© Jamini Roy 

28 Nov 2019

"Triumph of Modernism: Indian Artists and Global Modernism, 1922-1947"

Prof. Partha Mitter
Giacometti LAB
The École des modernités At the Institut Giacometti

"In global modernist art there is a serious imbalance between the Centre and the Periphery that causes non-western artists to disappear under the radar.   No study of non-western modernism can avoid the complex discourse of colonial power and authority, the tendency to consider all non-western modernist art as mere adjuncts of the dominant western modernism.  The three major artists I discuss today – Amrita Sher-Gil, Rabindranath Tagore and Jamini Roy – demonstrated striking originality and radical imagination. Yet they are hardly known to the West.  This is not because of their intrinsic quality as such, but because they occupy a marginal space within the history of global modernism. My talk will address these issues and seek to restore the importance of these artists within global modernism."

Photo © Prof. Partha Mitter

Partha Mitter, Prof., Hon. D. Lit. (Courtauld Institute, London University), is Emeritus Professor in Art History, University of Sussex, Member of Wolfson College, Oxford and Honorary Fellow, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. As writer and historian of art and culture, he specializes in the reception of Indian art in the West, as well as in modernity, art and identity in India, and more recently in global modernism.
He has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; and CASVA, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. He was also Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecturer at All Souls College, Oxford.

His publications include: 
Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1977; Chicago University Press Paperback 1992; new ed. Oxford University Press, Delhi 2013); Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994); The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde – 1922–1947 (Reaktion Books, London, Oxford University Press, New Delhi 2007) and numerous articles, including leading a debate in the Art Bulletin (‘Interventions: Decentring Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery’, Volume XC, No. 4 (December, 2008), 531–574; 'Bauhaus in Kalkutta', in: Annemarie Jaeggi (ed.): bauhaus global. Gesammelte Beiträge der Konferenz Bauhaus Global (Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2010), 149–158, and catalogue essay, 'History, Memory and Anish Kapoor', in: Nicholas Baume (ed.): Anish Kapoor Past Present and Future, catalogue of the exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 30 May–7 Sept. 2008, p. 105–118.
He also contributed to the exhibition Das Bauhaus in Kalkutta in 2013 and has been advisor to the Stiftung Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westphalen in Düsseldorf on global modernism. 


DAG supports the Research Program on a global history of modern art within the frame of the Ecole des Modernités/Fondation Giacometti

 

Pratical informations
Thursday November 28, 6:30PM (Free entrance)
Giacometti LAB, 7 rue victor Schoelcher - Paris 14
Reservation: rsvp@fondation-giacometti.fr

Videos

Partha MITTER - Triomphe du modernisme : les artistes indiens et le modernisme mondial 1922-1947

To search for a work, consult the Alberto Giacometti Database