Second Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Memorial Lecture to be held tomorrow on ‘Towards Decolonizing Indian Art History via the Problem of Mimesis in the Citrasutra’

Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) is going to organise Second Ananda Coomaraswamy Memorial Lecture on 6^th October, 2023 the topic 'Towards Decolonizing Indian Art History via the Problem of Mimesis in the Citrasutra' to commemorate the 76^th Death Anniversary of A.K. Coomaraswamy. Prof. Parul Dave Mukherji, School of Arts & Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi and the session will be chaired by Prof. Sachchidanand Joshi, Member Secretary, IGNCA, New Delhi.

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was one of the pioneering art historians of the 20^th century whose art-historic writing is an intellectual landmark due to its interpretative eloquence and ardent advocacy in favour of the indigenous roots of Indian art. He remains a unique and inspiring scholar and author across the many fields of study he made his own.

With this view in mind, IGNCA is organising the second Memorial Lecture titled 'Towards Decolonizing Indian Art History via the Problem of Mimesis in the Citrasutra' by Prof. Parula Dave Mukherji to acknowledge the critical and comprehensive work done by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy in the field of art and culture. In 2008, IGNCA acquired his collection of books, art objects and paintings (Bengal school, Rajput and Pahari School of paintings etc.), photographs and his correspondences with Indian and Western philosophers, historians, church chroniclers/historians, curators and friends, from his legal heir. He was the first to recognize and condemn the far-reaching consequences of the Macaulayite education system.

The study of Indian art history initiated between the mid-19th and early 20th century by Western scholars applied European norms and methodology to Indian art. More recently, this Eurocentric bias has diminished. Increased familiarity with objects of Indian art and their aesthetic language has led to attempts to understand and explain such objects from the point of view of those for whom they were made.

The talk aims to develop the idea of decolonizing Indian art history through this theory and a new engagement with the visual arts of early India. What does decolonising Indian art history mean today? This question will be addressed by revisiting an overlooked theory of Indian aesthetics, anukarana vada or the theory of performative mimesis.

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BY/SKT