Indian Art

We present two articles written by prominent art historians and critics. The first one gives a background of contemporary Indian Art and traces the progression of the visual arts from Nandalal Bose onwards. The second article dwells on the younger generation of painters from all parts of India. Both the articles have been written in a different context but serve as a comprehensive introduction to contemporary Indian art.

A Perspective on Process - By Geeti Sen

Painting is most significantly, a process of realisation: from that initial point of stimulus, reverie or impassioned response to its transposition into the mind’s eye of the artist and her/his tentative experiments – to a stage when the image is brought ‘to life’ on paper or canvas. This is the final moment of realisation; but the journey remains equally relevant.

EMERGING INDIA : YOUNG CONTEMPORARIES - By Parul Dave Mukherjee with contributions from Giridhar Khasnis & Nandini Ghosh

I am not saying that we are living the end of art: we are living the end of the idea of modern art. - Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire: Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde

If defining the contemporary is no longer the prerogative of the west in our post colonial and increasingly post nationalist present, the different takes on the contemporary become a central issue today. Much as we have come to distrust the binary logic in our postmodern era, placing contemporary Indian art in relation to trends in the west inevitably entails comparativism of sorts. If in the west, apocalyptic imagination about the end of art and art history periodically asserts itself; the Indian cultural scene envisions dreams of renewal and regeneration.