Modernism in Relation

RebeccaM. Brown is professor of the history of art and chair of themuseum studies and cultural heritage management programs at Johns HopkinsUniversity. Her books include Displaying Time (2017),Gandhi's Spinning Wheel and the Making of India (2010),and Art for a Modern India, 1947-1980 (2009).

In this lucid study and methodological tour de force, RebeccaBrown renders the words and symbols of KCS Paniker legible even as shechampions the power of illegibility. Her analysis-deeply grounded inphilosophies of language and power as well as archives and collections-offersnew ways to understand artistic creativity. Ultimately, Brown's work stands asan incisive meditation on the techniques and very purpose of art historicalwriting.-Karin J. Zitzewitz, Professor of Art History, University ofMaryland, College ParkRebecca Brown takes us on a wondrous journey through a singleartist's creativity to reimagine modernism's relational geographies. This is anart history that is methodologically bold, at once perspicacious and poetic-abook to savor and think with.-Monica Juneja, Heidelberg University, author of Can ArtHistory Be Made Global? Meditations from the PeripheryIn this searching and deeply self-aware book, Rebecca Brown offersa probing account of what she calls the "errant archive" of KCS Paniker-a bodyof work that resists neat organization yet insists on being remembered. Movingacross his painting, publishing, and institution-building practices with rarecritical intimacy, she illuminates how Paniker wove a distinctly South Indiancultural and intellectual sensibility into the very foundations of modernIndian art.-Saloni Mathur, Professor of Art History, University ofCalifornia, Los AngelesThis is not just a monograph on KCS Paniker, but a book thatoffers a lens onto the history of modern Indian art and its conversation withglobal modernism. At once poetic, it also narrates the cultural politics of thetime while centering Paniker's oeuvre and its aesthetics.-Parul Dave Mukherji, Dean, School of Arts and Aesthetics,Jawaharlal Nehru UniversityRebecca M. Brown’s book is a close and searching look at one bodyof work by one artist—KCS Paniker’s capacious, intriguingly cryptic Wordsand Symbols series of paintings, made in Madras in the 1960s and1970s—and an ambitious demonstration of seeing Modernism in Relation.Brown places Paniker’s paintings in relation to questions of writing and color,to his publishing and archiving, and to artists near and far, with specialemphasis on Paniker’s conversation with the Swiss German prewar modernist PaulKlee. As Brown, reflecting on the form of her project, writes, “Criticallyastute monographs allow for a rich, complex unfolding of ideas, readings ofworks of art, and the underpinnings of art historical method.”— Annie Bourneuf, Professor, Department of Art History, Theory,and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago