Jangarh Singh Shyam: A Conjuror's Archive

•This volume offers an analysis of the work of the Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam


•The author breaks down the too-simple narratives of 'tribal' and 'contemporary' and how they apply to this folk artist


Before any sound critical framework could be evolved around the phenomenal artist Jangarh Singh Shyam as the originator of an extraordinary individualistic idiom of painting, ruthless market forces regrettably came to dominate his art and Jangarh himself became their first casualty. While trying to finish a large commission at a museum in Japan under adverse circumstances, Jangarh committed suicide in 2001. He was 40.


A whole range of conditions, events and mediations associated with Jangarh's life and his art practice has since remained underexplored. This book is a first attempt to construct an equitable account of the formation of his prodigious artistic body of work that founded his legacy and grew into a movement. As a prime critical analysis of Jangarh Singh Shyam's oeuvre, this book also serves as a model framework for the study of a contemporary individual folk and tribal artist.


The book probes the efficacy of extra-cultural interventions into an individual artist's operative and relatively well-grounded indigenous cultural tradition, and asks how the latter interacts with the new, while intentionally reinventing itself.


This volume is published in association with the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore.