The Merchandising Of Culture

IT'S a rapidly expanding canvas awash with the colour of money. Swelling, upwardly mobile audiences, drawn by the strong urge to acquire the trappings of good taste, are streaming into art galleries and concert halls. Corporate promoters are throwing their weight behind the popularisation of pure culture. The stage is all set for a dramatic revolution. The world of high art—a rarefied realm hitherto peopled exclusively by the nation's most creative souls, living and working in splendid isolation—has zoomed into the era of hardsell.

The art of the marketplace is being propelled by the infusion of funds from corporate moneybags and attractively packaged and aggressively pushed by sales whizkids. We are in the age of unbridled consumerism. Even serious art, music, theatre and, to a lesser extent, 'art' cinema have suddenly become saleable commodities. Canned products that are ready to use: just flick open the lid and consume. Be it the evocative brushstrokes of a celebrated painter, the haunting strains of a classical raga or the excitement of a well-mounted, well-acted play, cellophane-wrapped culture is up for sale. The commodification of art is here to stay.

The success of Greek-born American pianist Yanni's recent concert in Agra illustrates the power of high-pitched marketing. Until about six months before he arrived, few Indians had heard of the flamboyant, longmaned musician. Then STAR TV plucked him out of nowhere and bombarded Indian viewers with promos of the man and his multi-national band. By the end of it, many affluent Indians were willing to shell out up to Rs 10,000 for a ticket to the concert.

It's the social rub-off that people hanker after. Indian classical music concerts, especially if a big name is involved, draw full houses primarily because the event is a social occasion where it pays to be seen. It is not unusual, therefore, to find the hall half-empty after the interval: classical music simply doesn't engage the so-called aficionados long enough. The same psychology is at work when a Bernardo Bertolucci or Federico Fellini retrospective comes to a city like Delhi. Virtually everybody who has social aspirations descends upon the venue to partake of the well-packaged fare. Once again, it is an opportunity to show off one's pretensions to taste.

So, is the increasing corporate patronage of the arts music to the ears of the purist? Maybe not. But it is: for practitioners of high culture who until recently were perennially on the verge of penury; for their 'enlightened' promoters who are making the most of the cultural gold rush; and, of course, for the burgeoning Indian middle class which has the cash to shower on activities that serve to separate them from the hoi polloi—the more the merrier.

"Awareness of art in India is definitely on the rise," says Parmeshwar Godrej, whose company is a sponsor of the upcoming Zubin Mehta concerts in India. "Corporate sponsors help bring art to the doorsteps of a larger audience."

When bottomlines are important in the art mart, promotional moves are all about numbers. Tina Ambani, film star-turned-corporate citizen, knows that pretty well. She's now organising her second 'Harmony' show in Mumbai. Enthused no doubt by the huge success of last year's edition, where 178 art pieces were displayed and nearly 70 per cent of the exhibits were sold during the show itself. "Given the networking support of the Reliance Industries textile division, the seven-day 'Harmony' show attracted 4,000 visitors per day," declares India's newest patron of the arts.

The growth in the consumption of packaged, homogenised, easy-to-digest culture has been phenomenal since the early '90s. Art galleries have proliferated all over the country as the super-rich have got into the act of acquiring and marketing works of art. Numerous corporate giants, notably ITC Limited, RPG Enterprises, God-rej and Britannia, have stepped up direct involvement with the promotion of high culture.

Classical music has been one of the greatest beneficiaries. Says Chidananda Dasgupta, film-maker-critic: "Sponsorship saves art from total extinction. There wouldn't be any classical music today, for example, if there hadn't been sponsorship in the form of, say, ITC's Sangeet Research Academy (SRA)."

Sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan, too, feels the spurt in sponsorships is for the better. "Everyone gets exposure, musicians, dancers, painters. In the search for excellence, the serious listener has greater options. The serious listener is choosy. But the artiste needs the presence of the not-so-serious section of the audience, too."

INDIAN classical music has a 3 per cent share of the market. That implies a significant growth that was triggered in the early '90s by Music Today. Supported by the marketing strategy of the Living Media Group, Music Today launched a series of high-quality recordings of Indian classical music, arranged not on the basis of the performers' names but themes. HMV, which was until then the only significant play -er in the classical music segment, suddenly had a competitor. The older company came up with well-packaged collections like Chairman's Choice, Pathfinders and Milestones. In their own small ways, Magnasound and BMG Crescendo joined in, creating a vibrant market.

Understandably, the audience has grown. The RPG music festival, which began in 1992, has attracted enormous attention in recent times. The annual concert reportedly costs around Rs 30 to 35 lakh, with each participating artiste being paid between Rs 50,000 and Rs 2.5 lakh. Agreeing that the popularity of high culture has increased perceptibly, Pavan Malhotra, HMV's product development manager, says: "The average listener is not necessarily a connoisseur. He buys music and goes to concerts in pursuit of a trend. The person who goes for Bhimsen Joshi also goes for Yanni."

