The purpose of art, the artist Amrita Sher-Gil wrote in 1936, is to “create the forms of the future” by “draw[ing] its inspiration from the present.” Through art, new worlds could be imagined into existence as artists cultivated forms of belonging and networks of association that opposed colonialist and nationalist norms. Drawing on Edward Said’s notion of “affiliation” as a critical and cultural imperative against empire and nation-state, Worldly Affiliations traces the emergence of a national art world in twentieth-century India and emphasizes its cosmopolitan ambitions and orientations. Sonal Khullar focuses on four major Indian artists—Sher-Gil, Maqbool Fida Husain, K. G. Subramanyan, and Bhupen Khakhar—situating their careers within national and global histories of modernism and modernity and showing how particular notions of East and West were challenged and transformed by their art.Through a close analysis of original artwork, archival materials, artists’ writing, and period criticism, Khullar provides a vivid historical account of the state and stakes of artistic practice in India from the late colonial through postcolonial periods. She discusses the shifting terms of Indian artists’ engagement with the West—an urgent yet fraught project in the wake of British colonialism—and to a lesser extent with African and Latin American cultural movements such as Négritude and Mexican muralism. This richly illustrated study juxtaposes little-known, rarely seen, or previously unpublished works of modern and contemporary Indian art with historical works, popular and mass-reproduced images, and documentary photographs. Its innovative art program renders newly visible the aesthetic and political achievements of modernism in India.
Sonal Khullar
Sonal Khullar is W. Norman Brown Associate Professor of South Asian Studies in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in the art of South Asia from the eighteenth century onward, with particular interests in modern and contemporary art, cosmopolitanism, postcolonial art worlds, and critical historiographies of art. Worldly Affiliations received the Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize of the Association for Asian Studies and the Millard Meiss Publication Award and Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award of the College Art Association. She is also the editor of Old Stacks, New Leaves: The Arts of the Book in South Asia.
Editorial Reviews
 | “Beautifully written, compellingly argued, Khullar’s book not only offers a major contribution to the study of Indian modernism, it also advances our methodological understanding of modern art at large. A vital addition to an exciting body of emerging art-historical scholarship that promises to fundamentally transform received ideas on modernism in the coming years.”
—Iftikhar Dadi, Cornell University
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| “An important intervention in the history of artistic modernism in twentieth-century India, Khullar makes the critical move of connecting these artists with the larger ‘art worlds’ in which they stand—worlds constituted by the institutions of art education, art criticism, art collecting, art exhibitions, and the forming of new art publics.”
—Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata
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| “Provocatively argued, this book is a must-read for art students, critics, and all those who are interested in modern Indian art, as well as all concerned with global modernisms.”
—Partha Mitter, University of Sussex
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| “A welcome offering in the emerging field of twentieth-century South Asian art; it presents a rich rethinking of Indian artists’ relation to modernity, postcoloniality, and the global art world.”
—Rebecca M. Brown, author of Art for a Modern India, 1947–1980
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