Contemporary painting and Indian politics

0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
1
2
3
4
5

Contemporary painting and Indian politics

ramana
Posting Freak

Joined: Oct 2003

Posts: 3,223

Reputation: 0

#107

02-09-2008, 03:09 AM

link:

Indian but Modern

QUOTEINDIAN BUT MODERNÂ
Editor's Choice

<img src='http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080208/images/8book1.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

The Fake Brahmin Dispensing for LucreÂ

THE TRIUMPH OF MODERNISM: INDIAâS ARTISTS AND THE AVANT-GARDE, 1922-1947 By Partha Mitter, Oxford, Rs 1,750

The discipline of art history demands of its practitioners that they have an appreciation of art as well as the training of a historian. This is not an easy balance to achieve. The eye of the art lover often sees aspects of a painting that are difficult to articulate. The prose of the historian can diminish the aesthetic appeal of a work of art. Partha Mitter is one of the few Indian art historians who uses his training as a historian to enhance his appreciation of art. In the process, he helps his readers to look at art in a more refined way.

The subject of his new book is complex and challenging. Mitter does not go into the thorny issue of attempting to define modernism in very precise terms. He sees it as the product of a particular aesthetic ambience whose hallmark was the avant-garde. Responses to the avant-garde in the non-Western world cannot be extricated from the network of authority, hierarchy and power that informed the relationship between the West and the Orient in the modern world.

The inherent inequality in the relationship between the West and its colonies in Asia and Africa has given rise to a situation, noted very aptly by Mitter, in which a country like India is denied having its own modernity. Mitter writes, âinfluence has been the key epistemic tool in studying the reception of Western art in the non-Western world: if the product is too close to its original source, it reflects slavish mentality; if on the other hand, the imitation is imperfect, it represents a failure. In terms of power relations, borrowing by artists from the peripheries becomes a badge of inferiority. In contrast, the borrowings of European artists are described approvingly as âaffinitiesâ or dismissed as inconsequential.ââ Mitter gives the example of Picasso whose emulation of African sculpture was seen as nothing more than than a mere formal affinity with the primitive. Gaganendranath Tagore (picture), who Mitter describes as âone of the first Indian modernistsââ, was dismissed as un cubiste manquÃ©, whose works were derivative and bad imitations of Picasso.

To break away from the stranglehold of this kind of analysis, Mitter seeks to empower Indian artists by restoring to them the dignity of their own choice. Indian artists deliberately chose elements from Western modernity to confront those elements with aspects of their own tradition. In the first half of the 20th century in India, this resulted in a new kind of artistic production and the construction of a national identity. The triumph of modernism in Indian art lies in its ability to cross cultural frontiers without losing its own self and identity. Through the process, to slightly alter a line of Yeats, a new beauty was born.

âThe modernists idiolized rural India as the true site of the nationâ: thus Mitter. He illustrates this point through his penetrating analysis of the works of a number of artists. His interpretation of the paintings of Jamini Roy is particularly compelling.

Jamini Roy used his art to fashion himself as a radical critic of colonialism. He used the cheap materials of the village craftsmen. His quest was to restore to art its simple goodness, which could be found only among the village artists. His art appeared to be elusively simple. He returned, Mitter says, âvoluntarily to the anonymity of traditionâ. He attained by paring down the inessentials a modernist brevity. His return to the village broke with convention, and his simplicity of expression was an exploration of his own subjective experience. He was modern while being embedded in India.

Mitterâs writing is lucid, which is remarkable since his subject is complex and contested. An added attraction of the book is its array of reproduction of art works.



Wish I knew what he wrote about the Bombay school of charlatans. A Bay Area artist who imtated Monet was offended when I described his paintings to my son as being Impressionist. I have been studying Indian modern art as a clue to the leftist chaos that is gooing on.