New Images Prior Text

Speaker: R. Sivakumar

September 6, 1996 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

From Manet to Picasso and Magritte to Kitaj we have numerous instances of the modern artist returning to historical images or texts. But why do artists return to prior texts? It has been described as parody but the purpose is not ridicule or satire but ironic and self-reflexive. It expresses gentle subversion rather than violent disparagement. It is a conscious use of intertextuality and the viewer is expected to read not only the image but read it also against the prior text or image. The viewer then sees the new image and what it displaces in a connected perspective, comprehending the two sensibilities and the two different realities. The work thus telescopes as a difference, a space that separates. The individuality of the artists and the contemporaneity of his vision is expressed as this separating space. Such an instance from early modern Indian art will be explored at some length in the talk.