Guha-Thakurta, Tapati

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Guha-Thakurta, Tapati

PERSONAL:

Education: Oxford University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta R-1, Baishnabghata Patuli Township, Kolkata 700 094, India. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and writer. Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India, professor of history.

WRITINGS:

The Making of a New "Indian" Art: Artists, Aesthetics, and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850-1920, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Traversing Past and Present in the Victoria Memorial, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Calcutta, India), 1995.

Archaeology as Evidence: Looking Back from the Ayodhya Debate, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Calcutta, India), 1997.

Culture and the Disciplines: Papers from the Cultural Studies Workshops, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Calcutta, India), 1999.

Culture and Democracy: Papers from the Cultural Studies Workshops, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Calcutta, India), 1999.

In Her Own Right: Remembering the Artist Karuna Shaha, Seagull Books (Calcutta, India), 2001.

Visual Worlds of Modern Bengal: Selections from the Documentation Archive of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Seagull Books (Calcutta, India), 2002.

Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Calcutta, Repossessing the City, Om Books International (New Delhi, India), 2006.

Iconography Now: Rewriting Art History?, Sahmat (New Delhi, India), 2006.

Contributor to Art India and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author and educator Tapati Guha-Thakurta is a specialist in the art and cultural history of modern India, as well as in India's archaeological, art history, and museum practices. She has taught history at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta, India, and also contributes to various periodicals and books, including articles and chapters about Indian art and history for Art India and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Guha-Thakurta has also published multiple books in India and the United States on Indian art and history, including Traversing Past and Present in the Victoria Memorial, Archaeology as Evidence: Looking Back from the Ayodhya Debate, Culture and the Disciplines: Papers from the Cultural Studies Workshops, and Culture and Democracy: Papers from the Cultural Studies Workshops.

The author's first published book was 1992's The Making of a New "Indian" Art: Artists, Aesthetics, and Nationalism in Bengal, c 1850-1920. The book is based on her 1988 doctoral thesis. While the Indian art most often written about is from the colonial period and before, Guha-Thakurta's book focuses on "new" Indian art, that of the Bengali school and artistic leader Abanindranath Tagore. She also examines the history and politics of that time, such as the role of artists and artisans in India, the Westernization of India, and how the Raj instituted art education.

Guha-Thakurta outlines other contributors to this artistic movement, including E.B. Havell, A.K. Coomaraswamy, Sister Nivedita, and Kakuzo Okakura. Andrew L. Cohen, writing in a review of The Making of a New "Indian" Art for the Art Journal, stated: "Guha-Thakurta's appraisal of the contributions made by these individuals, their discourse engendered from earlier Orientalist views, is a welcome contribution to the field. Comments on how the Indian female image becomes an allegory of purity, incorruptible by colonial dominance, are also insightful." Cohen further wrote that Guha-Thakurta "admirably achieves her goals, especially the … objective of evaluating nationalist art and critically examining Tagore and the Bengali school. Rejecting Western art and its elevation of classical ideals and Renaissance art, Tagore and his followers sought a new national art based on Indian aesthetics." Cohen concluded that the book "represents a major advancement in the expanding field of Indian art history."

More recently, Guha-Thakurta published the 2004 book Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India. It pulls together many of the author's essays published in various places over the past decade, divided into four parts: "The Colonial Past," "Regional Frames," "National Claims," and "The Embattled Present." Together the essays form an overview of the developments in art history and archaeology in India over the last 150 or so years. "Her focus," explained Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History contributor Julie F. Codell, "is on parallel tracks of archaeology and art history from the nineteenth-century to postcolonial modern India. Archaeology and art history were important to colonial Britain for an array of jumbled purposes: preserving monuments, writing Indian history, defining Indian cultural development as declining and linking all these purposes to racial differences between Britain and India." She ties in these developments with the history and regional developments of the country, providing an important context in which to examine the subject. While each essay stands on its own and can be read separately from the rest of the book, altogether the essays form a continuous narrative. Overall, Monuments, Objects, Histories was lauded as a comprehensive and in-depth examination of this time in Indian art history. Through this book, Guha-Thakurta "greatly increases our understanding of the role of archaeology and the historical museum in India," noted Art Journal contributor Iftikhar Dadi.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Art Journal, fall, 2006, Andrew L. Cohen, review of The Making of a New "Indian" Art: Artists, Aesthetics, and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850-1920; September 22, 2006, Iftikhar Dadi, review of Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India, p. 123.

Journal of Asian History, September 22, 2005, review of Monuments, Objects, Histories, p. 184.

Journal of Asian Studies, August 1, 2005, Helen Asquine Fazio, review of Monuments, Objects, Histories, p. 779.

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, spring, 2005, Julie F. Codell, review of Monuments, Objects, Histories.

Reference & Research Book News, August 1, 2004, review of Monuments, Objects, Histories, p. 236.

ONLINE

Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta,http://www.cssscal.org/ (June 24, 2008), author profile.

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