The Art of Secularism

Know about the book -

The Art of Secularism is written by Karin Zitzewitz and published by . It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1849042950 (ISBN 10) and 9781849042956 (ISBN 13).

Written in the wake of the widely publicised attacks by Hindu nationalist activists on the late M. F. Husain, India's most famous artist and a prominent Muslim, The Art of Secularism addresses the entanglement of visual art with political secularism. The crisis in secularism in India, commonlyassociated with the rise of Hindu nationalism in the 1980s, transformed the meaning of art. It challenged the relation- ships between modernism, national culture, secularism and modernity that had been built since Indias independence in 1947.The Art of Secularism describes how four renowned artists, "M. F. Husain, K. G. Subramanyan, Gulammohammed Sheikh, and Bhupen Khakhar" developed their practice in an era when secular nationalism grappled with the recent re-enchantment of signs. Com- bining close readings of these artists' work withethnography of the art worlds of Mumbai and Vadodara, Karin Zitzewitz describes both the everyday forms of cosmopolitanism in the Indian art world and the increasing vulnerability of art world spaces to cultural regulation. She also presents the shifting conditions of the production and exhibitionof art within the particularly urgent, varied, and sophisticated public debates about secularism in India, in which artists have been increasingly prominent interlocutors.