What is modern, then?

Presenting art in strange forms may bring immediate acclaim and money. But for contemporary expression to be successful and lasting, it should be rooted in formal technique and in its tradition.

A FEW weeks ago several works by eminent British contemporary artists were burned down in a fire in a warehouse in London. These were paintings, of sculptures, `pieces' of art and others objects valued at several millions of pounds. Most of them were from the collection of Charles Saatchi, who declared publicly that he was `devastated', (most likely in an artistic manner, since word has it that all the items were insured).

But what the fire did was to spark off a lively debate on what constitutes art. One set of critics considered many of the burnt items to be "abominations", expressing more the aberrations of the people who call themselves artists, while others have, equally fiercely, defended them as expressions of pure artistic expression, containing layers of significance and insight.

One of those which has been cited as an example of the kind of work that is being talked about is a work by the British artist Tracy Emin. It is a mountain tent on to which she had laboriously stitched the names of all the people she had slept with. Sexual exhibitionism, sneered some. Not at all, others retorted - she had the names of her mother and her siblings. `Slept with' obviously had different meanings to the artist. But this serves as an example of what is happening to contemporary art. True, the debate is going on for years, and will, in all likelihood, not conclude for several more; it may occasionally be kept aside as other issues come up, but it keeps surfacing again and again. This is one of those occasions.

This becomes relevant to us because it is not very different from the arguments we hear at home: What constitutes modernity, or the contemporary? What is traditional? Is traditional another word for being dead? Is contemporary another word for being alive? We see it in the field of the visual arts, and in the performing arts; in music, with `fusion' beginning to pull to it more and more artists who have been known either as pop artists or as classical musicians. Dancers have begun `creating' dances; and in the field of theatre - already said to be dying a natural death - strange forms are being presented which, according to many, is hastening its final death.

In Britain the division has been more or less fairly clear; those who have been promoting this kind of art are clearly the artists themselves and a few devotees, aided by some critics who feel they have their pulse on what constitutes contemporary expression. On one occasion, a man stood up and rather diffidently said he had an old shed in the back of his garden and would Saatchi like it as a sort of substitute for the tent. The statement was widely hailed, but drew on the poor man the wrath of a critic who dismissed him as one of the philistines who inhabit the country.

This issue has recently been given a thorough shaking up by Robert Hughes, widely recognised as the finest critic in the United Kingdom. In a speech at Burlington House to the Royal Academy, Hughes argued for a democratic institution that would invigorate the arts. And he said in no uncertain terms, that what was happening now in the art world was `obscene,' in the amounts that were being paid for individual items; he cited the case of someone paying in excess of 1,000,000 for what he called an `immature' Picasso. "There has been a tragic depreciation in the traditional skills of painting and drawing," he said, "the nuts and bolts of the profession." What Hughes said in his address is as true of the other arts as it is about the visual; no artist-creator can afford to do without the `nuts and bolts' as he called it, of the art form itself. The tragedy is that in our country, and, it would seem in the U.K, so many do, earning ephemeral acclaim that lasts just as long as yesterday's headlines.

We seem to have lost sight of the fact that we are merely proclaiming the splendour of the content without grounding it in formal technique and in its tradition, without seeking out the essential energies in the tradition from which the form has emerged. Consequently what we get is something grotesque, which catches the fancy of a few for various reasons and who then pass on to the next in line. To quote Robert Hughes again: "We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art; art that holds time as a vase holds water; art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that doesn't get its message across in ten seconds, that isn't falsely iconic, that hooks on to something deep-running in our nature."

If only one could persuade some of our more fashionable `artists' in the world of theatre, dance, painting, sculpture, and architecture, of this. Art that holds time as a vase holds water. These words ought to be the basic text that all artists - true artists - base their work on, and consider every time they think they have `created' something. And how can this be done? Hughes has been bold enough to say what many have been saying in our country, but quietly, in muted tones. Revitalise our Akademies. They are truly the institutions that will serve to take forward art in its different forms; they need not be `dead' institutions, but institutions that encourage and let artists grow. Exhibiting in the Lalit Kala Akademi, then, could be a rare privilege, not a mark of sarkari arrival. Hughes says of the Royal Academy that it has to be exemplary; so must ours be. "Not a kindergarten, but a place that upholds the primacy of difficult and demanding skills that leak from a culture and are lost unless they are incessantly taught to those who want to have them. And those people are always in a minority. Necessarily. Exceptions have to be made."

The other factor that needs to be brought to centre stage is the vital importance of tradition, of mastering technique and the rigours and discipline that it necessarily means. Too often we have instances of events being presented by persons who have never ever been through the rigours of training and discipline, through the traditional skills that an artist must know, understand and master before he or she can use creativity to give it more lustre and meaning. Contemporary means adding to, not providing a momentary tickle; whoever works on a piece that is contemporary is adding to a body of significance, of perceptions that have developed, are developing, and will continue to develop.

If the debate in the U.K. means a long, considered look at their own traditions so much the better. We do not need to have our contemporary art destroyed in a fire for us to look at its significance in the context of time, of its development over time. Equally, this does not mean looking back; it means looking forward, but with the consciousness of what has gone before. It means that we have to look at art - all forms of art - as that which holds time, in Hughes' words, as a vase holds water.