Third Text, Vol.

23, Issue 2, March, 2009, 209–214

Reviews

Primitivism Redux Mitter divides the book into four chapters

addressing the artistic development in India between
1922 and 1947. The first chapter situates the begin-
The Other Face of Indian ning of Indian modernist explorations in the after-
Modernism math of the little known 1922 Bauhaus exhibition in
Calcutta (currently known as Kolkata). Tellingly,
instead of being a minor event organised to celebrate
Ananda Shankar Chakrabarty West European modernist art in a non-Western
space, the Bauhaus exhibition as well as the local
responses to it became decisive factors in the devel-
opment of an indigenous and modern Indian artistic
Since the mid-1980s, a few notable, and at times vocabulary. Particularly noticeable in this context is
controversial, exhibitions have tried to call into what Mitter calls ‘the peculiar cultural experience of
question the place of non-Western art within the India’ (p 16), heralded by the explorations in cubism
largely unilateral discourse of Western modernism. by Gaganendranath Tagore. While some of the
That is the case, for example, of the 1984 exhibition works from this period by Tagore underscore the
‘Primitivism in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the artist’s continuing engagement with different aspects
Tribal and the Modern’, curated by William Rubin of Cubist syntax, Mitter rightly points to the ephem-
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.1 eral import of Cubism within the larger context of
Following the spate of critical – mostly negative – Gaganendranath Tagore’s artistic praxis.
commentaries regarding this exhibition,2 Jean- The second chapter, divided into three sections,
Hubert Martin curated the ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ addresses the primitivist turn within the context of an
exhibition in Paris in 1989,3 with his purported Indian modernist discourse. The primitivism in ques-
intention being to avoid privileging a Western art tion here, while ‘replete with ambiguities and contra-
historical centrality without necessarily neglecting dictions’ (p 33), concerns the interactions of urban
the ineluctable centre–periphery situation in contem- artists from Bengal and elsewhere with varied forms
porary global art practices. Yet, as Benjamin of rural iconography. Mitter argues that ‘primitivism
Buchloh and Hans Belting have noted,4 Martin’s as a form of critical modernity offered rich and diffi-
curatorial action failed to negate the colonial cult possibilities to Indian artists’ (p 35) during this
perspectives of power always present in the persis- period. This chapter focuses on some of the most
tent infectiousness of the centre–periphery model. exciting developments in late colonial Indian artistic
Recent studies of the pre-established models of practice, with the discussion in the three sections
cultural centrality tend to illuminate situations that evolving around different kinds of primitivist prac-
refute the grand narrative of Western modernism tices in the works by four seminal artists: Sunayani
framing those very models, and point to a complex Devi, Amrita Sher-Gil, Rabindranath Tagore and
merging of the centre and the periphery. In his new Jamini Roy. The first section, devoted to Sunayani
study of a specific set of artistic endeavours in late Devi and Amrita Sher-Gil, two extremely talented
colonial India, Partha Mitter underscores the post- Indian female artists largely unknown outside India,
colonial perspective of inherent heterogeneity and underscores each artist’s diametrically opposed rela-
difference in global modernism, and interrogates the tionship to the primitivist context within the context
‘complex interactions between global modernity and of their personal lives and artistic careers. Throughout
regional art productions and practices’ (p 9). The her life, Sunayani Devi tried to balance the domestic
historical contextualisation in this exciting volume life of a married woman and the professional career
throws light on the construction of national identity of an artist, and her aesthetic expressions remained
in late colonial India, where a selected group of Indian grounded in the formal iconography of Bengali village
artists utilised the formal vocabulary of the ‘primitive’ art. On the other hand, Amrita Sher-Gil, born in
other to reshape their own locus in otherness. Budapest, Hungary, of mixed Sikh–Hungarian

Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09528820902840714
210

heritage and trained in Parisian art schools, derived disjointed from the context advanced in the previous
her aesthetic impetus largely from images of an impov- chapters and the significance of the matter exposed
erished rural India. Interestingly, domestic localisa- here eludes transparency.
tion and nomadic alienation seem to have played The richly illustrated volume illuminates a criti-
decisive roles in the artistic visions of both artists who cal phase in the development of Indian modernist
remained, for very different reasons, outside the limits art, a topic rarely approached with the kind of expo-
of contemporary Indian sociocultural acceptance. sition and scrutiny normally observed in studies of
The two following sections of the second chapter Western modernism. Constituting a sequel to two
address the primitivist directions of Rabindranath earlier books, Much Maligned Monsters: A History
Tagore and Jamini Roy. According to Mitter, of European Reactions to Indian Art (1977) and Art
Tagore (India’s first Nobel laureate) was personally and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922:
responsible for the 1922 exhibition of Bauhaus art Occidental Orientations (1994), Mitter’s study will
in Calcutta (p 68). Tagore’s drawings and paintings be invaluable for scholars of modern Indian art
reveal his knowledge of Native American and history. The intricate interactions between colonial
Oceanic art as well as his penchant for dream imag- British presence in India and Indian artists struggling
ery, and his works could indeed be seen as harbour- to develop an indigenous modernist syntax acquire a
ing the kind of ‘primitive’ vocabulary often seen in striking clarity, especially in the first three chapters.
works by various European artists. However, Mitter Particularly interesting here is the role of Indian
argues that it was at Tagore’s experimental educa- artists who reframed certain kinds of Indian primi-
tional centre Santiniketan (West Bengal; later tive iconography in dynamic modern terms, an inten-
expanded into Visva-Bharati University) that primi- tional act of Indian artistic resistance to colonial
tivism ‘as the repudiation of urban colonial culture imperatives. Mitter’s critical gaze throws light on the
permeated all levels of education’ (p 78). Quite protean forms of Indian ‘primitivism’ that erupted
different from Tagore’s multicultural understanding within the colonial space and, to some extent,
of the visual arts, the modernist vision of Jamini echoed the strategies of the Western modernists who
Roy’s paintings relates to his engagement with disavowed the dictates of a modernity grounded in
Bengali village scroll painting, the pat. As Mitter urban experience and Western rationality. Scholars
points out, Roy’s status as an urban elite artist of twentieth-century Indian art will benefit
collided with his utopian vision of folk art, and the immensely from Mitter’s rigorous research and
result was an ‘essentially political act of making the historical contextualisation of the issues in question.
local signify the national’ (p 106). Significantly, One cannot but appreciate the large sections devoted
Roy’s construction of a formalist discourse based on to discussions of works by pre-independence Indian
the expression of the rural ‘other’ enabled him to artists largely deprived of the scholarly attention of
generate a critique of colonial art that could only art historians concerned with indigenous and multi-
tangentially recognise the non-Western other. ple modernisms around the world.
The two remaining chapters of the book, while Some troubling aspects in the book demand
extremely informative, do not quite attain the analyt- consideration. First, in the prologue, Mitter evokes
ical brilliance of the two earlier chapters. The third European artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and
chapter provides a historical context of diverging others in terms of their purported engagement with
forms of naturalism in different parts of India, derived ‘Eastern, particularly Indian Buddhist and Hindu
from regional expressions (for example, Hemen- philosophy’ (p 12). Mitter returns to what he calls a
dranath Majumdar and Atul Bose) and an indigenous ‘debt of abstract artists to Eastern thought’ (p 34)
kind of orientalism that provided the basis for what later in the book, but does not develop these ideas
Mitter calls a ‘New Naturalism’ (for example K further. On the one hand, the extent to which the
Venkatappa and Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury). European artists in question actually understood the
Particularly notable here is the section devoted to Roy fundamental principles of Indian philosophy is
Chowdhury, whose large-scale sculptural depictions highly speculative. On the other hand, the purpose
of humble labourers absorbed in their heroic struggle of these remarks within the context of the larger
for survival reveal a remarkable expressionist vocab- discussion remains ambiguous without an expansion
ulary. The fourth chapter addresses the Raj patronage of the theories in question elsewhere in the book.
of the arts in late colonial India, with a determined Second, the author’s use of grammatically incor-
focus on the complex imbrication of colonialism and rect and outdated jargon constitutes a problem. In
nationalism. The chapter ends with a discussion of the the first section of the third chapter, Mitter uses the
1934 exhibition of Modern Indian art at the Burling- term ‘la drape mouillée’ (p 135) to describe the
ton Galleries in Britain, with the surprising absence overtly sexualised paintings of female nudes by
of Amrita Sher-Gil from the group of artists. While Hemendranath Majumdar: if the artist’s rendering
historically rich, the last chapter remains somewhat concerns what is known as the ‘wet drapery’ tech-
 211

