A commitment to modernity is the underlying theme of this volume. Through essays that are interpretive and theoretical, the author seeks to situate the modern in contemporary cultural practice. She sets up an ideological vantage point to view modernism along its multiple tracks in India and the third world.The essays divide into three sections. The first two sections, Artists and ArtWork and Film/Narratives, raise questions of authorship, genre, and contemporary features of national culture that materialize into an aesthetic in the Indian context. The last section, Frames of Reference, formalizes the polemical options developed across the book. The essays here propose resistance to the depoliticization of narratives, and affirm an open-ended engagement with the avant-garde. They explore the possibility of art practice finding its own signifying space that is still a space for radical transformation.Geeta Kapur is an independent art critic and curator living in New Delhi. Her extensive publications on modern Indian art include the book Contemporary Indian Artists (Delhi, 1978), exhibition catalogues and monographs on artists. She is currently writing a monograph on Tyeb Mehta. Her essays on cultural criticism have been widely presented in forums of art history and cultural studies. Her curatorial work includes the show Bombay/Mumbai 1992 2001 in the multi-part exhibition titled Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis , at Tate Modern, London, in 2001. Geeta Kapur is a founder-editor of the Journal of Arts & Ideas and advisory editor to Third Text. She has held research fellowships at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and Clare Hall, Cambridge University. For the past three decades, [Geeta Kapur s] has been the singular dominant presence in the field to a point that her writings alone seem to have constituted the whole field of modern Indian art theory and criticism. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Biblio (Delhi), May June 2001. Geeta Kapur is a magisterial presence in the sphere of modern Indian art. [The] insistence on the primacy of bearing witness to creative practice has been the leitmotif of Kapur s work. . . . Kapur s contribution . . . is best understood by reflection on the radical change that her activity has brought about in Indian art criticism. Ranjit Hoskote, Art India (Mumbai), Vol. VI, 1, 2001. When Was Modernism is a book of essays: imaginative, interpretive, argumentative, polemical, political and, in the combined sense of all these, historical. . . . [It] provides an instance of passionate engagement that, at its best moments, verges on the poetic. Chaitanya Sambrani, ART AsiaPacific (Australia), Issue 30, 2001.

Ethnographic study of cultural politics in the contemporary Egyptian art world, examining how art-making is a crucial aspect of the transformation from socialism to neoliberalism in postcolonial countries.

Gounod was the leading opera composer in France in the mid-nineteenth century, and his best-known operas, including Faust and Romeo and Juliette, date from that time. Despite the overwhelming success of Faust and Gounod's immense influence on all French composers of the later nineteenth century, he has been virtually ignored by scholars until now. Huebner here charts the composer's career and deals with each of the major operas, discussing not only the music but also the critical reception and source material. He considers aspects of the composer's musical style and outlines his influence on subsequent generations of composers.

"This handsome publication, which accompanies a major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a lively and engaging account of the artistic scene in Paris in the 1860s, the years that witnessed the beginnings of Impressionism. For the first time the interactions and relationships among the group of painters who became known as the Impressionists are examined without the overworn art historical polarities commonly evoked: academic versus avant-garde, classicist versus romantic, realist versus impressionist. A host of strong personalities contributed to this history, and their style evolved into a new way of looking at the world. These artists wanted above all to give an impression of truth and to have an impact on or even to shock the public. And they wanted to measure up to or surpass their elders. This complex and rich environment is presented here - the grand old men and the young turks encounter each other, the Salon pontificates, and the new generation moves fitfully ahead, benignly but always with determination." "Origins of Impressionism gives a day-by-day, year-by-year study of the genesis of an epoch-making style." "Bibliographies and provenances are provided for each of the almost two hundred works in the exhibition, and there is an illustrated chronology. With more than two hundred superb colorplates, this informative survey is an essential work for both the general reader and the scholar."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved