Obscenity's rich dividends We need to define an aesthetic of obscenity to keep all publicity-seekers (artists included) at bay, says Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi The exhibition 'Tits n Clit n Elephant Dick'-re­cently pulled down by the Colaba police after a complaint by one Pushpa Vijule against its sub­ject matter-could refer to an elephant, which, as we know, is one big beast; and dick, of course, is its correspondingly big organ of urination as well as procreation. Were the artists alluding to the penis of an elephant-which would give their exhibit a charmingly zoological edge? Or a hu­man penis the size of an elephant's schlong, which would render their exhibit a hot-blood­ed, bestial fantasy? (Or was the name cunning­ly designed to drum up noise?) As I was mulling over these questions a friend, more worldly-wise than myself, alerted me that this recent scandal had the unmistakable whiff of a publicity stunt: it was somewhat suspect how two famously ob­scure artists suddenly got elected to our front pages. I told her I wasn't speaking for or against any artist here-certainly not the two in this case, whose credentials are worryingly inde­terminate-but deliberating the politics of such an attack. Even if Vijule's attack was an or­chestrated tamasha, it was still imperative to bare it for what it was: an old trick rehashed by art dealers as slick as the inside of an oil tanker. I know that if I attended an ex­hibition called 'Tits n Clit n Ele­phant Dick', I'd blush a little; be­sides, the title of the exhibition, so self-conscious in its desire to draw attention, would rouse my bore­dom. Pushpa Vijule, however, went to this aforementioned exhibition fully aware that an exhibit with the word 'tit' in its title wasn't exactly going to be a satsang. Enraged by what she witnessed, she marched off to the Colaba police station to register her complaint. When Vijule recorded the complaint, neither she nor the Colaba police had any idea that in a high court ruling in 1954, an artist's work displayed in a gallery is exempt from claus­es delineated in Section 292 of the IPC (this land­mark ruling was delivered in the case of painter Akbar Padamsee). Is there, in the light of this ruling, any like­lihood of booking Vijule for contempt of court? But Vijule is not the only one to tempt our contempt: let's not forget artists who flutter the flag of freedom of expression for the sake of a few column inches. (Clever paintings sell well: but controversy always caps the opening bid. Don't believe me? Ask M F Husain). Maybe we're not looking at art as much as the per­formance art of public relations professionals who've taken their cues from the West. In Lon­don, talentless twerps like Damien Hirst stuff dead cows and pass off a bogus job of taxidermy as art; in New York, they sit on the sidewalk with a banana up their rear in the name of art; their shoddy sub-continental siblings, mean-while, sashay around in skirts or morph into .glum martyrs at the hands of the rent-a-quote morality mafia. The media laps it up: all con­tent is content. The cops get to check out of their chowkies and show THEM: the urban elite. Art dealers rub their hands in glee: their stock just went up. And the public shakes its heads; and promptly flips the page. As Annie Proulx, in an altogether different context, wrote: "Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved." However, I'm still struggling over what in In­dia is truly obscene. The heterosexual men who frequent bars or the underage bar girls who are forced to dance to the tune of their black money? The skin on show in tacky remix music videos or the con­traventions of journalistic ethics on certain news channels? The genuine actors who toil away into oblivion in community theatre or glib cuties with a genius for the world-saver sound-byte? Within this larger question, I want to lo­cate who defines obscenity: it's certainly not the ruling class alone (that's only how urban India delights in deluding its self-worth-or lack of). Because the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison sug­gests that definitions lie in the hands of the de-finers^and not the defined, I want to append my first question: Why are the definers the defin-ers to start with? I want also to attention the fact that in our hyper-moralistic times, it's imperative to out­line an aesthetic of obscenity: this is one way to absorb a scholarly or artistic enquiry of sex­uality, art, and by extension, human culture, into mainstream address without threat of per­sistent attack. The aesthetics of obscenity, which I see as a set of fluid standards running paral­lel to conventionally held notions of 'decency', would relieve us from the imposition of moral ideas that breach civic rights. Establishing such an aesthetic will also allow ideas to flourish not as count­er-discourse but as discourse itself, and herein blinks the re­demptive eye of democracy. Most importantly, exhibitions determined by their sexual quotients will fall to the side; public relations pros who moonlight as painters will go out of work; and art, with its animating mysteries and lurid pleasures, will roar out and re­assert its granite and noctur­nal magnificence. In New York, they sit on the sidewalk with a banana up their rear in the name of art; their shoddy sub-continental siblings, meanwhile, sashay around in skirts or morph into glum martyrs at the hands of the rent-a-quote morality mafia SHROUD OF MODESTY: Mumbai policemen cover up the controversial exhibits after a complaint Times of India, August 13th 2006