ART NOTIONS: Essays on Indian Art

Description

“The lively and provocative volume of eighteen essays brings together the life-long engagement of the distinguished critic M Ramachandran with post-independence art in India. In a complex, even complicated series of arguments he proposes that a work of art is neither independent of marked forces, not of gender politics and regional consciousness. Finally, while praising postmodernism, he is not an uncritical admirer of identity politics and still has faith in the universal values of humanity. Nor is he convinced of the success of postmodernism. I think the reader has a great deal to engage within this lively and sophisticated set of essays. I commend them wholeheartedly.” – Partha Mitter

Born in Ernakulam, Kerala, M Ramachandran holds an MFA in Art Criticism from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the M.S. University of Baroda and an MA in the English Language and Literature from the University of Kerala. Later, he joined the Centre for Linguistics and English of Jawaharlal Nehru University for his PhD. (Semiotics). He has been contributing articles on art and allied subjects to various journals and newspapers published in Malayalam as well as English. He has authored the book Ritualistic Visual Cultures: Sri Lanka and Kerala. Currently, he lives in Ernakulam, Kerala.