culture. It circulates in the high end market economy world. The world where it circulates, here neither you are wrong in expecting certain kind of deliberate readings.

              You just now said, I don’t know who those viewers are, (but you said) they are reading from a different angle. Now I want to ask that are these viewers, common people or from the art world?

Anirban – Yes, they belong to the art world and they are art educated viewers.

Soumik da – If the art educated viewer’s response is like this that they lead again to multiple readings. One who is examining is saying that in popular culture it was like this but why have you used it in a different way which is ultimately leading to multiple readings. So in the other way round if you see that these people are in a way addressing this same contradiction, may not be in a very intelligent way. Now I feel that this contradiction is becoming a very important issue where there is a transition from the popular art to the high end, sophisticated, culturally informed art. Now you know that this kind of art practice has been in India for the last ten to fifteen years. Particularly in the postmodern era you have seen that with a definite theoretical standpoint they have been used not only in visual art but also in theater, film, in literature in Europe, in America and even in Bengali literature, the use of ‘cliché’ should not be denied or ignored as cliché but they are potential metaphors and motifs of contemporary expression. You must have read Joy Goshwami’s poetry, Senior Shonkho Ghosh’s poetry where we find fantastic use of cliché.  Then it is no more a cliché. Like an ordinary, common place, mundane objects in my eyes become very meaningful under a certain kind of situation in a certain context. Similarly in a work of art, a cliché can be used and reworked upon in a definite context and one can endow the cliché with a very positive and meaningful existence. Suddenly it becomes very meaningful, so you generate meaning. You are not leaving the signs with the meanings that they came from their original contexts. You are endowing these signs with a new set of meanings. You are allowing them to generate a new set of meanings in the way you are working out on your canvas.

             Now the problem is definitely not yours that you were expecting from your viewers. There is no problem with the viewer. In fact this is not a problem at all. I think this is a very interesting fact that you are using a language which is very edgy. If it would have been a very imaginary language then it would have been very different. This is an edgy language; picking things up from a world which is replete with hundreds of meaning and ideas and messages and you are reworking on them in your canvas again in a way which also seems to be replete with many meanings particularly because of your compositional structure. This is something unique I would say because those who work with popular signs, you will see, including those who work with popular imagery say Prasanta Sahu to even seniors and also juniors I have seen they isolate their signs. They isolate only one sign or maximum two signs through their composition.  Like one image of a terrorist’s gun or a photographic image or a cigarette case or any kind of mundane popular sign.  Now I can say that you are also isolating but you are isolating then and then you are returning them again to a second kind of crowd. In this way I think your painting is unique. Definitely you have also to isolate them because unless you isolate how will you work.  But you are not freezing it.

          I think in Prasanta Sahu’s work or even in Atul Dodiya’s work you will see there is a major problem happening, that is not only they are isolating the signs from their popular domain but they are going for a kind of frozen composition. They are freezing it to an extent that only one kind of meaning or reading is possible , though it is not bad. But you know Anirban that this kind of work with this kind of language has been happening in India for at least nine to ten years in Baroda and Bombay. In Orissa there is a whole band of artists who are working with Neo Realism. The point is that it has become a dead convention which they are not realizing. The reason is that there is no wrong in the language but if a language is used repeatedly then it becomes a dead convention, in which no one is giving an innovative thrust. So isolating an object, picking up an object, freezing it into a kind of motif, which leads to a possibility of reading which is very much expected kind of reading, let us say predictable. You should agree with me that in art practice too much of predictability is detrimental, is negative to its kind of worth. If it becomes too much predictable then why do you look at a work of art, listen to music or watch a film. If predictability of a work of art is less the viewer or listener gets involved in generating the meaning.     

Anirban – Yes, you are right; viewers are expecting my work to be very predictable, involving only one image. They expect me to give fewer images and to leave a lot of blank space in my painting.

Soumik da – Exactly, they want that isolation and a frozen composition. This kind of attitude of freezing, you will see that (I am not disrespecting any one, if you don’t mind) they want to play it safe. Now anyone can do it, even a first year or a second year student can do it. He can pick up anything. If he has skill of applying a three dimensional realism, he will be able to paint without having any meaning or can be very pretentious. It claims to have a meaning. The point is to what extent the artist is involving himself in creating a second set of meaning.

            Even in case of popular road sign if you see, there is no fixed meaning.  I have 750 match boxes. Now if I see, what is there, it is a match box with lots of images. One who needs a match box would obviously need it and would buy even if there are no images on them. Is there a need of so many images? But there is a reflection like when the film Mother India was launched; many match boxes were produced with images of Mother India. So images depending on film, on nationality or concepts dealing with nation are reproduced on these match boxes.

Even there also in popular culture’s domain not as a creator but  as a common person  you are collecting them, then also they do not have any fixed meaning. So when you are using them in your work then also there cannot be any frozen meaning. To generate or to endow that object with new set of meanings, at least there should be many possibilities of readings. So I think this contradiction, not theoretically but mostly I would say in the way you are composing your picture. Nowadays no one is thinking about the composition, they are talking it for granted, thinking it in a very mechanical way. Composition is a very important part of a language (retaining the classical notion of art language. For a composition meaning may change, as we can see from Renaissance to Ajanta onwards. Therefore when I am using a postmodern idiom, composition becomes a back dated idea! I as a person do not believe this because the way you are composing is so vital for your art and for the viewer to generate, to read things into your picture. Composition plays a very important role and this is applicable in your case. Composition itself becomes a message. You are picking up things from the popular domain and sending them back to a new kind of crowd in an ambivalent, ambiguous and sometimes confusing. Sometimes it is becoming difficult to understand as to what he is trying to say?

Anirban – Everyone wants to find out a story.

Soumik da – Yes, story with a specific meaning like terrorism, or Kashmir issue or with a specific issue. Story not necessarily as narration. Those people who are little informed are not necessarily looking for a story but they are looking for an agenda, or an issue. They want to know what Anirban’s agenda is or what is his issue?

           Those who are working with these popular signs have a definite issue. By looking at these paintings you can immediately understand the issue like this one deals with terrorism or police’s atrocity at Nandigram, or political, social or feminist issues. What is your issue? People are impatient about your agenda/issue. They are not able to control themselves and which is resulting into such a kind of reading of your painting which is not at all applicable to your painting. To read your painting one has to get involve ingenerating meanings, considering the composition right at the beginning. You have to at first respect and accept the composition. Composition is itself an important guiding sign. Composition itself is a sign. It is to be read as a sign. Just you have intended to gather different things and therefore you have arranged them casually, is a very sacrificial idea. To create such a composition there must be a very clear intention of the artist which is working in his mind. The artist may not be saying about it.  There is no need of saying it.  It can be understood that not only in one painting, but repeatedly one after the other and that too any body can understand that to complete a work like this needs so much of labor and patience.  It would have been easier if you could pick up and separate a single image like ‘Shahthi charan lophe hati jakhan tokhan’ and place it beside a Sukumar Ray’s poetry ‘Abol Tabol’ and could have made a different kind of a background which would result in affixed  and frozen meaning and could have been neat and clean. The viewer could have been pleased and could have felt peaceful after looking at such a simplified painting. But you are not going into that direction. You are choosing a restless, un- peaceful and a path full of tension. Choosing things from one kind of  a restlessness and tension, and placing and throwing them into another restless position. I think in this fundamental play of signs in these works, you are deliberately avoiding any kind of safe play with these signs. In fact you are quiet respectful to the ‘Confusion’ amid which these signs actually exist in real life. You are not cleaning the ‘Confusion’ with a duster and not making them into an artificially neat and clean imagery. This is a confusion these signs exist in. This is the kind of confusion (confusion not in the negative sense),in which the painting has resulted into where confusion is the quality of the painting. Confusion is the situation in which we encounter or confront these signs in our daily life. So you are not forgetting this confusion. Therefore if there is a contradiction in your painting or if anyone finds any or reads any contradiction, to my mind it is a very positive contradiction.  Now we have to understand where this contradiction leads you to.

Anirban – When I first started this kind of work with different signs, the position was that how do you view the world where there are different kinds of seeing which co-exist together.

Soumik da – Exactly, that is multiple existences. When you are talking of multiple existences that do not mean that one is detached from each other.  Signs also exist in multiple meanings, multiple co-existences and the way in which you are co-existing different things in your painting, they also according to their orientation, undergo a certain kind of continuous transformations due to juxtaposition. Therefore some classical notions of visual language is also working here in a newer way, in a newer sense. Particularly that which we now are calling them as sign, people earlier used to call them as colour or form. Otherwise what is happening is very deep, serious and very well connected to our traditional practice and knowledge of art.

