‘Speech Acts’ by Geeta Kapur: Subjective truth-telling and what stands the test of time

To refuse a historicist account yet historicise against the grain;

That is, to historicise with and through

Contradictions;

And allow the contradictions to be relayed across

A mode of recursive narration.

To mark the rhythm of recursive narration with

Declared disjunctures,

And to construct an art history from this material…

— Okwui Enwezor, quoted by Geeta Kapur, from a lecture she gave in October 2016 at the exhibition, ‘Postwar: Art between the Pacific and Atlantic 1945-1965’, in Munich

A recent example might put these words into perspective, so also Geeta Kapur’s new book. One of MF Husain’s paintings sold for a mind-boggling sum and in news was the person who picked up the same: Kiran Nadar. If the act were to be analysed critically within the curatorial lens, it would have to be historicised through the contradictions: the attack on Husain by the Hindutva brigade in the past and his resultant exile. If recent purchases of avant-garde or modern art were to be analysed, it would have to be through the “mode of recursive narration”. This example is not part of ‘Speech Acts’ by Geeta Kapur, and what I missed discussion on, in the book: as to how the avant-garde or the non-conformist, sometimes anarchist, art gets overshadowed by capitalist investment in art. The book goes back and forth into the art of “subjective truth-telling”, by revisiting ‘speech acts’ (essays, interviews and curatorial texts by the author over the last two decades), wondering if, rendered in a different context (today’s political moment, as against the moment when they were uttered), “the repetitions mutate”, i.e. stand the test of time.

About Husain, Geeta writes: “Husain was an exuberant and optimistic artist figure, believing rather than critiquing, praising rather than denouncing India’s cultural heritage and its secular handling by progressive post-Independence regimes. Violence against him was not literal, but it was a threat by hate-mongering ideologues from the Hindu right and their rogue outfits; it enumerated his transgressions in the name of secular modernity….”

In the context of “the political unconscious haunting our individual and social existence”, as she puts it, the question arises as to whether curators are or should be critical chroniclers of history/present, or mere passive presenters?

Right at the onset, it must be noted that this book, meant for the serious art historian/critic, seeks several acts of returning to the text. The ‘Interviews’ segment is the most interesting. Not in the least because, as she points out, “The entry of another voice and the rendering of inter-subjectivities [of the interviewer and the interviewee] may produce consolidated truth-claims, or, equally, a dialogue that deflects the two speakers further apart and provides a wrenched dynamic.” Another that intrigues is ‘De-modern: Why?’ She dissects Gandhi’s idea of the modern, the Biennale as a space, the post-colonial, the contemporary, art history in the Global South, among others.

We can see reflections of how words, once spoken, mutate (and how) in segments, cross-connect. For example, “the ruse of representation is tested in its political deployment” (‘Introduction’) is exemplified in the feminist “performance activists” (referred to in the conversation with Ravi Sundaram and Ashish Rajadhyaksha, September 2023). Thus, “Pushpamala N has developed a photographic oeuvre wherein genre-based imagery is researched before it is staged… Her performance persona is as deliberately conventional as it may also be offensive. She inserts her body presence in the mode inviting darshan so that Hindu national(ist) iconography of believers becomes, within the terms of art, an elaborately performed satire…”

Savi Savarkar, Vikrant Bhise and Anupam Roy are evoked for “their practice ranges from a visceral handling of subject, to Ambedkarite iconography and entangled narrative, to activist immediacy”.

I end with her questions for our times: “With what conceptual strategy and in what dissident form shall the avant-garde perform today?” And, will the mandate [she was talking post-2014 elections] overpower the agenda of political equality of all religions? In this context, then, “What can we assume about the values of citizenship, culture and art practice within this kind of (nation) space?”

— The writer is an independent journalist-historian based in Shimla

Book Review