Untitled Document
About the Book:
Husain’s Raj forefronts the ludic quality in the work of Maqbool Fida
Husain, postcolonial India’s most iconic modernist and also arguably its
most playful.The book focuses on a series of paintings in which the artist offers
a postcolonial visual commentary on the erstwhile colonial world in which he
had been born and raised. These works are densely packed with objects and people
(British and native, high and low, male and female) and some animals as well,
brought together in narrative action that revealthe anxieties and absurdities
of imperial rule in India.
Husain came of age in the waning days of British colonial rule and was witness
to the rising tide of Indian nationalism. Instead of providing grim portraits
of what it meant to grow up in such a context, he presents playful vignettes
of the Raj to a new generation of viewers—many of whom would not have
experienced colonial rule directly—showing us how it is possible, even
necessary, to laugh while looking back at a painful and traumatic past.
Content:
In Gratitude
1. “Images of the Raj”: Recalling Empire
2. “Shikar and Afternoon Tea”: England’s Hard Work in India
3. “Raja and Rani”: Lampooning Princely India
4. “Memsab and the Bearer”: The Sexual Politics of Husain’s
Raj
5. “100 Years of Struggle for Freedom”: Husain’s Pictorial
Patriotism
6. “Last Vestige of the Raj”: Laughing at Empire Properly
About the Author:
Sumathi Ramaswamy is Professor of History at Duke University
in Durham, North Carolina, USA. Over the course of her academic career, she
has published extensively in the fields of language politics, gender studies,
spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern
history of Indian art. She is a contributor to the Marg books, India’s
Popular Culture: Iconic Spaces and Fluid Images and Art and Visual Culture in
India. She is the recipient of numerous honours and awards, including from the
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in the USA and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
in Germany.
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