Geeta Kapur's Polemical Categories of Tradition and Contemporaneity in Third World Art

In this 2011 essay from Afterall's Exhibition Histories series, Geeta Kapur examines how 'tradition' and 'contemporaneity' function as polemical categories within Third World cultural practice, particularly in India. She argues that these terms are not essential categories but pragmatic features of nation-building, invented by cultural vanguards during decolonization. Kapur traces the invention of Indian tradition through figures like A.K. Coomaraswamy, who established a canonical aesthetic, and Rabindranath Tagore, who offered a romantic, dismantling approach. She contrasts aristocratic and bourgeois lineages, citing artists such as Ravi Varma, Amrita Sher-Gil, and the Progressives (F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza). Kapur critiques the imposition of Western modernism and the linear model of progress, advocating for a 'tradition-in-use' that resists both capitalist commodification and postmodern laissez-faire. She emphasizes the role of the Third World intelligentsia in bringing existential urgency to contemporaneity, while warning against diaspora privilege and First World appropriation. The essay was originally presented at the third Bienal de La Habana and reprinted in The Third Text Reader (2002).