Course Description
Course Description: By emphasising the salient features of the 20th and 21st century Indian visual culture, this course foregrounds the necessity to perceive the history of Indian modern and contemporary art from the point of view of making. The course analyses how societal interests, history and individual approaches intersect in art-making. A focus on the production of artworks—explored through a diverse range of topics, including wash water colour, printmaking, post-independence architecture, craft production and installation art—thus promises to yield newer insights into our visual culture. The course aims to integrate art theories and art production while fostering creative thinking in students.
Course Content
Lesson Plan: Lecture Topics
Patches of Wash: Japanese watercolour and Indian Nationalism
- Colonial Art Education and Bengal School
- Nationalism in methods and visual language
- Kakuzo Okakura, Abanindranath Tagore, Abdur Rahman Chughtai
Module 2
Impressions: Printmaking and knowledge circulation
- 1943 Famine and the role of printmaking
- Printmaking as an artistic medium in the post-independence India
- Chittoprasad, Krishna Reddy, Zarina
Quiz 1 (15 marks)
Module 3
Canvas as a Construct: Western Modernity and beyond
- Rise of Professional Artists in India and art galleries
- Significance of Oil painting on canvas
- Bombay Progressives to recent experiments
Module 4
Sculpture: Objects and Spaces
- Traditional and new materials in sculpture
- Institutional and public sculptures
- Ramkinkar Baij, N. N. Rimzon, L. N. Tallur
Module 5
Architecture: The construction of a New Nation
- New Capital cities and institutions after 1947
- Urban, public, private spaces and new materials
- Charles Correa, B. V. Doshi
Midterm Examination (30 Marks)
Module 6
Contemporary Indigeneity
- “Revival” projects, folk and tribal communities
- Village artisans to urban artists, change in material, spaces
- Jangarh Singh Shyam, Bhuri Bai, Swarna Chitrakar, J. Swaminathan
Module 7
Bazar Art or Bazar and Art?: Discourses on the Popular visual culture
- Impact of posters, comic books, cinema, television on art making
- Visual culture of streets, markets and public
- Bhupen Khakhar, Chitra Ganesh, Orijit Sen
Quiz 2 (15 Marks)
Module 8
Installation Art: Media, expressions and boundary
- “Found” materials, readymade objects and artistic practice
- Multisensory expressions, art and technology
- Vivan Sundaram, Atul Dodiya, Shilpa Gupta
Module 9
Craft-Art Interface
- Gandhian movement, Khadi and post-1947 craft revival
- Art and Craft binary and interconnections
- Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Suraiya Hasan, Gurappa Chetty
End Term Examination (40 marks)
References
Brown, Rebecca M. 2010. Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel and Making of India. London and New York: Routledge.
Correa, Charles. 1996. “The Blessings of the Sky.” http://www.charlescorrea.net/pdfs/essay07.pdf
D'Souza, Robert. India’s Biennale Effect: Politics of Contemporary Art. New York: Routledge.
Dutta, Arindam. 2007. The Beurocracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility. Ew York: Routledge.
Edwards, Eiluned Mair. 2016. “Ajrakh: From Caste Dress to Catwalk.” Textile History 47, no. 2: 146-70.
Hill, Greg., Candice Hopkins, Christine Lalonde. 2013. Sakahan: international indigenous art. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada.
Jain, Kajri. 2007. Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kapur, Geeta. 2020. When Was Modernism – Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India. Tulika.
Khullar, Sonal. 2015. Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930-1990. University of California Press.
Mathur, Saloni. 2019. A Fragile Inheritance: Radical Stakes in Contemporary Indian Art. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mitter, Partha., Parul Dave Mukherji, and Rakhee Balaram. 20th Century Indian Art: Modern, Post-Independence, Contemporary. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2022.
Seid, Betty. 2007. New Narratives: Contemporary Art from India. Grantha.
Sengupta, Paula. 2012. The Printed Picture: Four Centuries of Indian Printmaking. New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery.
Subramanyan, K. G. 2007. The Magic of Making: Essays on Art and Culture. Calcutta: Seagull.
Grading Policy
According to the Undergraduate Manual
Outcomes of this Course
Aims and Objectives
- Objectives: Understanding art history from the perspectives of material, technique, theme and human interaction promises to integrate art theories and hands-on production of art.
- It elucidates how materials and techniques stimulate creative thinking and decision-making through a series of case studies allowing students to explore them in their practice.
- The course content may help students recognise the potentials in the materials and tools from our surroundings and utilise them to address societal problems.