How can we reconfigure our picture of modern art after the postcolonial turn without simply adding regional art histories to the Eurocentric canon? Transmodern examines the global dimension of modern art by tracing the crossroads of different modernisms in Asia, Europe and the Americas. Featuring case studies in Indian modernism, the Harlem Renaissance and post-war abstraction, it demonstrates the significance of transcultural contacts between artists from both sides of the colonial divide. The book argues for the need to study non-western avant-gardes and Black avant-gardes within the west as transmodern counter-currents to mainstream modernism. It situates transcultural art practices from the 1920s to the 1960s within the framework of anti-colonial movements and in relation to contemporary transcultural thinking that challenged colonial concepts of race and culture with notions of syncretism and hybridity.

Reviews

This book makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate on global modernism. Enriched by wide research spanning a wide geographical area, this subtle, scholarly work, well-grounded in deep research, will become an essential textbook at educational institutions as well as provide a benchmark in future discussions on questions of global art.
Partha Mitter

Introduction
1 Toward a postcolonial art history of contact
2 In the shade of tall mango trees: art education and transcultural modernism in the context of the Indian independence movement
3 Transcultural beginnings: decolonisation, transculturalism and the overcoming of race
4 Trees of knowledge: anthropology, art and politics. Melville J. Herskovits and Zora Neale Hurston - Harlem circa 1930
5 The migrant as catalyst: Winold Reiss and the Harlem Renaissance
6 Encounters with masks: counter-primitivisms in Black modernism
7 Purity of art in a transcultural age: modernist art theory and the culture of decolonisation
8 Painting the global history of art: Hale Woodruff's The Art of the Negro
Index