The Creative Process: The Arts of War (Spring 2017)

The Creative Process
the viewer that children, too, are playing with Weapons of Mass
Destruction, conspiring to make war, not love.
However, Duchamp’s works still glossed over and idealised the
struggles of life. Kausik’s Balwan is a pushback against the
idealisation and fetishisation of violence and war. He tells TMAC,
“The Mughal miniatures were violent as well. We were never really
free of violence.” And in a way, Kausik is right. A lot of the
underlying tension in representations of the Hindu epics and the
painting tradition of the martial Rajputs indicate impending
violence. For Kausik, this glorification of violence is abhorrent, and
the attempt to represent war as glory is a blot on the conscience of
the artist.
Behind the creation of Balwan is a commentary on consumerism as
it manifests itself in the art world. Kausik is fully aware of the
traditions of the artists that came before him, and while mentioning
Warhol, reminds one of the nature of the buyer. The art world is a
market, where demand meets supply, and Kausik believes that “art
is (now) a thing to satisfy your customer.” The reductivism that
marks Kausik’s works is different, for it is meant to be homely, not
to be consumerist. This is also why Kausik’s installations are not
meant to last, and the materials are recycled into other installations.
The ephemeral nature of Kausik’s art is a recognition of the
commercialisation of art, for if art no longer exists, it cannot be sold.
Ranjit Hoskote’s catalogue essay for an exhibition that marked
Kausik’s return to the art world reads:
Adopting a DIY aesthetic as he does,
Mukhopadhyay turns his back on the kind of high
finish that has been de rigueur in much
postcolonial Indian art. However, the rough edges
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