Partisan Aesthetics: Modern Art and India's Long Decolonization

340 Pages·2020·20.223 MB·English

by  Sanjukta Sunderason

PARTISAN AESTHETICS
SOUTH ASIA IN MOTION
EDITOR
Th omas Blom Hansen
EDITORIAL BOARD
Sanjib Baruah
Anne Blackburn
Satish Deshpande
Faisal Devji
Christophe Jaff relot
Naveeda Khan
Stacey Leigh Pigg
Mrinalini Sinha
Ravi Vasudevan
SANJUKTA SUNDERASON
PA RT ISA N
A ES T H E T ICS
Modern Art and India’s Long Decolonization
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of
Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
isbn 978-1-5036-1194-8 (cloth)
isbn 978-1-5036-1299-0 (paper)
isbn 978-1-5036-1300-3 (electronic)
Cover design: Kevin Barrett Kane
Cover image: Somnath Hore, Wounds (c. 1977). Courtesy Akar Prakar Gallery.
© Artist’s Estate
Typeset by Motto Publishing Services in 11/15 Adobe Caslon Pro
To Mamma, Baba, Poppy.
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CONTENTS
Illustrations ix
Preface xi
Introduction: Partisan Aesthetics: Confi gurations 1
PART I. Dialogues and Dissonances
1 “Political Potentiality”: Jamini Roy and
the Formations of Progressive Art Criticism 43
2 “As Agitator and Organizer”: Socialist Realism
and Artist-cadres of the Communist Party of India 85
3 “Concrete Contextuality”: Realism and Its Discontents
in the Art of the Calcutta Group 129
PART II. Postcolonial Displacements
4 “All the More Real for Not Being Preached”:
Forms and Futures of Socialist Art in Nehruvian India 173
5 “Revolution in the Tropics, Love in the Tropics”:
Arts of Displacement in the Post-colony 217
Postscript: Toward an Aesthetics of Decolonization 257
Notes 263
Bibliography 289
Index 309
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure .. Sachin Sengupta, “Jamini Ray-er Silpa Pradarshani.”
Anandabazar Patrika, undated, possibly from
September 1937. Page from album of newspaper reports
from the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta. 45
Figure .. Title page, Bishnu Dey and John Irwin, Jamini Roy.
Catalogue of Indian Society of Oriental Art. 68
Figure .. Chittaprosad, “Life behind the Front Lines,”
leaf from People’s War, 24 September 1944. 86
Figure .. Chittaprosad, Antiwar cartoons published in
political pamphlets of the CPI. 92
Figure .. Chittaprosad, Panel for India Immortal, People’s Age,
6 January 1946. 106
Figure .. Chittaprosad, Wounded Striker, Royal Naval Mutiny
(1946), People’s Age, 3 March 1946. 109
Figure .. Chittaprosad, “Inter-Asian Conference,” People’s Age,
23 March 1947. 113
Figure .. Chittaprosad’s drawings for People’s Age, 15 August 1947. 114
Figure .. Reproductions of Yenan woodcuts, People’s War,
2 September 1945. 115
Figure .. A clay model visibly inspired by Vera Mukhina’s famous
78-foot-high 1937 steel sculpture, Worker and Kolkhoz
Woman, at the Ninth All India Kisan Sabha Conference,
People’s War, 6 May 1945. 116
Figure .. Tumi ki shudhui chhobi? Untitled cartoon from album
of famine reportage. 130
Figure .. Chittaprosad, “Bengali Artist: Zainul Abedin,”
People’s War, 21 January 1945. 136