Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

cross-legged on European chairs, and their demonstrative display of all that needed to be 'recorded', i.e. the pleats of their dhotis, their expensive shawls, buckled shoes, hookahs, or their love for sitar (often having f-holes) as depicted in these pictures, bespeak an idiom and imagery informed of photography. The bazaars of India are busy producing images for textbooks , trucks, calendars and cinema billboards, casting in plaster and plastic pol iticians, filmstars and deities with a sense of ease and humour, and without carrying the burden of trad ition-modernity d iscourse on their shoulders. Perhaps to the d istress of many classicists, these images command the same reverence as d id once upon a time the celebrated Chola bronzes or Sarnath Buddhas, and in many ways come closer to what the classical arts would have looked like when first created . The bazaar artists may not be a part of the art establ ishment comprising museums, galleries, . academies, agents and art reviewing press, but their concern for ind ividuality, innovation, their religious and political convictions, their openness to new materials and techniques, and above all, their interest in reflecting the contemporary social environment in their work is no less than that of their art-establ ishment colleagues. Imaginary boundaries between the sites of art in India today need to be renegotiated , and therefore also the notion of tradition. Note: For detailed analysis of the idea, see: Judith Mara Gutman, Through Indian Eyes: 19th and Early 20th Century Photography from India (New York, 1 982); Christopher Pinney, Camera lndica: The Social Life of Indian Photography (Chicago, 1 997); John Bowles, 'Born on the Streets', in: Outlook (New Delh i), August 30, 1 999, pp. 68-70; Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta, (Calcutta, 1 989), p. 1 95. Ibid . , 1 94; Gutman, op. cit. , p. 99. Ibid . , p. 35; Raymond Foy, Madras, in : Francesco Clemente: Three Worlds (Philadelphia, 1 990), p. 54. ---