Moving Focus

"Reflections on the chords and discords inherent in the relationship between tradition and modernism.

K. G. Subramanyan (1924–2016) played a pivotal role in shaping India’s artistic identity after Independence. Mani-da, as he was fondly called, seamlessly blended elements of modernism with folk expression in his works, spanning paintings, murals, sculptures, prints, set designs and toys. Beyond his visual artistry, his writings have laid a solid foundation for understanding the demands of art on the individual. In the year of his centenary, Seagull is proud to publish his writings in special new editions.

Written between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s, the articles and lectures collected in Moving Focus reflect on some of the major concerns of the practising artist and scholar of modern Indian art: tradition and modernism, the question of the image, the use of art criticism. There are also essays on the work of Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Binodebehari Mukherjee, Ramkinker Baij and Amrita Sher-Gil. Together, they deal with the focal changes taking place in the contemporary art situation—a period of great significance in terms of cultural development, just about a decade and a half after India’s hard-won Independence—and seek to put them in perspective. K. G. Subramanyan’s analytical essays remain as relevant and useful today as they were when this collection first appeared decades ago."