Toward a Development of a Cosmopolitan Aesthetic

In this essay I explore the interaction betweenrace and aesthetics in colon India (1857-1947). In the context of nation building and the Indian independence movement, the Indian art world struggles to articulate conditions for the very possibility of an artist who would be authentically Indian while remaining authentically artistic, a seemingly impossible accomplishment. And yet a chosen few are somehow are able to do just th cosmopolitan Indian artists, transcending the parochial boundaries of natic race, ethnicity, and religion as set by tradition, while remaining rooted in something that is nonetheless fundamentally Indian. I focus on three artist from this period, Ravi Varma, Abanindranath Tagore and Amrita Sher-Gil, documenting the vastly different receptions of the public to each of their works and techniques, and exposing the complex network of reasons and emotional attitudes that, in the end, allows for each to be justifiably viewe as a great Indian artist, although the first two do not free themselves from the constraint of using a ʹracializedʹ aesthetic lens.