Clearly, discernment is not always the key element. Says playwright Mahesh Dattani: "It is a self-propelling process once a play becomes part of cocktail circuit conversation. People in the circuit have to see it or else they are lost." Writer Ranga Rao echoes Dattani: "When one talks of Yanni's concert and art galleries, one is talking of expressions of the shallow, hollow upper crust." India is a poor country and the kind of value systems that are reflected in a Yanni concert belong to the West, says the man of letters. Hence they have no impact on society at large.

That could be one reason why corporate involvement with art promotion is assuming novel forms. Bank of America's branch on New Delhi's Barakhamba Road, for instance, has opened its premises to a rolling exposition of "affordable art" in association with Antahkaran, a small gallery that promotes upcoming talent. Says Sunil Sharma, vice-president and retail business head (New Delhi), Bank of America: "We want to make banking a wholesome experience for our customers, besides creating a platform for upcoming artists." A part of the proceeds from the show is earmarked for the SOS Children's Village. Big players are increasingly banking on art. Artists are laughing all the way to the bank.

"Just look at the number of sponsored shows around—it is clear that cultural consumerism is a fact," says Dattani. "Our generation," says artist Manu Parekh, "had to struggle for 20 years. Even a decade ago, I used to think that it needs courage to be a painter. Today, things have changed: you can a make a living out of art."

Indeed, the works of leading painters are sought after by art collectors and yuppies alike. Classical music soirees and dance recitals are, more often than not, sellouts in India's urban centres. English-language theatre, especially imports from Broadway and West End, are roaring hits. And books authored by Indians writing in the English language are runaway success stories, objects of frenetic media hype. Reasons publisher Ravi Dayal. "Why should a talented artiste die in penury? The rich are not God's gift to mankind, but if they can contribute to a worthwhile cause, fine."

But is the hype really in order? Poet Nissim Ezekiel feels it is: "A writer has to promote his work. The relationship with the readers is like any other human relationship: it needs to be worked upon."

Filmmaker Saeed Mirza, who has never pandered to the lowest common denominator in the market, feels there is nothing wrong with popular art provided it is art in the first place. "Art does not have to be exclusive," he says. "Who reads Tagore or Shakespeare? Just because popular writing is read by all, does it mean it stops being art?" For the likes of Mirza, however, artistic integrity is all-important. "History is littered with corpses of people who tried to strike a balance between populism and art. Charlie Chaplin is a rarity," he argues.

Success and money are not necessarily negative influences on an artiste's work. "Bhimsen Joshi does make money, but the purity of his singing has never suffered," Kathak dancer Shovana Narayan points out. Talking of dance in particular, Odissi exponent Protima Gauri has no problem with sponsorships: "Over the centuries, dance was patronised by the royalty. The laity had no access. Today, sponsorship means a chance to perform. Globalisation and the advent of the TNCs has helped us find an identity." The corporate sector is certainly doing its bit. Delhi, Mumbai,

Calcutta, Bangalore, Chennai—every major urban centre is witnessing an upsurge in awareness. Until the late '60s, Delhi had only two private art galleries. "Today, the city has over 50," says Virendra Kumar Jain, owner of Kumar Gallery, the Capital's first private art gallery, set up in 1955 exclusively to promote modern Indian art. Filmmaker K. Bikram Singh, who recently completed a 13-part TV series on Indian painters, agrees: "Only a few years ago, the market simply wasn't big enough to sustain all the artists active in Delhi. " Today, artists no longer need secure jobs to keep them going.

The picture, at least on the face of it, is equally bright in Mumbai, Calcutta and Bangalore. Karnataka's capital, for instance, has 13 private art galleries, five of which regularly hold sponsored shows. For about three years now, Bangalore has witnessed an average of four shows a month. Classical music concerts average six a month during the season. English theatre, which readily finds sponsors, is the rage. About 1,500 people watched Arjun Sajnani's The Kiss of the Spiderwoman every day during its six-day run in March.

Indeed, India's middle-class consumer—having taken care of the basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, he is looking for other ways to spend his disposable income—is ready for the best. There's a huge consumer market out there for cultural products that are well-packaged and slickly presented and, most important, are identified with refined taste. Says choreographer Astad Deboo: "With the media becoming accessible, art awareness is spreading. The MTV-type culture is still dominant, but all is not lost." At a recent performance in Bangalore, Astad detected an amazing degree of understanding of dance among the audience. "There were younger dancers who came backstage to discuss the performance. They were keen to look at dance with a new eye."

