Writing the Modern

T.K. Sabapathy is currently an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore, where he teaches the history of art.

"Reading this anthology is a revelation, like encountering a Chinua Achebe novel or listening to Gayatri Spivak speak for the first time." — Mekong Review"[A] painstakingly conceived book containing some of Sabapathy’s most seminal essays, articles and speeches, is a weighty tome befitting a scholar of his stature. [...] Every dip into the book’s textual tensility yields novel insights and elaborate apprehensions of the push and pull of history upon art, and art upon history. [...] Writing the Modern is a vivifying read. Sabapathy writes with such flair, such verve, such density of purpose, it is not unusual to find oneself re-reading many of his sentences simply to revel in his consummate command of the English language." — Arts Equator"In keeping with Sabapathy’s postwar Euro-American schooling, this compendium—including monographic articles, catalogue essays, newspaper features and exhibition reviews, conference papers, and public speeches—reflects his highly eclectic but always thoughtful take on Southeast Asia’s modern art developments. Drawing on the theoretic and iconographic methods of Western scholars such as Michael Baxandall, E.H. Gombrich, Rosalind Krauss, Herbert Read, Barbara Rose, and Michael Sullivan (all amply cited in his texts), Sabapathy demonstrates an acute sensitivity to the visual, tactile, and symbolic qualities of artistic mediums." — Art in America