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Prabhakar Barwe (1936-95) could well have ended up a theoretician whose book 'Kora Canvas' (Blank Canvas) was a manifesto that established the multi-dimensional relationship between an artist, the object on which he paints, and his subjects. That he was not just an intellectual scholar but an artist whose work speaks for him, is evident through a range of works in which Barwe dissects our understanding of the world and how we view it. Taking commonplace objects and our perception of their existence in the space they occupy, he shifts the dialogue to a point of discomfiture that makes us question our understanding of them. Using scale, discordant juxtapositions, and displacements, he reimagines the everyday in a manner that is thought-provoking, even provocative, as alternate realities—whether perceived or imagined.

Sunayani Devi picked up a paintbrush in 1905 when she was thirty years old while supervising her kitchen duties, self-taught, but with enough talent to attract the critical attention of Stella Kramrisch who organised an exhibition of her paintings in Germany in 1927. It was in her worthy footsteps that India’s women artists followed. Devayani Krishna was born five years after Sunayani Devi began painting; Amrita Sher-Gil already had a career in Paris by the time India’s first art school-trained woman artist, Ambika Dhurandhar, earned her diploma in Bombay. B. Prabha followed next, her work reflecting the realities of the marginalised in a piquant language. By the time Nasreen Mohamedi and Zarina Hashmi, both born a decade before Independence, established their careers, women were joining art schools in greater numbers, validating their practice not on the basis of their gender but on its context. Anupam Sud Devayani Krishna Gogi Saroj Pal Latika Katt Madhvi Parekh Mrinalini Mukherjee Navjot Rekha Rodwittiya Shobha Broota Zarina Hashmi

Radha is painted as a queen in this Early Bengal oil painting, surrounded by her fellow Gopis (cowherds and companions) and Krishna—her divine consort and an incarnation of one of the Hindu trinity—dressed as a sentinel. She sits on her royal throne amid a forest landscape, perhaps recalling her identification as Vrindavaneshwari (goddess of Vrindavan). Going by the small but remarkable details of the jewellery, we can guess that it is the work of an artist trained in the miniature tradition. But does the painting hide other possible secrets?

Indian modernism is rich in diversity with a dizzying succession of artists who have each carved a niche for themselves in the rich firmament of art practice in the country. Open to influences from the West, reaching deep into the roots of their own culture, exploring and experimenting across mediums, absorbing ideas, reinterpreting established norms, Indian art defies any easily tailored silos to carve for itself a confident assertion of its own identity within a global context, while being a part of its larger assimilative journey.

The idea of primitivism centres on the wish to identify with, or respond to, elements of a society that are deemed ‘primitive’. In artistic terms, it is about rejecting realism, simplifying technique and reducing the formal means of expression to a ‘primitive’ state. The term itself is borrowed from discussions of Western art, where high-profile examples include the images of Tahiti and its people made in the 1890s by Paul Gauguin, and responses to African sculpture by Pablo Picasso in 1906-09. The second thread of primitivism—the reduction of formal means—is best exemplified by the ‘cut-outs’ made by Henri Matisse in the 1940s.

Do we view things differently as we grow older? What are the perspectives that matter most when viewing art? Do we see things differently as men and women? Do we see art differently as men and women? How does one’s gender impact the creation of art? In the months leading up to ‘Ways of Seeing’, these were some of the questions we posed to ourselves, and we wish we could say that we found a generic, universal response, for there are as many standpoints and views as there are viewers and people. Amrita Sher-Gil Anjolie Ela Menon Anupam Sud Arpana Caur B. Prabha Devayani Krishna Elizabeth Brunner Gogi Saroj Pal Jaya Ganguly Kanchan Chander Kavita Nayar Latika Katt Madhvi Parekh Mrinalini Mukherjee Nalini Malani Navjot Nilima Sheikh Rekha Rodwittiya Shobha Broota Sunayani Devi Vasundhara Tewari Broota Zarina Hashmi Akbar Padamsee Avinash Chandra B. C. Sanyal Baburao Painter Bikash Bhattacharjee D. P. Roy Chowdhury Dharamanarayan Dasgupta Dhruva Mistry F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Pyne George Keyt Haren Das Jagadish Dey Jamini Roy Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. H. Ara K. S. Kulkarni Khagen Roy Krishen Khanna M. F. Husain M. Suriyamoorthy M. V. Dhurandhar Nandalal Bose P. T. Reddy Prokash Karmakar Sakti Burman Satish Sinha Sudhir Khastgir Sunil Das V. Nageshkar