It's the new emerging audience that Arun Bharat Ram of SRF Ltd has focused his attention on. "Classical music and dance cannot become financially self-sufficient without a discerning audience," he says. "What we need today is a music-loving audience to support our classical traditions." Therefore, he suggests that more corporate groups need to sponsor "selfless, non-profit, non-government voluntary organi-sations like Spic-Macay, which is devoid of frivolities".

In Calcutta, corporate support for the arts has taken deep roots. Take ITC's initiatives. The Rs 5,000-crore tobacco giant was among the first Indian companies to sponsor cultural events aggressively. From 1972 onwards, ITC has sponsored Sangeet Sammelan, the classical music festival which has evolved into one of India's most important annual cultural events. In 1978, the company's patronage extended to setting up SRA. A public charitable trust, the SRA, housed in a stately 200-year-old mansion in south Calcutta, handpicks promising young talent in classical music from all over the country, puts them under the training of a maestro and hands out scholarships. The aim is to inculcate the values of the guru-shishya parampara in its young students; renowned vocalists like Hirabai Barodekar and Girija Devi have lived in and taught at the SRA. ITC pumps in Rs 1 crore every year to keep the academy running.

RPG Enterprises' forays into corporate patronage of the arts has been on a smaller scale, but their impact has been tremendous. For seven years, the company has been producing art folders containing six to eight prints of the works of India's top painters for public sale. Thanks to this venture, Tagore, Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Jamini Roy prints adorn the walls of many middle class homes these days. "It was a way to make good art available to the public," says litterateur Mani Shankar Mukherjee, also RPG's communications chief.

The same spirit has inspired VST Industries to help the group theatres of Calcutta. As they struggle to survive on shoestring budgets, the 150-odd group theatre troupes today bank on the Natya Sanghati, set up four years ago by VST "for the welfare of the artistes". VST Industries' marketing and corporate communications assistant manager Somnath Chatterjee says the organisation has already disbursed Rs 10 lakh to performers.

Where does this leave real art? Says filmmaker Ketan Mehta, whose experiments with commercial cinema (Hero Hiralal, Oh Darling Yeh Hai India, Aar Ya Paar) have all ended in disasters: "Culture has market as a counterpoint. Unfortunately, in recent times, the market has taken over culture." Notes artist Jehangir Sabavala: "It (consumerism in culture) is a double-edged sword. Unless handled carefully, it can do more damage than good. Art should not be thought of as an investment."

KUMAR Gallery's Jain, who was instrumental in helping the likes of M.F. Husain tide over their early days of struggle in Delhi, strikes a note of caution. "The so-called boom is only a tamasha. Drawing rooms, garages and basements are being turned into art galleries. Kitsch is being promoted. It doesn't augur well for serious art," he says. Not quite true, says Renu Modi of Gallery Espace: "Some shows do stop at packaging. The hungama does help and some artists do fall into the whirlpool. But it's also a fact that the galleries are all doing well. General awareness has gone up and you can't sell just anything." The trouble, Jain laments, is that buyers are looking only for decorative art, affordable 'pretty pictures'.

The dangers inherent in widespread corporate sponsorship is recognised by many artists. "An insidious form of censorship comes into play with sponsorship," warns Dattani. "My kind of plays, where I may talk of communalism, will not be touched by corporate sponsors. They mostly look at bringing in successful productions from Broadway or West End." Rudrapra-sad Sengupta of the Calcutta-based Nandikar group says "the doom of serious and experimental theatre is almost a fait accompli" in this situation. Sponsors are the only way out for theatre these days. "But the problem," says Sengupta, "seems to be that the corporate sector is not yet ready to offer a theatre infant the right to experiment and fail. It seems interested only in supporting an event or occasion which is sure to succeed."

Artist Paritosh Sen's view is similar. "Corporate houses buy names, not good art. They end up buying a lot of rubbish. For example, last year's Ambani art show and the RPG exhibition resembled pan-bidi shops. Artists who sell well stop experimenting."

The booming art bazaar has, feel some critics, led to a decline in quality. "Bikash Bhattacharjee's work during his best period (1965-77) was marked by this eerie beyond-the-surface reality. Now the skills are intact, but that magic is gone," says a critic insisting on anonymity. "When the dictates of the market dominate, artists get bogged down in styles that sell," says art historian Pranabranjan Roy.

"Art today," says painter Yusuf Arakkal, "is talked of more in terms of price than quality. That is sad." For veteran Urdu poet Ali Sardar Jafri, success is not always detrimental to a serious creative person. But hype is. "While the likes of Ghalib or Tulsidas live on to this day because of the strength of their work, the hyped-up writers of our times will not last long," he says. "Public relations efforts can help an artist temporarily. Only art of real worth will stand the test of time," says Virendra Kumar Jain.

That's true of all forms of creativity.