Reimagining Tradition in Indian Art:The Intersection of Cultural Heritage  and Modern Trends

• Divishtha Rathore

  Author

Indian consist a cultural heritage in art which dates back to thousands of years. It stands at a crucial crossroad where tradition meets modernity and they both have actively grown together. This paper investigates on how tradition in Indian art functions not as an unchanged fragment of the past, but as a living and adaptive process which interprets and responds to shifting social realities. Artists think over inherited values and aesthetic modes even if they have to negotiate with the rapidly changing time which includes India’s cultural, political, and technological landscapes. Rather than just existing as a stagnant framework, tradition in Indian art encompasses an everlasting and ever adaptive framework of cultural beliefs, values and various practices which are handed down across generations.

The development of Indian art is not an easy transition from tradition to modernity, but it has gone through a complex change where old traditions are debated upon, questioned, judged and finally reinterpreted under the ever changing social, political and aesthetic demands of the time. Paintings made on historical episodes, artworks made under the colonial rule and the lifelong artistic journeys of eminent artists such as Raja Ravi Varma and Abnindranath Tagore, this research paper focuses on how Indian artists have paved a path between continuous cultural changes and the creative innovations made by these great personalities.

The post independence art of India display the cultural heritage, colonial influence, involvement of crafts in art and the struggle for the formation of individual identity. All these important elements have played important roles in distinctively shaping the Indian modern art.The present negotiation between tradition and the change demonstrates that the spirit in Indian art is derived not from unmindful preservation, but from tradition’s capacity of self renewal and creative reinterpretation. 

1. Divishtha Rathore

   Research Scholar, Department of Visual Arts, 

• Reimagining Tradition in Indian Art:The Intersection of Cultural Heritage and Modern Trends