Modernism & Avant Garde India

To mark the republication of Geeta Kapur’s When Was Modernism (2000, 2020), this course unpacks Kapur’s vast contribution to modernist art theory—to questions of art, nationalism, and internationalism; leftism and third world politics; gender and queerness; abstraction and figuration; canonical theories of the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde; and contemporary art’s globalization. Despite the importance of her work, Kapur’s writing can be a challenge for readers unfamiliar with South Asian art history. This course will therefore serve as a chronological survey of South Asian modernism from the colonial period to the contemporary and a study of Kapur’s key articles and texts. This dual approach situates key movements in South Asian modernism within framework that can be mobilized for a comparative and decolonial approach to modernist art history globally and throughout Asia, as we will see in selected comparative readings and images in class.