Highlights from the PeabodyEssex Museum's HerwitzCollection of Indian art, thepreeminent public collectionoutside of India A revolutionary art movement asserted itself in India between the declarationof independence at midnight on August 15, 1947, and the economic boom ofthe 1990s. This is the first in-depth study of the three generations of artistsresponsible for critical shifts in the development of India's modernist art. Theirachievements and the country's unprecedented boom ushered India's modernand contemporary art into a new era of globalism, a soaring international market,and an explosion in the media and technologies of art.After independence, India's artists faced a particular artistic challenge:how to express the new nation's distinctive character while entering a globaldiscourse focused on modernism's universal premises of experimentation andshared human values. In the absence of a dominant aesthetic, painters couldturn where they wished and blend as they liked--from Abstract Expressionismto Tantric spiritualism; from Rajasthani painting to changes in India's complexpolitics, religions, classes, and vernacular life.The contributors to this beautifully illustrated publication bring a deepknowledge of both India and modern and contemporary art: Susan S. Bean,Curator of South Asian and Korean Art at the Peabody Essex Museum; HomiK. Bhabha, Harvard University; Rebecca M.

Brown, Johns Hopkins University;Beth Citron, Rubin Museum of Art; Ajay Sinha, Mount Holyoke College; andKarin Zitzewitz, Michigan State University.