Artful Dodgers

Artful dodgers

Artistic ways to avoid praising the artist
(first published in Reading Habit Feb 2011)

Time was, when you were expected to show up at your friends’ weddings, their children’s birthdays, graduation, weddings, and then at your friends’ 25th anniversary celebration or sometimes even a 50th. So easy. You may have groaned about what to wear and what to gift, but that was about it. Now there’s a new rite in many of our social lives.
Everyone, just about everyone, is writing a book/showing paintings/recording music/making a film/having a sale of exclusive dupattas. Art exhibitions, book launches, music performances, CD releases, play-openings, movie screenings … friends and family have to be there, clap, buy, praise and promote. It’s a modern-day friendship ritual.
But what if you don’t like your friend’s etchings/sculpture/embroidery/docu film. What then? Surely you can’t be a churl and say it out loud, not on opening day, and usually not on any other day either, given the wafer-thin nature of creative people’s skins. If your artist pal is happy for feedback of any kind, you’re lucky, and you can speak your mind. But either ways, not on The Day.
I’ve been on this side of the table and that side of it too, so here are some coping strategies or stratagems, rather. These have been gleaned from my people-watching and from some smart decoding by other writers/artists. These can be used at the Event, or when you meet the person again and feel that some feedback is expected of you.
When the paintings look to you like bits of the wall in your house that is in urgent need of repairs, you can play the ‘middle class moron’ and say (if you can’t sidle away after drinking the wine) with a self-effacing pretend-sheepish grin: “All this abstract stuff is lost on me; you know me, I only understand scene-scenery.” (You do know the word landscape, but by cleverly using scene-scenery, you’re let off the hook by appearing an irredeemable hick/philistine.)
When you’ve not read the new book and meet your writer-friend, you can a) say you’ve kept it to read on your long flight b) pretend you’re in the middle of it, and smartly throw in a character’s name, and say I’m waiting to see what happens to her. If it’s non-fiction you can safely say things like “Hmm, fascinating premise”.
If you’ve read the book and disliked it up to page 53 and then abandoned it altogether, you could say this to your friend, in private. Or if it’s music that didn’t work for you, you perhaps could be truthful if your friend can take it on the chin. But if you’re not into that brutal honesty thing, there are many deft devices when you meet the writer/artist/musician. Ask her “So what are you working on next?” A neat side-step. Or ask him micro-details like where he buys his paints/clay; what the cost per square foot of canvas is, and other such trade stuff, smartly steering clear of the creative part of it.
The film industry (Bollywood) has a ploy that I love to watch. After a screening of a film, people will give the director/actor/scriptwriter the thumbs-up sign from afar and skid off, or if they have to come face-to-face, they will engulf him in a huge bear hug and boom “Pappayy!” or “Brrrotherrrr!” (pronounced brether). Thereby simply avoiding talking about the impending box office disaster he has made.
Praising the venue and or the snacks is another good ploy. A singer friend had a performance, and while many people said many nice things after the program, he tells me that one of his acquaintances came to him smacking his lips and said “Nice chivda.” From then on, between some of us creative types, nice chivda has become a kind of code-word for half-hearted or pretend-praise.
But like so many creative people say, all of this is counterbalanced by those who genuinely like what we do. Out of the ether comes that mail telling you seriously wonderful things about your book; at a show you spot a face that appears wherever and whenever your paintings are up; there’s that someone in the audience whose eyes moisten as your raga develops – these are the high points of every artist’s thin-skinned existence! (add)
I have friends/acquaintances who pointedly ask me when I’m going to write a book about my dogs. I might have taken this as a sign of how versatile they think I am. But the question usually comes from people who I suspect don’t particularly like my novels; and to my trained ear, it sounds like they’re saying your human characters suck, but perhaps your dogs may have a better bite.