Keshav Malik (1924- 2014)
Johny ML
JohnyML remembers veteran art critic, poet and writer, Keshav Malik who passed away on 11th June 2014.
Death is a cliché. Hence let me start with another cliché: With Keshav Malik’s passing away an era in Indian art comes to an end. Malik was born in former Punjab in Pakistan in 1924. He breathed his last in Delhi like his contemporary writer, Khushwant Singh. He was ninety years old. Cubism to Performance Art, Malik witnessed a lot of changes taking place in Indian art. However, he was elegant enough to restrict himself to the kind of art he held closer to his heart; modern art. That was the old world elegance and decency. He did not wheel into the smoke filled rooms reeking in beer smell with an urge to witness the latest fads in Indian art. Malik kept himself aloof and that aloofness came from a sort of wisdom displayed by only those people who lived enough to face life and death dispassionately. I am not the right to person to write an obituary note on the death of this veteran art critic for my acquaintance with him as a person as well as a critic was minimal. I have not read much of his art criticism or poetry because when my generation of art critics launched themselves into the firmament of Indian art scene, it was already polluted either by the self serving newspaper critics or by the highbrow-istic academic writers. On the one hand any writing that went without a quote from a western scholar was deemed to be less than academic therefore unworthy of scholastic perusal. Making art writing complicated was the prime aim of these academic writers of that time. On the other hand, the newspaper critics posed themselves as the tastemakers of the time. Keshav Malik belonged to a time before this critical climate of confusion. And he was one of the Titans of that time.
Names like Richard Bartholomew, Krishna Chaitanya, Keshav Malik and Santo Datta made artists (at least in Delhi) think twice before they attempted any exhibition. Richard Bartholomew was incisive in his words and critical assessment, Krishna Chaitanya was the reigning patriarch of art criticism, Santo Datta’s column had created a benchmark of its own. Keshav Malik, though had a column in Times of India was a critic with difference. He maintained the old world elegance even in his critical assessment of the works and their creators. Artists who came to exhibit in Delhi waited for Keshav Malik to visit their shows. They did not even want him to write about them. But the very presence of this man was a reward in itself. Those artists who had enjoyed the benevolence and presence of Keshav Malik went around and talked about it in many words. Hence, many artists arranged their Delhi exhibitions did so according to the availability of Malik in town. “Artists from remote areas came to Delhi looking for Keshav Malik,” said senior artist A.Ramachandran when he was commenting on the contributions of Keshav Malik as an art critic and writer, in a function held at the KNMA, New Delhi in November 2012. “Malik ji never turned them away. When he did not feel like writing anything about their works, he wrote a few lines of poetry, which they happily printed in their brochures as the blessings from the great art critic,” Ramachandran remembered. On the same occasion, noted art critic, Prayag Shukla had said that Keshav Malik was the most accessible art critic of his time.
