This has been a query that has haunted
the art world in almost a Benjaminian sense
of haunting, which is, when anyone posits
the query – what is art?
This has been a contentious and much
debated issue since human civilisation started
recognising art as a facet of humanity. And
the answer or rather the contention to this
query has evolved through the centuries and
is evolving even now, as we speak. Through
the lens of relational aesthetics, one can
almost say that the era of the canvas is dead
– as Nicholas Bourriard propositions, ‘Art is
a state of encounter imposed on people’ .
Contemporary art is a miasma of mediums,
tools and speaks of a visuality that transcends
the usual canvas.
It is interesting to note however, that in
the discourse of contemporaneity of art, the
unique position that ‘traditional or tribal’
arts have come to occupy in a postcolonial
framework. Helle Bundgaard in her work on
the Orissan Pata paintings delves into the
discourse on art world and this is seminal
in understanding the position of traditional
art works especially in the postcolonial
contemporary art scenario in India.
Bundgaard mentions the various arguments
and engagements that critical theorists
have had in promulgating the definition
and meaning of ‘art world’, the term first
introduced by Arthur C. Danto in 1964.