Modernism in Relation

Reviews / Votes

In this lucid study and methodological tour de force, Rebecca
Brown renders the words and symbols of KCS Paniker legible even as she
champions the power of illegibility. Her analysis-deeply grounded in
philosophies of language and power as well as archives and collections-offers
new ways to understand artistic creativity. Ultimately, Brown's work stands as
an incisive meditation on the techniques and very purpose of art historical
writing.



-Karin J. Zitzewitz, Professor of Art History, University of
Maryland, College Park

Rebecca Brown takes us on a wondrous journey through a single
artist's creativity to reimagine modernism's relational geographies. This is an
art history that is methodologically bold, at once perspicacious and poetic-a
book to savor and think with.





-Monica Juneja, Heidelberg University, author of Can Art
History Be Made Global? Meditations from the Periphery

In this searching and deeply self-aware book, Rebecca Brown offers
a probing account of what she calls the "errant archive" of KCS Paniker-a body
of work that resists neat organization yet insists on being remembered. Moving
across his painting, publishing, and institution-building practices with rare
critical intimacy, she illuminates how Paniker wove a distinctly South Indian
cultural and intellectual sensibility into the very foundations of modern
Indian art.





-Saloni Mathur, Professor of Art History, University of
California, Los Angeles

This is not just a monograph on KCS Paniker, but a book that
offers a lens onto the history of modern Indian art and its conversation with
global modernism. At once poetic, it also narrates the cultural politics of the
time while centering Paniker's oeuvre and its aesthetics.





-Parul Dave Mukherji, Dean, School of Arts and Aesthetics,
Jawaharlal Nehru University