Repatriation Dilemmas: Curating Ruins and the Conflict of Heritage
In a digital age where stories unfold in unexpected ways, an Instagram reel from @insidehistory recently caught my attention, narrating a modern-day tale of a Caryatid’s separation from her sisters. The reel lamented, “She’s being held hostage in London while her sisters are home safe in Athens.” This Caryatid in question is a marble-sculpted female…
The Body Geography: The Landscape of the Female Body, as Represented Through the 20th and 21st Century Indian Art
‘Memory, Roots and Desires’, an exhibition held at Gallery Sumukha between Dec’22 and Jan’23, celebrated six of their globally renowned south Indian artists; among which, Pushpamala and Shanthamani Muddaiah–displayed alongside, sparked compelling discourses on the notions of the female body as landscape memory. In this culturally and socio-politically charged show that spoke about time and…
Globalizing Art Experiences: Rethinking Exhibitions and Curatorial Challenges
When one ponders on the internationally renowned contemporary global exhibitions, Biennales or Biennials dominantly engage one’s thoughts. As evidenced etymologically, taking place biannually all across the globe, over 270 biennales are actively taking place according to the Directory of the Biennial Foundation. These are increasingly becoming a source of local pride and cultural tourism that…
Critical and Receptive Views on Concepts of Imitation
Does the term originality have any alliance with visual arts? Complying with the conception that every ideology in the world has already been explored and been experimented with, by someone – somewhere – sometime, it is reasonable to perceive that authenticity and radicalness is beyond the bounds of possibility in reference to visual arts. Considering this approach, deprivation from the perks of being acknowledged due to lack of recognition and documentation can be presumed as the truth behind avant-gardism; after all, art intervention and appropriation, being both contradictory and crucial parts of the former, are incorporated by contemporary artists today…
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Summary : The Originality of the Avant-Garde
In the article “The Originality of Avant-Garde” Rosalind Krauss talks about the new concept of originality proposed by the Avant-garde and how originality should have no ancestors or parents. It should be a beginning from ground zero, it should be a self-birth. In the early 1970s she diverted away from Greenberg’s Modernist theory – to what she termed as a “larger modernism”. Krauss came to believe that Greenberg’s approach was too limited in scope. She began to consider the more sophisticated qualities of an artwork – the things one could not point out in a painting or sculpture. This eventually…
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Summary : The Future of Museums is Ethnographic
In the Paper – “Future of Museums is Ethnographic”, the author, Kavita Singh elucidates how in the past ten years, discussion over the “Future of Museums” has been in lime light. People have been expecting transformation and development of the institution as a result of technological advancements. As a part of moving forward, innovations need to be made for the sake of changing audience and community needs. However, she believes – “Museums” & “Future” linked together can lead to the fear of discontinuance the very former. She gives an example saying that museums of modern art have no purchase against…
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Summary : Modernist Painting
In the essay – “Modernist Painting”, Clement Greenberg talks about technical changes in art and aims to suggest a logic to this development. He says that modernism has gone way beyond the boundaries of art and literature and includes almost the whole of what is truly alive in our culture. He considers Kant to be a true modernist, since he was the first to criticize the means of criticism itself. According to Greenberg, Modernism criticizes from the inside – rather than from the outside and through the procedures themselves – of the things being criticized. By giving the example of…
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Art Theoretica 