The panel discussion will mark the launch of International Departures: Art in India after Independence by Devika Singh (Reaktion Books, 2023). Described as a major contribution to a new, transnational history of art, this captivating and richly illustrated account presents together for the first time the work of Indian and foreign artists active in India after independence in 1947. It engages with the many creators, critics and patrons of the postwar Indian art world, from K.G. Subramanyan, Zarina and Mulk Raj Anand to Isamu Noguchi, Le Corbusier and Clement Greenberg. International Departures 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 Featuring a wealth of rare and previously unpublished images, this provocative book explores how artists in India participated in global modernism during a crucial period of decolonization and nation building.
Chaired by Professor Jo Applin (Courtauld) and including Dr Shanay Jhaveri (Barbican), Professor Partha Mitter (University of Sussex and Carleton University) and the author Dr Devika Singh (Courtauld), the panel discussion will address some of the core issues of the book and examine the impact that new transnational readings of art have on the history of art and on the practice of curating.
Find out more about the publication International Departures here.
Jo Applin is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, where she is currently Director of the Centre for American Art. She has published widely on modern and contemporary art. Her most recent books are Lee Lozano: Not Working (Yale University Press, 2018) and, with Amy Tobin and Catherine Spencer, London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent, and Ephemeral Networks 1960-1980 (Penn State University Press, 2018). She is an Editor of Oxford Art Journal and is currently writing a book on art and ageing.
Shanay Jhaveri is the Barbican’s Head of Visual Arts. Previosuly, he was Associate Curator of International Art from 2016 – 2022 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and completed his PhD at the Royal College of Art in London. Among the many exhibitions Jhaveri has curated are the ground-breaking retrospective ‘Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee’ at the Met Breuer in 2019, and Huma Bhabha’s Met Roof Commission ‘We Come in Peace’ in 2018. He has published widely in various art journals, and has written books including Western Artists and India: Creative Inspirations in Art and Design, Outsider Films on India: 1950 –1990 and America: Films from Elsewhere. In September, 2023 Jhaveri launched a new series of site specific commissions at the Barbican with Ranjani Shettar’s Cloud songs on the horizon.
Partha Mitter (Honorary D.Lit. Courtauld Institute ; FRSA) is Emeritus Professor in Art History at the University of Sussex and Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University, Ontario, Canada. He has held fellowships, among other places, at Churchill College and Clare Hall, Cambridge; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.; CASVA, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Radhakrishnan Lectures, All Souls College, Oxford. His books include Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art, 1977; Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922, 1994; The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde 1922-1947, 2007, jointly edited book, 20th Century Indian Art (2022).
Devika Singh is Senior Lecturer in Curating at the Courtauld. She was previously Curator, International Art at Tate Modern where she was part of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational and in charge of acquisitions of South Asian art. Singh has also been Smuts Research Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow at the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art (Max Weber Foundation) in Paris. She has curated exhibitions and collection displays at the CSMVS (Mumbai), Dhaka Art Summit, Dubai Design District, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge) and Tate Modern. She is on the editorial group of the Oxford Art Journal and her writing has appeared widely in exhibition catalogues, art magazines and journals.
Organised by Dr Lucy Bradnock (The Courtauld) and Dr Devika Singh (The Courtauld) as part of the Modern & Contemporary Series.
Praise for the book:
‘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.’ – Homi K. Bhabha, Harvard University
‘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.’ – Partha Mitter, University of Sussex and Carleton University, Ontario
‘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.’ – Christian Kravagna, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
‘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, it 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.’ – Zahia Rahmani, National Institute for Art History (inha), Paris
