Our world, from the recent past, has started becoming smaller, more approachable and more graspable. It has started to reveal more and sometimes all. With the information technology advances and increasing speeds in the modes of transport, the rate of change on our planet has become faster and this rate of change will accelerate in future.
Consequently, a global face for every creative human endeavor will emerge. The global face of contemporary art has already started taking shape and can be sensed at the international contemporary art events, especially in the West. In these international contemporary art events, sometimes one is overawed by the scale, magnitude and the freedom of the creative experience, sometimes one feels intimidated, sometimes shouted at, sometimes, like a miniaturized disciple, listening to a commandment and sometimes one encounters altered contexts, human scale and placements. The creative experience appears to be the celebration of material, technical

virtuosity and sequences of the physical world. Most of these will exist till the event lasts and shall go into the information technology stores for existence. In these events, the conventional format creative visual experiences, hang in unobtrusive corners, like scolded children.
Artists will continue to use conventional formats for making paintings and sculptures. In search for new directions, sometimes sensational new directions, in the creative visual imagery, theatrical installations, ritual, information technology and altered biological code will be explored. In the international expositions of contemporary art, where a large number of artists from different countries will participate, more and more conceptual installation projects will be seen because these have better capability to establish the individuality of the creator and the identity of the work.
The age of art movements prolonging for a long time is over. Contemporary art in future will be an expression of an artist's creative concerns in his own

creative visual imagery. His creative concerns will establish his point of reference in history and his creative visual imagery his identity. To be relevant, the artist will be under pressure to produce a substantial body of work before the world moves on.
Contemporary art in future will reflect an aggregate of the artist's local, regional and global consciousness. It will be relevant to the time and will reflect the perceptions of the future. Local, regional and global consciousness will enrich each other and start blending in many permutations and combinations to generate new creative directions. These will provide a balancing human factor and the possibility of immortality to the creation.
The initiative to shape the global face of contemporary art seems to have passed in the hands of the West. The older cultural identities are playing a minor or no role in its shaping. When complete, the features of the face will not represent an aggregate of all human conscience and creative aspirations.
India, China, as well as other countries

to generate their own thought processes and have the flexibility to receive, churn and imbibe in their own streams of thought, the alien creative influences and interactions to enthuse vitality, relevance and contemporariness to their art forms.
West has over-utilized its creative visual imagery and is looking around for new inspirations and directions. Older cultural identities can provide inputs for new directions in contemporary art. West is required to alter its codes and references to judge and appreciate creative visual directions of the East. Such and similar happenings will keep the global face of contemporary art creative, human and alive, representative of our past, our present and our future and of this world and beyond. These interactions will help to rationalize creative visual tendencies, emerging on the horizon, to alter and use the nature’s biological code.

Ved Nayar

(This article was printed in the book, Indian Contemporary Art, published by Masanori Fukuoka in 1993. Some additions & modifications have been made in the article)