nique, then the correct French term is ‘draperie pp 164–77, and Yve-Alain Bois, ‘La Pensée Sauvage’, ibid,
mouillée’. In the same way, antiquated European pp 178–89.
terms such as ‘l’uomo universale’ (p 168) sound 3 See Magiciens de la Terre, exhibition catalogue, Centre Georges
rather incongruous, especially when utilised with Pompidou, Paris, 1989.
regard to the indigenous modernism of Indian artists 4 See Benjamin Buchloh and Jean-Hubert Martin, ‘Interview’,
such as Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury. Third Text, 6, spring 1989, pp 19–28, and Hans Belting, Art
Third, Mitter seems to refute the European hege- History after Modernism, trans Caroline Saltzwedel and Mitch
Cohen, with additional translation by Kenneth Northcott,
mony of modernism and offers a critical account of a University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003, pp 67–8.
non-Western indigenous modernism in late colonial
India, based on ‘primitivism’. However, what kind of 5 Sarah Wilson, ‘Paris Post War: In Search of the Absolute’, in
Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism 1945–55, ed Frances
‘primitivism’ is at issue here? Is the primitivism Mitter Morris, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1993,
evokes the same as that which triggered the early pp 33–4
twentieth-century modernist experiments in art? A
6 Ibid
case in point is the term ‘new primitivism’ that Sarah
Wilson deploys to distinguish various primitivist – 7 See Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge,
London–New York, 1994, and Sarat Maharaj, ‘Perfidious
premodern – practices in French art around the mid-
Fidelity: The Untranslatability of the Other’, in Global Visions:
twentieth century from the early twentieth-century Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts, ed Jean
primitivism observed in works by artists such as Fisher, Kala Press, London, 1994.
Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.5 Wilson has argued
that the ‘new primitivism’ in post-1945 French art © 2009 Ananda Shankar Chakrabarty
derived not from exotic but rather from ‘indigenous
and anonymous sources, prehistoric, Gallic and
Romanesque’.6 Similarly, since a specific form of
indigenous modernism seems to form the core of
Mitter’s discussion, it would be useful to distinguish
Chinese Whispers
the late colonial Indian primitivism from the one
whose multifaceted appearance in Western Europe Paul O’Kane
has prompted several harsh and polemical debates.
Finally, Mitter’s account of the rise of an indige-
nous Indian primitivism, while rich in historical
contextualisation, could benefit from a theoretical
approach based on the idea of translation. The seeds Hsiao-Hung Pai has written an important book. This
of such an approach are already present in the freelance journalist, who specialises in Chinese and
prologue, where Mitter evokes the issue of hybridity, Southeast Asian issues, has ‘gone underground’ to
without expanding the notion elsewhere in the book. amass evidence of the brutally unjust world in which
The linkage between hybridity and translation, migrant workers are forced to operate in Britain due
appearing in propositions by Homi Bhabha and to inadequate and outdated legislation. Loopholes,
Sarat Maharaj,7 has immensely broadened the black markets and downright criminality allow
possibilities for negotiating cultural difference in a obscene working conditions, violent and intimidat-
postcolonial world. The theoretical models of ing bosses, gang masters and threatening loan-sharks
hybridisation and translation would enable Mitter’s to ‘bleed dry’ people already forced by poverty to
exposition to attain a more sophisticated approach travel to so-called ‘first world’ countries in search of
for his explications of late colonial Indian modernist some means of rescuing themselves and their families
art overlaid on indigenous primitive expressions. from the inadequacies of their emerging nations.
The writer’s style and gift for description brings
home and makes real the unpalatable vision of a
Partha Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism: India’s
Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922–1947, Reaktion meat-packing factory shift on a tiny hourly rate; a
Books, London, 2007 wintry onion field in the Midlands in the early
hours; or a seedy suburban ‘massage parlour’ (read
‘brothel’); as well as crowded, dingy rooms packed
NOTES with grubby mattresses shared by workers who pay
for the dubious privilege. Meanwhile, the fact that
1 See on this William Rubin, ed, ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Pai works secretly, for and alongside bosses known
Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, exhibition for their violent or brutal tactics (and gives many
catalogue, vol II, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984. detailed names and places), makes the reading a
2 For the critiques, see among others James Clifford, ‘Histories of nervous adventure as you begin to fear for the
the Tribal and the Modern’, Art in America, April 1985, author’s own safety.