New York’s Tamarind Art Council just organized a lecture and a book launch by art expert Rebecca M. Brown.

She explores a self-conscious Indian modernism in sculpture, architecture, photography, film, drawing and painting after Indian independence until 1980.

Rebecca Brown works an associate professor teaching art history at the famed Johns Hopkins University. The art scholar brings to the fore how Indian artists, who created modern works, sought to harbor a local idiom, post India’s independence in ‘Art for a Modern India.

These artists freely depicted the country’s pre colonial past even while they challenged the dismissal of non-western places as well as cultures by the West as sources of primitive imagery. Through analysis of specific objects of art & design, Brown depicts how Indian artists opted to engage with questions of iconicity, narrative, authenticity, urbanization, science and technology.

She explains how Bhupen Khakhar reworked the folk idioms and sought to borrow iconic images from kitsch-type calendar prints in his popular paintings of urban dwellers. Discussing other works of art, Brown chronicles the mid-20th-century trajectory of the modern visual culture of India. This was an insightful l talk on Indian modern & contemporary art.

Tamarind Art Council is a not-for-profit body that promotes contemporary art with an all-encompassing focus on diverse artistic expressions, like performing and fine arts.