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Old Word/New Modernism

by Sophia Powers

RAZA: A RETROSPECTIVE

Saffronart

The Fuller Building, 595 Madison Avenue, Suite 900, New York, NY 10022

September 21, 2007 - October 31, 2007

When it comes to the avant-garde, India is the new China. Only in the past few years have Indian artists begun to achieve the sort of celebrity accorded to Chinese contemporary artistsin the U.S. more than a

decade ago. The work, however, could hardly look more dissimilar. While Chinese art oft addresses politics in the language of pop, Indian works tend to deal figuratively or abstractly with a cornucopia cultural conundrums.

There could be no better introduction to this nation of newcomers to the contemporary scene then Raza, the grandfather of Indian modernism. His latter canvases look to be the mischievous distant kin of Frank Stella’s geometric works, with quite a bit more color. Yet for all their formal rigor, they are not mere meditations on composition. Rather, each work is a variation on the bindi, the traditional forehead decoration of married women in India. The work is at once specific, referential, and sublime.

(*Images, from top to bottom: S.H. Raza, Raza: A Retrospective, September 21 - October 31, 2007; Saffronart, New York, Prakriti Purush, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 39 x 78 inches, Courtesy of Saffronart, New York. S.H. Raza, Raza: A Retrospective, September 21 - October 31, 2007; Saffronart, New York, Indian Temple, 1959, oil on canvas, 33 x 25 inches, Courtesy of Saffronart, New York.)

Posted by Sophia Powers on 10/6/07