Walking a Tightrope: Indigenous Indian Art and its Reception (original) (raw)
The Contemporary Moment In Indigenous Art: Global Events and Sociopolitical Critiques
Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India, 2017
This chapter discusses the works of contemporary indigenous artists in India hailing from four communities (the Warli tribe from Maharashtra, the Pardhan-Gond tribe from Madhya Pradesh, the Mithila folk artists from Bihar and the Chitrakar folk artists from West Bengal). It examines how these artists negotiate with concepts of tradition and contemporaneity through works that explore the urban, that tackle global themes and reflect upon contemporary concerns. The artists discussed herein often engage with these subjects by portraying a contemporary event, be it a natural disaster, a terrorist attack or a disease with global ramifications (e.g. AIDS) but equally, they do so by tackling sociopolitical issues within their communities (including feminist issues such as female foeticide). In the latter vein, they effectively adopt the position of artivists. Within this discussion, care has been taken to keep Arjun Appadurai's observation in mind, i.e. that modernity today is “irregularly self-conscious and unevenly experienced", which -- it may be argued -- applies to an understanding of contemporaneity within the Indian context.
Forewords to Brochures on Tribal Paintings of India, published by Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi
Brochures of Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 2014
A description of the motifs and meaning of Santal, Madhubani, Godna (Tattoo), Kalamezuthu, Gond Art, Ganesh Gopal Jogi's Art, explaining the continuing vitality and aesthetic charm in tribal art of India.
Indian Art History: Changing Perspectives, ed. Parul Pandya Dhar. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld., 2011
The shaping of the disciplinary practice of art history in the Indian context has been a fascinating process and brings to the fore a range of viewpoints, issues, debates, and methods. Changing perspectives and approaches in academic writings on the visual arts of ancient and medieval India form the focus of this collection of insightful essays. A critical introduction to the historiography of Indian art sets the stage for and contextualizes the different scholarly contributions on the circumstances, individuals, initiatives, and methods that have determined the course of Indian art history from colonial times to the present. The spectrum of key art historical concerns addressed in this volume include studies in form, style, textual interpretations, iconography, symbolism, representation, connoisseurship, artists, patrons, gendered readings, and the interrelationships of art history with archaeology, visual archives, and history.
Editorial Introduction Contemporary Art Practices in Twenty-first Century India
The Chitrolekha Journal on Art and Design, 2018
Contemporary, as a terminology, means anything and everything that live-in or belong-to or occur-in the same epoch, especially the one that is prevailing. Being used in the realm of human art-practices, it refers to a specific time-frame rather than a special type of art. It was framed as a coin at the beginning of Modernism in western-world, while its definition – being anchored in the present – always had a start-date that kept on moving with time. Thus works bought by the Contemporary Art Society of London, for instance, way back in 1910 could no longer be described as so, while museums with a permanent collection such works inevitably find them aging. In addition to this, the contextual functionality of the term was also taken over time and again by various ‘–isms’ through the last six-seven decades. Multiple definitions came into the fore, since 1960s, of what constitutes Contemporary Art and today they vary widely from each other. The term however is now used specifically to limit the art of the present, produced in the latetwentieth century or the early twenty-first. To be more substantial, ‘contemporary’ now refers to art made and produced by artists living today, though commercial-galleries, art-dealers and artmagazines often restrict the coin to the works done after AD 2000 only. Thus it poses further issues with the mid or late twentieth century artists who are still productive after a long career, along with ongoing art-movements that have lasted for long – leaving us imprecise about the divide between contemporary and non-contemporary.
The Performative Power of Indian Tribal Art Introduction
2020
In terms of the history of European studies of non-Western as "primitive" art, Franz Boas is often hailed as the first scholar treating "the arts of the world on an egalitarian basis" in the wake of Johann Gottfried Herder"s ideas. The essential point to be made here is that Boas" perspective on indigenous arts was very much shaped by his own exposure to the highly specialized tradition of Northwest Coast painting and carving (Boas 1955). This existed alongside much less specialized forms of visual expression and by his museum work, which favored the analysis of a body of collected forms over observational field data about what later would become known as the "social life of things"the interaction between humans and things that supplied changing meanings and values to visual forms (Feest 2004: 6). In India, Verrier Elwin was certainly the first to write about Adivasi art, which testifies to the importance of Adivasi creativity and imagination. The appreciation and revaluation of Adivasi cultural heritage, creativity and dignity in contemporary India demonstrates an acknowledgement of Adivasi art as an expression of indigenous knowledge. This collection of articles does not concern various forms of Adivasi art but is organized around two thematic approaches. The first one tries to analyze the discovery of tribal art and literature by two important figures, Verrier Elwin and William George Archer, who collaborated and shared an interest in art and literature. The second theme aims at suggesting « The Performative Power of Adivasi Art ». In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing. It means that Adivasi art has the capacity to express Adivasi myths, songs and culture in order to re-enchant the real world even if the latter is full of problems. Several articles of the present issue argue that Adivasi art and literature have a performative power since they allow Adivasis to express their identity not only in the terms of their own culture but also in a way that influence their position in the public sphere. Among Adivasis, indigenous knowledge revolves around two dimensions: the emergence of a historical consciousness and a shared identity related to language and art. Further, the acknowledgement of Adivasi literature and art may contribute to their empowerment. In this perspective, Adivasi intellectuals and artists become the new shamans since they convey their artistic journey into the modern world.