International Departures: Art in India after Independence

In this captivating and richly illustrated account, Devika Singh presents together for the first time the work of Indian and foreign artists active in India after independence in 1947. The book engages with the many creators, critics and patrons of the post-war Indian art world, from K.G. Subramanyan, Zarina and Mulk Raj Anand to Isamu Noguchi, Le Corbusier and Clement Greenberg. Singh opens up new ways of thinking about Indian art, closely examining artworks and analysing how they were received in India and abroad. Featuring a wealth of rare and previously unpublished images, this provocative new book explores how artists in India participated in global modernism during a crucial period of decolonization and nation building.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Chapter 1: Participating in the Indian Art Scene Chapter 2: Questions of Travel Chapter 3: New Forms of Internationalism Conclusion References Further Reading Acknowledgements Photo Acknowledgements Index

About the Author :
Devika Singh is a senior lecturer in curating at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London and was previously curator of international art at Tate Modern.

Review :
This ambitious study takes in a broad sweep of India’s cultural life after Independence, looking equally at the role of homegrown talents such as K.G. Subramanyan and also of foreign luminaries such as Clement Greenberg or Le Corbusier. I give a little “hurrah!” for the binding of International Departures: Art in India after Independence – the hardcover lies so comfortably on my desk. Wonderfully informative, the book illustrates the frequently overlooked brisk circulation of art, reception, and patronage in and out of India in the decades after the nation-state’s independence from British rule . . . Author Devika Singh coherently structures the book into chapters with plenty of images of artists and critics at work. The late Indian artist and instructor Krishna Reddy’s abstract prints are particularly captivating. Through her analysis of the internationalist networks created and utilized by Indian, American, and European luminaries of art, architecture, film, and design, Singh successfully convinces her reader that India should be regarded as a crucial site for the development and reinterpretation of modernism in the Cold War era. Rather than treating internationalism as an 'ism', Singh unpacks it and peoples it with artists, curators, artworks, events, conversations, letters made possible by thorough archival research. Breathtaking are unpublished photographs that render the familiar story of the Indian modern fresh. Devika Singh’s eloquent challenge to perspectives on modernism . . . Her book examines international connections that shaped Indian art between independence in 1947 and the 1980s, arguing that the latter cannot be analysed as a separate, grand national narrative, but must be seen as entangled with transnational trends. In so doing it seeks to unpick the complex mutual relationships between traditions on the receiving end of colonialism and within the hegemonic centre itself. Combining a history of exhibitions with one of ideas, the study of entirely new archives with transnational trajectories reset in a global context . . . Singh's publication is an indispensable read and contributes to the writing of a new history of 20th-century art that is truly connected. This . . . richly illustrated history of Indian art since 1947 describes how artists in India – both native and foreign-born – participated in the global modernist movement during a crucial period of decolonisation and nation building. An important departure in the study of post-Independence Indian art envisaged as an archive in transition between national prerogatives and foreign relations. Devika Singh’s lively narrative explores the institutional trials and individual tensions that accompanied the legitimate emergence of Indian artists on the international stage. Read this impeccably researched study of cultural intersections and aesthetic innovations to observe the founding, and grounding, of an emancipatory political imagination. This highly original and fascinating work traces the story of interactions between Indians and the West in the formation of post-independence art in India. Not only will it become an indispensable text for art history, this richly illustrated work will be essential reading for all serious students of global modernism. An impressive achievement. This captivating book reads like a living map of Indian modernisms. Devika Singh’s transnational art history of mobility gives us a rare synopsis of the entangled routes of art – the activities of Western artists in India, processes of identity formation and politicization of Indian artists in Paris and London, and the traveling of exhibitions as part of India’s international politics. Devika Singh offers a major contribution to a new, transnational history of art. The first book to probe how a society, through its artistic community and practice, deconstructed Western discourses on the other and in the process re-appropriated its own culture, International Departures substantially revises the terms of the history of modern art and turns the tables on the critical uses of Western formalism under the shadow of Indian political motivations. Devika Singh’s publication . . . inscribes itself in a new history and geopolitics of art . . . In order to develop her argument has conducted a remarkable analytic work