Geeti Sen in his book, Image and Imagination, enters into a discussion about contemporary Indian art. In his research Sen has interviewed and studied five artists of the contemporary era in India. Meera Mukherjee, Jogen Chowdhury, Manjit Bawa, Arpita Singh, and Ganesh Pyne are identified as Indian artists without a particular school or movement, “guided by their own precepts, powers of association and formal training” (Sen 11). The author focuses on these individual artists as he pulls from their images and imaginations the essence of contemporary painting in India. The book is a collage of art, interview, research, critique and analysis.

The five artists used in the author’s exploration are all very different. Meera Mukherjee is a female sculptor, using Bengal folk art techniques to make her bronzes. She takes the religious sculpture of the folk artists and transforms their iconographic imagery into her contemporary sculpture about contemporary issues. Mukherjee lives an austere existence, devoted to the creation of her art through time consuming and painstaking traditional methods.

Jogen Chowdhury draws and paints his dreams with symbols from the Indian tradition, archetypal images that have been reused and redefined by him as a personal language in his work. This hybrid symbolism makes Chowdhury able to bring new meanings into the world through old vehicles of knowledge.  Access to his world is through the traditional Indian world of gods, goddesses, animals, plants, and artistic technique.

These two artists and the other three (Manjit Bawa, Arpita Singh, and Ganesh Pyne) each have a particular way in which Indian tradition has given rise to and merged with the contemporary existence to produce their new breed of art. Sen’s thesis about these artists and contemporary art in India is thus made apparent,

“It is the coming together of the known and unknown, the familiar and the forbidden--that dynamic spark, that moment of encounter, which engenders creation” (Sen 156).

The author’s past interests in Indian art, traditional and contemporary, as well as his cross disciplinary research, could only have helped lead him to see the conclusions made.

As before mentioned, the book’s content is a montage of art, interview research, critique, and analysis. The photographs taken of the various artists’ works are black and white and color. In the critique of some of the paintings though, the art that is available in black and white photography is inadequate to help the reader understand the points delivered. In particular, Manjit Bawa’s and Arpita Singh’s paintings come across as lifeless corpses drained of color. Indeed, Bawa cannot be understood except for his color choices of background, foreground, and object; and Singh’s paintings become the naive endeavors of a girl without our ability to understand the strength of her color palette. Geeti Sen makes the mistake, in trying to immerse the reader in too many of the five artists’ images, of placing quantity over quality.

In addition, while his research and use of interviews definitely helps to support his thesis, Sen’s language in the artistic critiques of these five artists is overly positive and stereotypical of art interpretation. The grandeur, subtlety, complexity, and simplicity of these artists’ works are not once questioned by the author; in fact everything is Wonderful! While it’s not really expected that the author challenge the works that support his points, the analysis in this book reflects the same type of optimism that exists prior to confrontation and disagreement. Some understanding of possible criticisms to his own ideas or to the legitimacy of the five artists might help place the discussion on firmer ground, in context of other research.

The book is plainly laid out, one artist after the other. His thesis arguments are carried out by each artist with a continuity kept in mind, but with a different point proved in each chapter on each artist. The words of the author do not privilege the highly academic or preach to the masses. There is the opportunity to gather as much information as one can wish, at any level that one may be at, student, teacher, or appreciator.

Conclusions made by the author are in context of contemporary India. With the political history of recent India: religious riots between Hindus and Muslims, armed conflicts between India and former colonized counterparts, assassinations of prime ministers, et al., there is a tendency to view contemporary Indian art as a vehicle completely representative of institutions, revolutions, current affairs, etc. Sen believes that while art is definitely available as an example to these conclusions, there is also art that moves beyond the moment. The five artists in his book are not so lost in the moment of contemporary India to forget the archetypal symbols and the traditional Indian artistic techniques of the past. Folk artist techniques learned by Meera Mukherjee or the flat background colors used by Jogen Chowdhury and Manjit Bawa as in classical miniature painting are some examples of remembrance.

Of course, the title of Sen’s book, Image and Imagination, relates the importance of the individual’s imagination in the production of the image. These five artist have five different imaginations that can only produce five different images. Those images are not only visible artwork, but their hidden philosophies, spirtualities, histories, politics, etc. The author’s concern for the individual’s imagination and image is paramount in the conclusions he makes.