Living is an art. And art is inexorably intertwined with our everyday life. To view “Art”, one doesn’t need to visit sanctified temples of art like museums and galleries. It can be found in street corner graffiti, in the beautiful arrangement of flowerpots in a neighbour’s terrace garden, in the textile motifs of our bedcover. Here I’m meaning art in its broadest definition, that which has a human design, and which appeals to one’s aesthetic sense, though that sense could be rather subjective.
It’s instinctive human nature to give expression to the inner self. Very rare is the person who never hummed, even in the solitude of a washroom, or who hasn’t sketched an abstract design on a notepad in absentminded boredom. The everyday life of the prehistoric men are documented in the cave paintings. Art is as old as the history of human species.
Art has a touch of superfluous. It goes beyond “functional”. But human mind is not satisfied with mere practicality. It is naturally drawn towards beauty. It seeks harmony, symmetry; sometimes deliberately cultivated dissymmetry, in its natural and spatial environment. Four walls and a roof are sufficient to provide shelter. Why should we ponder for hours over the colour/s of the walls, over the curtain, over each and every piece of furniture to occupy that room? It would be too superficial to say that it’s a reflection of growing consumerism. The tradition of integrating art into our daily lives is part of our heritage. It hasn’t been just an elitist preoccupation either. On one end of the spectrum is the intricate pietradura of the Mughals; on the other the Madhubani paintings done on walls of the humble village folks in Bihar are testimonial to the fact that the impulse to surround oneself with beauty and creative expression is an urge that cuts across class barriers.
It is both impractical and expensive to have wall murals in cosmopolitan urban settings where most of us live in tiny apartments, we still naturally gravitate to things that are aesthetically appealing to us. One doesn’t need to have a deep pocket for that. We incorporate everyday objects of art in our daily lives without even realising it consciously. Whether it’s an interesting ashtray, a bright colourful ceramic mug, or an ultra abstract, post-modern painting by your niece who is a student of art (and which by mistake you might have hung upside down), every little object that we pick and choose to surround ourselves with is a reflection of ourselves. We might not be painters, artists, musicians to channelise our creative urges more directly, but by our process of selection and rejection, by appreciation and criticism, we live the life of an artist, albeit in a more mundane fashion.
I would like to conclude by mentioning a small museum that exhibits objects of art used in everyday life. It’s at Sanskriti Kendra, Anandagram, Mehrauli, New Delhi. There are beautiful nutcrackers, utensils, locks and keys, jewellery boxes and various other artefacts. My own favourite is a metal matka (pot), a water pot which village women used to carry water from wells. It has a hollow compartment inside filled with tiny pebbles. While you walk holding the matka, the pebbles make a jingling sound with each footstep. With this little contraption, the most mundane (and I’m sure tiresome) task of fetching water became the elegant act of a graceful dancer with merry rhythmic footsteps.
The writer is a Kathak dancer based in Delhi.
mukherjee.sharmistha@gmail.com