One of the reasons I came to India was to study Indian art history. So when my professor turned out to be a jerk I was disappointed and angry. This man dismissed all of our comments and questions and to be honest I didn't learn much from him. Last Friday was his last day teaching and this week one of his colleagues came in to teach the second half of the course on modern Indian art. The class is great because he has an understanding of Indian and Western art-so I don't feel completely lost. A lot of the contemporary works we've talked about have reminded me of western art from the 60s. One of the images was of a performance artist sitting naked on the ground. Every member of the audience was given yellow powder (used on the groom at a marriage ceremony) and asked to paint the artist. The performance reminded me of Yoko Ono's 1964 "Cut Piece". The performance forced each member of the audience to walk up to the artist and cut a piece of her clothing. While the themes are different they share the idea of audience participation. Yoko's piece is pretty cool here is the link if you're interested <www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dsvy_yoko-ono-cut-piece_shortfilms>

Unfortunately the university blocks certain websites so I cant post the actual video but here is a still from a work by South Indian artist Sonia Khurana titled "bird"(2000). Check this website out to watch the video-let me know what you think!


Oh and forget Amitabh Bachchan...I've fallen in love with my art history professor. But he's married...to an artist :/