January 4, 2023

Displacement of objecthood has been one of the primary attributes of much of modern art in the latter half of the twentieth century. From the emergence of environments, installation and happenings in the 1960s,

“Avant-garde” is the name attributed to a progressive leadership in the history of modern art. Taken from French military terminology, it was understood for a century to signify the creative pursuits of several generations of Western artists

Back in the 1980s, the photo historian Abigail Solomon-Godeau concluded her insightful essay on art photography with a poignant observation that left many photographers uncomfortable, even irate. Art photography, she wrote, “has systematically engineered its own irrelevance and triviality.

During conversations about installation, I have often heard Indian artists insist that the West has, only in the recent decades, merely intellectualized something that has been part of the Indian heritage for centuries. As with all nativistic gestures, such claim

A couple of years ago, during one of my frequent visits to Kolkata, a well-known artists’ group in the city invited me to one of its weekly meetings. I was requested to propose a topic for discussion, so I suggested

One often hears these days that Indian art has “gone global”. Indeed, for those of us who were adults in India during the 1970s and 1980s, living with dead telephones, state-run television and neighborhood mom-and-pop stores is now all but

To put it rather bluntly, it is impossible to write an exclusive history of modern sculpture. Though one could make the same argument about modern painting, it certainly is more relevant to sculpture; for unlike painting’s occasional insistence on purity

In its vibrancy, variety, and opulence, Durga Pujo is indeed comparable to such grand spectacles as the Carnival of Brazil. Yet unlike the Brazilian event, which has been closely examined by chroniclers of visual culture, this dynamic Bengali autumn festival