Modernism / Murderism: The Modern Art Debate in Kumar

Publication design for a book that brings together a debate on Modern Art, that took place in the pages of the long-running Gujarati art periodical, Kumar.

Starting with a few disgruntled reader comments on the inexplicability of “the modern style of painting” (Kumar #422 · February 1959), the debate blew up when an article penned by the writer and art critic Pherozeshah Rustomji Mehta was published four months later, provoking the young modern artist Jyoti Bhatt to submit his own article in response. A counter-response from Mehta, three articles by Bhatt on the topic of ‘Distortion in Art’, scores of readers’ mail, and many editors’ interjections ensue, spanning twenty-one issues between 1959 and 1964.

Translated fom Gujarati by Vasvi Oza; with lucid, blunt, and often hilarious writing from the original authors that still speaks to today; and book-ended with a postscript by Reliable Copy on Kumar itself; the book provides a direct view into the introduction and interrogation of the Modernist aesthetic in India.