A Fragile Inheritance Radical Stakes in Contemporary Indian Art

• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Durham Duke University Press 2019
• Subjects: History of art; Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999; art criticism; Geeta Kapur; global contemporary art; South Asian art; thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MP 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999::3MPQ Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999; thema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AG The Arts: treatments and subjects::AGA History of art; Vivan Sundaram
• Online Access: Open Access: DOAB: description of the publication; Open Access: DOAB, download the publication
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (249 p.)
• ISBN: 9781478003380; 9781478003014; 9781478001867; 9781478090311
• Access: Open Access

In A Fragile Inheritance Saloni Mathur investigates the work of two seminal figures from the global South: the New Delhi-based critic and curator Geeta Kapur and contemporary multimedia artist Vivan Sundaram. Examining their written and visual works over the past fifty years, Mathur illuminates how her protagonists' political and aesthetic commitments intersect and foreground uncertainty, difficulty, conflict, and contradiction. This book presents new understandings of the culture and politics of decolonization and the role of non-Western aesthetic avant-gardes within the discourses of contemporary art. Through skillful interpretation of Sundaram's and Kapur's practices, Mathur demonstrates how received notions of mainstream art history may be investigated and subjected to creative redefinition. Her scholarly methodology offers an impassioned model of critical aesthetics and advances a radical understanding of art and politics in our time.