The Act of Drawing as Cultural Translation: Modern Depictions of an Ajanta’s Dancer

This paper analyzes the reception of the Ajanta paintings in Kolkata and Dresden around 1910 by means of the concept of cultural translation following Dipesh Chakrabary’s formulation in Provincializing Europe (2000). This concept serves as an analytical tool for investigation of transcultural intera...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Izquierdo de la Viña, Sol
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/407318
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/407318
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Cultural translation
Transculturalism
Drawing
Ajanta
Entangled modernisms
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Bengal School of Painting
Contemporary art
Descripción
Sumario:This paper analyzes the reception of the Ajanta paintings in Kolkata and Dresden around 1910 by means of the concept of cultural translation following Dipesh Chakrabary’s formulation in Provincializing Europe (2000). This concept serves as an analytical tool for investigation of transcultural interactions that needs to be concretized and proofed in localizable processes. Therefore, the act of drawing is regarded as a cultural translation process through which the artists re-imagined motifs from Ajanta within their own personal and different historical contexts. This analysis of modern versions of a dancer from Ajanta avoids text-related categories such as a binary conception of original and copy, as well as an universalizing and Eurocentric vision of modernism. Instead, the concept of cultural translation sheds light on a transmedial, translocal and chained process of transcription and re-codification of images in relation to the artistic local contexts, which were inserted in the global circulation determined by the power dynamics of colonialism.