Art for a Modern India, 1947-1980

"Rebecca M. Brown weaves a rich and layered narrative of Indian post-independence art, interweaving 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 itself to colonialism. There has long been a crying need for such a work and Brown's pioneering opus fulfils this admirably."Partha Mitter, author of The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922-47