Art and Emergency: Modernism in Twentieth - Century India

Description

During states of emergency, normal rules and rights are suspended, and force can often prevail. In these precarious intervals, when the human potential for violence can be released and rehearsed, images may also emerge. This book asks: what happens to art during a state of emergency? Investigating the uneasy relationship between aesthetics and political history, Emilia Terracciano traces a genealogy of modernism in colonial and postcolonial India; she explores catastrophic turning points in the history of twentieth-century India, via the art works which emerged from them. Art and Emergency reveals how the suspended, diagonal, fugitive lines of Nasreen Mohamedi's abstract compositions echo Partition's traumatic legacy; how the theatrical choreographies of Sunil Janah's photographs document desperate famine; and how Gaganendranath Tagore's lithographs respond to the wake of massacre. Making an innovative, important intervention into current debates on visual culture in South Asia, this book also furthers our understanding of the history of modernism. Cover Author Bio Endorsement Title Page Copyright Information Dedication Table of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter Plan 1 Fugitive Lines of Desire: Nasreen Mohamedi 1947–77 Prelude: Satori! Introduction The Studio Emerging Interventionism: A Wretched Abstraction Abstract with Memories The Allusive Neutral Labyrinths of Solitude Reflections on the Post-Colonial Absurd Desert Roaming: Through the Eyes of a Stranger Calligraphic Abstraction? Abstracting Lines: A New Instrument of Vision Reclaiming the Beloved Conclusion 2 Beyond or in Emergency? The Emergence of Photography during the 1943 Bengal Famine: Sunil Janah Introduction Phantasmagoric Aesthetics Memento Mori: The Famine Photographs of Willoughby Wallace Hooper and A. T. W. Penn Gandhi’s Superbody and the Performance of Political Somatics Agitating and Organising: The CPI and the Role of Photography Necropolitics and Necropower in Bengal Cecil Beaton’s Famine Chic and Fashion Victims In Search of Famine? Sunil Janah and the Bengal Famine 1943–4 With a Brush and a Little Ink Immortal Famine? Conclusion 3 Laughing in the Shadow of Swadeshi: Gaganendranath Tagore 1905–21 Introduction Laughter! (Mis)translation: Bergson and Laughter (1911) Mechanicalcutta: Town and Country have Become Twins Sly Allegories Wry Thunderbolt Inside/Outside: Absurd Heterotopias Neither Goddess nor Whore: Machine Wives Beyond Laughter Emergency and the Law’s Violence Reform Screams The Babu’s Grin Conclusion Conclusion Notes Introduction: Tearing Apart the Storm of Progress Chapter 1 Fugitive Lines of Desire: Nasreen Mohamedi 1947– 77 Chapter 2 Beyond or in Emergency? The Emergence of Photography during the 1943 Bengal Famine: Sunil Janah Chapter 3 Laughing in the Shadow of Swadeshi: Gaganendranath Tagore 1905–21 Conclusion Bibliography Books Exhibition Catalogues Essays, Chapters, Short Works in Books and Edited Volumes Journal Articles Unpublished Articles, Conference Papers, Reports, Blogs Newspaper Articles Diary Entries, Letters, Documents from Personal Archives Interviews Index