            When I was walking down the street I saw three billboards. In one of them there was an ad showing the muscle man Sanjay Dutt holding a Tata Steel rod. And just below it there was another ad of the health department showing a thin polio infected boy standing just below it. When I am reading it I am thinking that Sanjay Dutt is more stronger than the polio infected boy, and Tata Steel is more stronger than Sanjay Dutt. This meaning is not intended but I am generating the meaning. I am giving the meaning because of a certain kind of reading. Others may not have reacted to it. Therefore we create meaning, we generate meaning, we connect signs. Therefore multiplicity is very interesting, not just because they are co-existing but because it generates interesting ideas.  Sometimes these generated meaning can actually become very important expressions of deeper truths of life. Truths which I can understand but is unable to say, suddenly by this kind of generation of meaning can indicate serious truth, but amid of apparent confusion. These generated meanings can also give us a deeper understanding of life with philosophical dimensions. In this kind of art I think motifs should not be frozen into a timeless thing. One should let it go free once again. This new set of meanings may go out of the artist’s hand, so people are afraid of it.  They want to get hold of the whole meaning within their control.

Anirban - I do not want to hold it in my hand but my viewers are expecting it from me.

  Soumik da – Exactly, here you do not want it. You want an apparently uncontrolled meaning. On the other hand you are controlling the composition in a much matured way. You can tell me that I have not thought of it earlier and have not plotted it. Do you do layouts beforehand?   

Anirban – No I do not do any layout. I start from one corner, and keep on doing the details as I go up.

Soumik da – So you are evolving your composition. You are in a sense incorporating risk in the very process of making your art. You are taking that risk factor. At least it may happen that being a painting student for so many years you know that you can loose balance which is a very formal case. Then there may be a problem. But definitely when you have finished some part of it, in your subconscious mind there will be a calculation going on in how to organize the space in a meaningful way. That meaning which will remain within your intention and deliberation, and another meaning which will remain as a possibility.  Not necessarily very spelt out meaning. That’s why people are expecting you to focus on one single thing. But you are saying that I will not focus on one single thing. You are talking a different standpoint altogether. Keep on working and people later understand your intention and possibility. For that you have to give time to your viewer to accept this kind of new language.

           The approach of working with popular signs had started for challenging the conventional and fabricated signs. They said that we will not fabricate signs emotionally. There are hundreds of signs floating around us and this is the most potential subject of our art. So it had started with a challenge. This practice is not challenging any more, because it has become a safe convention.

            I think in your work there are quiet some fundamental challenges to begin with the composition and also the denial of any frozen meaning. If you have to isolate the sign and keep it in isolation, then what is the need of working with popular signs which would lead to a frozen meaning? Then it would be similar to my own practice of collecting Dokra metal works and then keeping it in the showcase. On the contrary you are coming out of the showcase convention. The people who have trained their eyes in the showcase convention will not be able to accept your work.

           There is nothing wrong in the way you are working, there is nothing wrong in your expectations, I think it takes time. I think you are convinced with your work .I can see different kinds of surfaces on one single painting with different kinds of styles. It seems that you are not trying to make a personal, individualized style of your own. In Patha Bhavana I have seen children working by spreading paper on floor. On the four sides children are painting on it. I have told their teachers that don’t display this kind of painting (which has been worked on from all sides) on the wall. Instead display it horizontally on the floor or on a stool.

             Until now your painting has a single orientation that is this side is up and this side is down. Intended viewing orientation is that, this is up and that is down, which should be hung on the wall, vertically.

                You may come to a next stage where you will play with the orientation itself. This culture of crowd, culture of confusion, loaded with signs or bombarded with popular signs; cannot have a single orientation in real life .They are coming from different directions. Just because we stand on the earth vertically, we tend to read the orientation vertically, but actually they are coming from different directions and angles of our life. So then people will go around your painting which will be displayed on the floor, which would further lead to huge excess of confusion. So there is a metaphorical possibility in the viewing orientation itself. So when you are playing with the viewing orientation, you are addressing or you are suggesting the real absence of any singular orientation of the signs in real life. So it has a metaphorical dimension. If you call the school children to see your painting, they will not have any problem in reading your work because we are used to see television with all kinds of channel surfing. So it is the same effect here also. The experience of channel and net surfing are here in your painting which acts as a metaphor.

   This interview was taken in 2008 in a video. Now it has been translated from the bengali video interview to english..