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Betty Seid’s New Narratives, a beautifully produced, vibrantly-illustrated coffee-table book has — unwittingly, perhaps — answered this question in the affirmative. The result: for everyday art lovers, an attractive and provocative art book with a theme that serves to unify the panache of artists and artworks under the homey rubric of “narrative”, or story-telling. For art critics and theorists, on the other hand, an uncanny feeling, reminiscent of the mixture of awe and discomfort we feel while studying the film work of Leni Riefenstahl. How else should we feel upon reading, in Betty Seid’s introduction, that “all the artists in this exhibition have a narrative agenda”? But we jump ahead — of which ‘exhibition’ does she speak? The book was released in conjunction with an art exhibition held at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2007. The exhibition “New Narratives” is a travelling show moving across the U.S. cities throughout 2008.

Now back to the book itself. While its spine, rather unfairly, lists only the name of Betty Seid, who was also guest curator of the Chicago exhibition, the book actually contains several entries by Mumbai based Dutch art critic, Johan Pijnappel. Having served as consulting curator for the Chicago show, Pijnappel is an authority on Indian video art. His contributions serve to push the book in the avant-garde direction. We discern that very contemporary, not merely modern, art is our concern — indeed 21st century art is the implicit theme of the book. With only three exceptions, the 60 works featured date from 2000 or later. Consequently, the reader wonders why the subtitle “Contemporary Indian Art” was selected over the more accurate tag “21st Century Indian Art”.

The book devotes sections to 16 artists, covered under three main headings: Looking Inward: Narratives of the Self; Looking Outward: Contemporary Observations; and, Looking Backward: Interpreting Texts. The first part features introspective works of artists such as Gulammohammed Sheikh, Arpita Singh, Vivan Sundaram, and Jayashree Chakravarty. The second treats socio-political themes in artists including Subodh Gupta, N.S. Harsha, and Ranbir Kaleka. The video works fall in this part. The final part covers works reflecting/refracting Indian tradition(s), featuring artists Reena Saini Kallat, Sheba Chhachhi, Nalini Malini, Atul Dodiya, and Jitish Kallat.

One immediately observes that the book balances its 21st century leaning by inclusion of senior artists like Gulammohammed Sheikh, Nalini Malini, Arpita Singh, and Vivan Sundaram. Speaking of balance, we can mention that nine of the 16 artists treated in the book are women, indicating their increasing participation in contemporary Indian art. Compare a mental picture of this lot against the historic (nay, nostalgic) black and whites of the Progressive Artists Group… yes, the times certainly are changing. Among noteworthy successes of New Narratives is its achievement in capturing and conveying so much of the dynamic spirit of our rapidly changing times.

Speaking of what gets captured and conveyed brings us back to narrative. Although Seid suggests that “all the works in this exhibition have a story to tell,” one might retort that such a claim reduces the dialectical, dialogical elements of art to the merely didactic (the mode of the artists’ account). It opens the risk that Looking Inwards is nothing but self-indulgence, Looking Outwards mere preachiness or paternalism, and Looking Backwards only pedantry. But are these artworks really self-indulgent, preachy and pedantic? Most are not – indeed, those which are not are those which resist reduction to the strictly narrative.

Of course, to channel the deluge of artistic expression into the canal of narrative is a skill of its own, a talent, and an art. Thus we remain in awe of Riefenstahl. But we must resist the assumption that 21st century Indian art should be characterised by an image of transcendent wizards spinning out tales in total command of their media and messages. Were it so, the book would definitely need renaming: New Narratives: Personal Propagandas from Contemporary India Artists.

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