Jangarh Singh Shyam: A Conjuror's Archive

Before any sound critical framework could be evolved around the phenomenal artist Jangarh Singh Shyam as the originator of an extraordinary individualistic idiom of painting, ruthless market forces regrettably came to dominate his art and Jangarh himself became their first casualty. While trying to finish a large commission at a museum in Japan under adverse circumstances, Jangarh committed suicide in 2001. He was 40. A whole range of conditions, events and mediations associated with Jangarh's life and his art practice has since remained underexplored. This book is a first attempt to construct an equitable account of the formation of his prodigious artistic body of work that founded his legacy and grew into a movement. As a prime critical analysis of Jangarh Singh Shyam's oeuvre, this book also serves as a model framework for the study of a contemporary individual folk and tribal artist. The book probes the efficacy of extra-cultural interventions into an individual artist's operative and relatively well-grounded indigenous cultural tradition, and asks how the latter interacts with the new, while intentionally reinventing itself. This volume is published in association with the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore. AUTHOR: Dr. Jyotindra Jain was formerly Director of the Crafts Museum; Professor and Dean at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU); and Member Secretary of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, all in New Delhi. He was also a Visiting Professor at Harvard University and a Rudolf-Arnheim Professor at Humboldt University, Berlin. An eminent scholar of Indian art and popular visual culture, Jain has published extensively in the areas of his specialization, and curated exhibitions for some of the most prestigious cultural institutions and museums in India and abroad. A recipient of the 1998 Prince Claus Award for Culture and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2018, he is presently a member of the International Advisory of the Humboldt Forum, a multi-arts complex in Berlin; a Tagore National Fellow; and Co-Editor of Marg Publications, Mumbai. 90 illustrations