Art for a Modern India, 1947-1980

“Keeping in view Brown’s art-historical skill and insight, and her willingness to bring together disparate media into unified frames of analyses, Art for a Modern India should become a key point of reference for future scholars exploring the interface of art-historical and cultural heritage studies.”
- Daniel J. Rycroft, CAA Reviews

“Rebecca M. Brown weaves a rich and layered narrative of Indian postindependence art, connecting painting with a wide range of references that include the architecture of Charles Correa, the ‘high’ cinema of Satyajit Ray, and the demotic art of Bollywood. All the while she balances theoretical sophistication with penetrating insights into the singular achievements of these artists as they negotiate the predicament of local versus global modernism. In the process, she unravels the indebtedness of modernity to colonialism. There has long been a crying need for such a work, and Brown’s pioneering opus fulfills this admirably.” - Partha Mitter, author of The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922–1947

“[R]ecommended for libraries with graduate programs in art history and for others looking to expand their modern and non-Western art history collections.” - Melissa Aho, ARLIS/NA Reviews

“An interesting contribution, this book will be useful in general and undergraduate libraries. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through faculty/ researchers; general readers.” - E. Findly, Choice

“Bringing together a range of disparate but linked examples, Brown's text makes for stimulating reading–an essential text for any student of the arts, postcolonialism, and the interaction of science and arts in the postcolonial context.” - Aparna Sharma, Leonardo Reviews

“Rebecca Brown’s elegant and conceptually driven account of modernism focuses on the decades following Independence. . . . Brown’s approach is highly satisfying. By cutting across media and juxtaposing artists whose aesthetic commitments and backgrounds are presented as incommensurate within the internal debates of the Indian art world, Brown challenges the specialist. But she also gives the general reader an overarching sense of what conceptual problems faced Indian artists and, just as importantly, why those problems emerged as such. It is a particularly fitting approach for a period of art history that is dominated by studies focusing on single artists, artist groups, and institutions.” - Karin Zitzewitz, Art History