Tracing the roots of visual culture and the Indian Modern Art

Historical evidence suggests that in historical Indian context, the visual was perceived as a key aspect to the godly realm as it was to humans. Utmost care and meticulous approach marks the crafting and sculpting of sites of worship and temple architecture, in order to please and pacify the divine powers. Such images are not mere static representations of another world beyond our comprehension; a meeting point rather, where the divine and the human encounter but never really fully comprehend one another.

The image stands as an injunction to submit and also as a perpetual enigma. Going forward, the proliferation of colonial modern ideologies as well as nationalism imparted the visual regimes of the subcontinent with new layers and altered their representational economy.

In essence, the visual element plays a vital role in the wider South Asian cultural spectrum, both modern and traditional. The contemporary practitioners from India made an effort to locate the country both in the rich art tradition of the subcontinent, in the historical canon, as well as in the richness of popular culture.

Daniel Herwitz notes in a recent essay on late MF Husain, Indian artists were ‘doubly’ alienated from the past as well as the subaltern masses – omnipresent and undrinkable, like seawater is to the seaman. In the backdrop of this constant push and pull between the past and the present, modern and traditional an elaborate documentation of India’s rich visual culture and myriad forms of modern art becomes pertinent, which forms the core of ‘Making India Visible: Visual Culture and Modern Art in India’.

The broad-based albeit theoretically incisive intellectual exercise looks at vibrant visual-cultural history and art practices in contemporary context. The exercise is in keeping with the stated mission of The Center for South Asia at Stanford to turn the immense depth and diversity of South Asia’s culture & historical experience into integral aspects of more theoretical debates in the social sciences and the humanities.

Those elucidating on the subject include the authorities in the field such as leading art historians, philosophers, religious studies’ scholars and anthropologists as well as some known practicing artists.