R. Siva Kumar

Raman Siva Kumar (born 3 December 1956), known as R. Siva Kumar, is an Indian contemporary art historian, art critic, and curator.

His major research has been in the area of early Indian modernism with special focus on the Santiniketan School.

He has written several important books, lectured widely on modern Indian art and contributed articles to prestigious international projects such as the Art Journal, Grove Art Online or The Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press.

Since 1981, Professor Siva Kumar, who is often considered to be "the most erudite and self-effacing art historian" of his time, has been teaching art history at Kala Bhavana, where he has held several offices, including that of the Principal.

His writings on Abanindranath Tagore and the Santiniketan artists have contributed a new perspective on them by shifting the critical focus from nationalist revivalism to a context sensitive modernism.

He was awarded the Kesari puraskaram for art writing by the Lalit Kala Akademi, Kerala in 2010.

He has also curated major exhibitions like Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism, and The Last Harvest : Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore and retrospectives of important Indian artists, such as Rabindranath Tagore, Benode Behari Mukherjee(co-curated with Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh), K. G. Subramanyan.

He also has co-curated an exhibition titled "Tryst with Destiny" for the Singapore Art Museum to mark the 50 years of Indian Independence and served as a curatorial adviser for Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose curated by Sonia Rhie Quintanilla for the San Diego Museum of Art.

R. Siva Kumar was born in Kerala.

After completing his early education in Pune and Kerala he moved to Santiniketan, where he joined Kala Bhavan and completed his MFA in history of art.

In 2011 the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata, under principal Dipali Bhattacharya, had organised an exhibition of 23 Tagore paintings.

And later 20 were found to be fake.

Siva Kumar, who had already seen digital images of the paintings and, convinced that they were all fakes, had warned the college principal, Dipali Bhattacharya, against holding the exhibition.

But Bhattacharya went ahead with the claim that the paintings were "genuine".

“There’s a great market for Tagore's paintings and his works are of a rare kind.

I had seen the reproductions and I knew they were fake.

It's unfortunate because it completely destroys the oeuvre of the artist.

But the problem of fakes is larger than what is made out of it." R. Siva Kumar had revealed to the Indian Express. According to Siva Kumar the fakes were "by an academically trained artist — not old Santiniketan.

Elements have been taken from different prints and then collaged together...This (Tagore-faking) needs to be nipped in the bud.

The other day, I came upon a notice about an exhibition of Nandalal (Bose) and Abanindranath (Tagore), the medium being acrylic and canvas.

Acrylic paints were not invented then.

They are totally uninformed.

The art world should wake up if it wants credibility.

Institutions should be more careful.

In 2013 he was awarded by the Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi for his book Ram Kinkar Baij – A Retrospective.

R. Siva Kumar also received a special award from the University of Dhaka for his contribution to the Indian art scene.

In Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism Siva Kumar introduced the term Contextual Modernism which later emerged as a postcolonial critical tool in the understanding of Indian art, specifically the works of Nandalal Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Kinker Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee.

Several terms including Paul Gilroy’s counter culture of modernity and Tani Barlow's Colonial modernity have been used to describe the kind of alternative modernity that emerged in non-European contexts.

Professor Gall argues that ‘Contextual Modernism’ is a more suited term because “the colonial in colonial modernity does not accommodate the refusal of many in colonized situations to internalize inferiority.

Santiniketan’s artist teachers’ refusal of subordination incorporated a counter vision of modernity, which sought to correct the racial and cultural essentialism that drove and characterized imperial Western modernity and modernism.

Those European modernities, projected through a triumphant British colonial power, provoked nationalist responses, equally problematic when they incorporated similar essentialisms.”

R. Siva Kumar, being an authority on Tagore's paintings, curator of his largest Exhibition and the author/editor of the most comprehensive reference work on Rabindranath's paintings has played an important role in preventing Tagore-fakes.

Among his curated exhibitions Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism commissioned to mark the fifty years of Indian independence, Benodebehari: A Centenary Retrospective (co-curated with Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh) and The Last Harvest : Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore commissioned to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Tagore are considered landmark exhibitions.

The reputed Indian Magazine, Frontline reported, "The best show was the one (celebrating 50 years of Indian Independence) curated by R. Siva Kumar of Santiniketan, 'The Making of a Contextual Modernism', exhibiting about a hundred works each of Nandalal Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Kinker Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee".

While The Last Harvest : Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore was shown at ten major museums of the world including the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin; Asia Society, New York; National Museum of Korea, Seoul; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Petit Palais, Paris; National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome; National Visual Arts Gallery, Kuala Lumpur; McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ontario; and National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.

In a review of Rabindra Chitravali in The Statesman, German scholar Martin Kämpchen (de) writes, "It collects excellently faithful reproductions of Rabindranath's paintings in large format. The editor, Kala Bhavan's art historian, Prof R . Siva Kumar, has spent his entire working life researching the Bengal School of Art, especially the Santiniketan crop of painters. This is the crowning achievement in this hard-working and self-effacing scholar's career."

For the Royal Asiatic Society, Cambridge Journals, W. Andrew Robinson wrote, "The unparalleled quality of the volumes' reproductions, made from new scans of the original works kept in Santiniketan, in New Delhi and elsewhere, and printed by India's leading art printer, Pragati Offset, based in Hyderabad, is thrillingly good. Rabindra Chitravali: Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore is surely one of the finest art books to have been produced in India.

Closely associated with the critical traditions of the Santiniketan his writings on Abanindranath and the Santiniketan artists have been recognised as making an important contribution to the reassessment and critical reception of these artists.

Reviewing his book Paintings of Abanindranath Tagore Tapati Guha Takurta wrote: ‘With this magnum opus on Abanindranath Tagore, Siva Kumar can be seen to have traversed full circle within this particular lineage of art practice and art writing in Bengal.

An art historical journey that began with and has continuously returned to the work of K. G. Subramanyan, has tracked its course backwards in time to mark out its significant inheritance, not just of the Santiniketan masters (Nandalal Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij), but also in the little-known oeuvre of the later Abanindranath.'