Terracciano - Art and emergency: Modernism in Twentieth-Century India

Emilia Terracciano is the Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford (201518). Her research interest lies in contemporary photographic art practices with a focus on the visual cultures of the global south. She has taught in various institutions including University College London, Courtauld Institute of Art, Sothebys Institute of Art and the Photographers Gallery. Terraccianos work has appeared in Art Journal and Art Bulletin, as well as in the art press, including Frieze, Modern Painters, Caravan and Burlington Magazine. From 200813 she worked with the curatorial staff of the V&A Asian Department to catalogue the South Asia modern and contemporary collection, and acted as a consultant for the British Museum acquisition team.

This is a passionately argued book. It has a decisive theoretical frame and it offers an ideological reading of modernism through three diverse practitioners in twentieth-century India. The authors critique of existing interpretive positions will spark debate. For this precise reason, as for its complex scholarly discourse, the book is important and unique.

Geeta Kapur, independent critic and curator, Delhi

Emilia Terracciano returns to the twentieth century, not to present the genealogies of modern Indian art as a celebratory parable of the post-colonial nation but to probe the fissures that emerge at the level of representation under conditions of national emergency. Art and Emergency straddles the late colonial and the post-colonial decades to analyse artistic production at pivotal moments of violence, violation, and conflict. Terraccianos questions are as new as they are original. As the book unfolds moving backwards in time instead of forward astonishing conjunctures emerge. The book analyses the relationship between aesthetics and politics with great intellectual agility and, ultimately, demands that we reconsider the questions that have thus far been asked of twentieth-century Indian art.

Atreyee Gupta, Assistant Professor, Global Modern Art; Modern and Contemporary South and Southeast Asian Art, University of California, Berkeley

Art and Emergency is an original and challenging work sustained by a deep reading of a remarkable array of literary and historical sources. A substantial contribution to the history of Indian modernism in the colonial and postcolonial eras that combines political history with aesthetics, the book unravels art in periods of emergency when the rule of law and human rights are suspended. Arguing for these periods as discontinuities, it deploys an anti-chronological narrative that interweaves past and present in a compelling indictment of state power. The artists removed in time and concerns but held together by their protest against oppression Nasreen Mohamedis abstract drawings, Sunil Janahs famine photographs, and Gaganendranath Tagores lithographic cartoons force us to rethink our views on Indian modernity. The work will be indispensable to students of Indian and colonial history and art history, as well as making a persuasive contribution to global modernism.

Partha Mitter, Emeritus Professor of History of Art, University of Sussex

In this provocative study, Emilia Terracciano subjects three substantive artistic projects during the twentieth century to a thorough examination. She shows them to be uncanny in their own right, and when placed together in a constellation, what emerges is nothing less than a profound reassessment of the role of art in addressing the extraordinary conditions of its making in India. Not only do the artworks recover a sense of the contingency and urgency in which they were likely created, our broader conception of colonial and post-colonial history itself is productively challenged. Art and Emergency persuasively argues that our present and recent past cannot be simply marked by normalized conceptions of linear progress, but rather as a shattered ensemble of catastrophes to which art serves as a privileged witness. A powerful and groundbreaking work.

Iftikhar Dadi, Associate Professor, History of Art, Cornell University

For Shelagh, Ciro and Brian, without whom, nothing

Contents

List of Figures

Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, copper etching plate, intaglio printing with acidic watercolour on drypoint, 1921. Courtesy: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Vivan Sundaram, Memorial, mixed media, 1993. Courtesy: Vivan Sundaram.

Sukumar Ray, untitled photograph, c.1915. Courtesy: Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives and Ray Estate.

Nasreen Mohamedi, untitled, ink and graphite on paper, c.1975. Courtesy: Glenbarra Art Museum. Heirs of Nasreen Mohamedi.

Jyoti Bhatt, Nasreens Studio, photograph, c.1995. Courtesy: Jyoti Bhatt and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Jagdish Swaminathan, Lily by My Window, oil on canvas, c.196872. Courtesy: Sothebys Inc. 2016.

V. S. Gaitonde, untitled, oil on canvas, 1960. Courtesy: Sothebys Inc. 2016.

Tyeb Mehta, untitled, pen and ink on paper, 1984. Courtesy: Sothebys Inc. 2016.

Nasreen Mohamedi, untitled, graphite, gouache and ink on paper, c.1975. Courtesy: Glenbarra Art Museum Collection. Heirs of Nasreen Mohamedi.

Vivan Sundaram, Gang on Tank, graphite on paper, 1975. Courtesy: Vivan Sundaram.

Vivan Sundaram, Smash Dynastic Ambitions, ink on paper, 1979. Courtesy: Vivan Sundaram.

Vivan Sundaram, Smash Dynastic Ambitions, ink on paper, 1979. Courtesy: Vivan Sundaram.

Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Speechless City, oil on canvas, 1975. Courtesy: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Bhupen Khakhar, Janata Watch Repairing, oil on canvas, 1972. Courtesy: Chemould Prescott Road Archive and The Bhupen Khakhar Estate.

Nasreen Mohamedi, untitled, ink and graphite on paper, c.1980. Courtesy: Glenbarra Art Museum Collection. Heirs of Nasreen Mohamedi.

Nasreen Mohamedi, untitled photograph, c.1970. Courtesy: Chatterjee and Lal. Heirs of Nasreen Mohamedi.

Nasreen Mohamedi, untitled photograph, c.1960. Courtesy: Sikander and Hydari Collection. Heirs of Nasreen Mohamedi.

Nasreen Mohamedi, untitled, oil on canvas,