A poor artist is only a romantic notion
ALL roads over the weekend (March 31 onwards) led to the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) in Mumbai, a multi-disciplinary space for the arts, with the inaugural celebrations spread over three days.
The flamboyantly designed cultural centre, along with curated shows on fashion, theatre, visual arts and music, saw the presence of the who’s who of India’s cultural elite co-mingling with the Bollywood royalty. It had all the ingredients of a blockbuster.
Do perfect spaces create an explosion of ideas or do they drown one in safety and lull one into complacency?
I think it’s time to dispel these romanticised notions of the artist in the garret as outdated and redundant. For years, the artist has scrimped and scrounged, and I hope the new players will erase that deprivation and keep the coffers flowing for the artist to concretise his artistic possibilities. I don’t wish to sound like Cassandra, but will this new entry indicate a corporatisation of culture? Every addition to the cultural landscape, hopefully, means less wars and less hostility and a heightened sense of brotherhood and community.
The inaugural function led to a cacophonous uproar between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’: The world of art and design was divided by those who received the invites for the grand inaugural and those who didn’t. The presence of Bollywood was ubiquitous, and the clothes were designer wear. Maybe the criterion for being there was slim, tall, fashionable, and an artist. You had to belong or pretend to belong to the same rarefied stratosphere.
No sour-grape theory should apply as I have personally benefited from corporate funding and recognise its significance in making art possible. Recently, Aadyam, an Aditya Birla initiative, along with Bhoomija, supported ‘Hayavadana’, a classic play written by Girish Karnad, which I directed. Once you have tasted blood of corporate funding, it’s impossible to go back to government grants that force you to push your resources in a way that pull your imagination to a vertiginous edge. However, when you benefit from corporate support, it makes you feel that anything’s possible on the stage. These new players have certainly freed the artists and made them traverse unchartered terrains, although sometimes intangible strings can tug you into compromise.
To revisit the history of patronage in modern India, the person that comes to mind is Rudi von Leyden, who discovered a way in which business and culture could mix. When he came to India in 1940 as the boss of Unilever, he supported the first cohesive group of Indian artists — The Bombay Progressives. MF Husain, FN Souza and SH Raza were some of the artists highlighted and supported.
After four decades of gestation, the seeds sowed by Rudi von Leyden are fructifying. From music and dance to theatre, both classical and contemporary, are being curated and celebrated. The Ambanis are not the first business family in India to invest in a performing arts space; JRD Tata and Jamshed Bhabha were the pioneering forces behind the still thriving National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai. The Birla Matoshree Sabhagriha, built by Rameshwar Das Birla, is one of the earliest performance spaces. There’s also the Royal Opera House, Prithvi Theatre and Jehangir Art Gallery, besides others, each with its nostalgic associations, making for an equitable relationship between the corporates and the arts.
The Anand Mahindra group has helmed many cultural initiatives, including the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, a blues festival and, more recently, a percussion one. The Godrej group, until 2020, funded the India Culture Lab. Serendipity, exploring the geography of Goa with visuals arts, installations, theatre, music, dance as well as cuisine, is now part of the artistic calendar. It has supported out-of-the-box artistic endeavours with creative ventures, grand and epic, made possible by their largesse.
The relationship between art and money has always existed — from artisans decorating palazzos for the Italian aristocracy to today’s star-artists flourishing in a global art scene supported by private collectors.
In a polarised world with intolerance and bigotry asserting itself, a commitment to culture is not just good ethics but good politics as well. Public-private partnership is the keyword, as corporates committed to assigning funds towards their corporate social responsibility ventures have also realised the invaluable contribution of the arts in creating a healthy and more humane environment.
When you work as an artist, you recognise that you do not require limitless funds to survive, but potentials can never be realised without funding. Getting funds is not only about money, it is also about a wholehearted attempt to try and forge a mutual understanding between the arts, the commercial and civic world. It fulfils an ancient role of connection between levels of power, expertise, culture and gender. These dynamics are significant in helping society adapt to the hard world we live in, humanise it, make it more equitable and start conversations.
— The writer is a theatre director
