Aesthetic of Ephemeral Public “Art”: Book discussion: Tapati Guha-Thakurta, In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata (Delhi: Primus Books, 2015)

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

This roundtable focuses on Tapati Guha-Thakurta’s recent monograph In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata, which is innovative both in its archive and its methodology. It focuses on the annual worships (puja) of goddess Durga in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) as they acquired what she calls an “artistic profile” in the first decade of the twenty first century. Guha-Thakurta analyzes the goddess-centric mass art installations – “art Pujas” – from a “non-religious” perspective by mapping the sociology of artistic production, rather than studying their religious efficacy. Written at the intersection of Art History, Visual Culture, Urban Studies, and Anthropology, this path-breaking monograph raises questions about the fundamental categories of critical analyses including art, craft, artist, artisan, sacred, secular, profane, traditional, modern, and popular art.

Through a decade long intensive and extensive ethnography of Durga Puja festivities, Guha-Thakurta narrates a “micro-history” of art Pujas exclusive to Kolkata. Yet, according to her, the autumnal outburst of street art festival has a wider scope to think about fluidity of disciplinary boundaries of Art History and of Visual Studies. Durga Pujas as a new form of “popular art” in the public sphere allows her to think of an aesthetic that is “art, but not quite” – “art” objects created only to be recycled after the Pujas. This is “an aesthetic that calls for its own criteria of evaluation and terms of analysis,” writes Guha-Thakurta.

The discussants will initiate a critical dialogue from their own areas of research expertise that are essential for understanding art Pujas. Mahadevan will employ the methods of media archaeology to understand the ever-shifting artistic trends that draws on various media. Khullar will discuss the address of the Durga Pujas and their status as public art, highlighting distinctions between elite and popular practice. Zitzewitz will scrutinize the relationship between art and secularism in the modern South Asian public sphere. Roychoudhuri will emphasize the photographic mediation as an essential aspect of the Puja experience in the age of mass publics. The author will respond to the discussants’ comments and questions, while also opening up a wider discussion with the audience.

Area of Study

• South Asia

Session Organizer

• Ranu Roychoudhuri, University of Chicago

Chair

• Ranu Roychoudhuri, University of Chicago

Discussants

• Ranu Roychoudhuri, University of Chicago

• Sudhir Mahadevan, University of Washington

• Karin Zitzewitz, Michigan State University

• Sonal Khullar, University of Washington

• Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences