Devajyoti  Ray and Bridget Riley

Contemporary Indian Art often shows iconography that has come down from various phases in India’s long history – a history that had seen the incoming of a people from various parts of the world. Indian art assimilates all these influences into a diffused spectrum which is often difficult to decipher without good knowledge of Indian history.

Amidst the various people that had once inhabited the Indian political and cultural space, the British were perhaps the most recent. The British rule in India had lasted for about 150 years, during which Indians got introduced to European genres of modern art. These influences can be very easily observed in Indian artworks today.

But is it possible to delineate a distinct Indo-British style? Perhaps not. Yet an attempt in this direction has often been made, the latest of which can now be seen in an exhibition titled “Cultural Coalition” to be held first in London this month and then taken to New Delhi by the end of the year.

Dom Elsner's works do
show some Indianness
 but it needs support of
 a curatorial note.
Kate Linforth's works (below)
require even more
explanation in terms
of the context. 

The show includes works of Devajyoti Ray, Angus Pryor and Kate Linforth. At the entrance of the show a banner explains to the unintiated the similarity between Bridget Riley's Op art and Rays's Pseudorealism. Another banner explains older historical connections as between Howard Hodgekin's collection of Mughal art works and the influence such works had on artists of Eton of the time.

Nonethless the curatorial notes remain way too sketchy. They do not mention even a paragraph on how Company School of paintings in India developed and how artists like Jamini Roy acquired recognition in Europe in spite of remaining rooted to Indian iconography. 

   
The works at display also show only recent trends in art in the two countries.

But here too a mention of the contributions of artists like Anish Kapoor and YBA artists would have made the show all the more worthwhile.