Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India after Independence

 

“Peabody Essex show frames the transformation of a nation and its artists…. Susan S. Bean has assembled a juicy exhibit, organized across three generations of artists…” The Boston Globe 

“A curatorial coup here involves several thoughtful groupings …  Including these carefully selected loans…explains something about the aesthetic breadth of the artists.” The Wall Street Journal  

 

 

Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India After Independence (Thames & Hudson and Peabody Essex Museum, 2013) was published in conjunction with the exhibition held at the Peabody Essex Museum in 2013.  The project presents the revolutionary art movement that asserted itself in India between the declaration of independence at midnight on August 15, 1947, and the economic boom of the 1990s. Both the book and the exhibition feature the museum’s renowned Herwitz Collection of Contemporary Indian art and include other important comparative works from public and private collections. Midnight to the Boom presents three generations of artists responsible for critical shifts in the development of India’s modernist art.  After independence, India’s artists faced a particular artistic challenge: how to express their distinctive visions while participating in a global discourse on modernist art. In the absence of a dominant aesthetic, painters in India turned where they wished and blended as they liked—from Abstract Expressionism to Tantric spiritualism; from Rajasthani painting to the embroidered quilts of Bengal. The beautifully illustrated volume Midnight to the Boom, features essay by scholars with deep knowledge of both India and modern and contemporary art: Susan S. Bean, ; Homi K. Bhabha, Harvard University; Rebecca M. Brown, Johns Hopkins University; Beth Citron, Rubin Museum of Art; Ajay Sinha, Mount Holyoke College; and Karin Zitzewitz, Michigan State University.