THE ART OF THEORY

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS BY THE VETERAN ART CRITIC GEETA KAPUR REFLECTS THE COMPLEX IMPULSES THAT SHAPED INDIAN MODERNISM

- -Bhavya Dore

Art and commerce are closely intertwined, so how can artists be truly free and radical? What is the relationship of the artist to the nation-state? How does decolonisation influence cultural practices? What are the modes of artistic dissent? These are some of the animating concerns in Speech Acts, a new anthology by the art critic, theorist and curator Geeta Kapur. The collection, featuring essays, talks and interviews, addresses and interrogates themes that Kapur has tackled in her storied career.

“The title, Speech Acts, refers to the spoken word and the elocutionary mode; to debates, dilemmas and dialogic exchange,” says Kapur over email. “The book rests on my desire to address the contemporary through an authorial style that includes contradictions and ironies as well as a sustained poetics in the time of now.”

Kapur unpacks the saturated valencies in that one word ‘contemporary’. For instance, can it be seen as synonymous with ‘modernity’? At a theoretical level, it is, she writes, a “coming together of certain historical forces at a certain moment”. As art, the contemporary is showcased in spaces like the biennale or the modern museum. It can take the shape of avant-garde movements and indigenous responses to the existing canon.