Contemporary Indian Art: Other Realities

This volume provides a much-needed perspective on contemporary Indian art, offering a dynamic rather than a static way of approaching the subject. Instead of a mere chronicling of modes and elucidation of styles of art which are now well known, the essays, written by scholars, deal with questions which, though often asked, remain open-ended. Within the broad conceptual framework of each essay, the works of individual artists are discussed. Much of the debate centers on the contentious subject of modernism in Indian art, in its Eurocentric, Asian contextual, or multicultural form. This preoccupation with modernism, as the essays here reflect, gives way in the 1980s to the generating of a greater expressiveness about one’s own reality, the plight of the common man, the feminist, and the marginalized. Notions of multiculturalism infect Indian artists of the ‘90s and there is a confident borrowing from all cultures free of any colonial hangover or self-doubt as they resort to pluralistic modes: installations, earthworks, conceptual, performance, and video art. The changing parameters of postmodernism and diasporic art are also dealt with, and the appendix has extracts from significant writings which relate to the issues of modern Indian art from its formative to its present stage.