THE ACT OF DRAWING AS CULTURAL TRANSLATION: MODERN DEPICTIONS OF AN AJANTA’S DANCER
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/regac2019.1.08Keywords:
cultural translation, transculturalism, drawing, Ajanta, entangled modernisms, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Bengal School of Painting,Abstract
En este artículo se analiza la recepción de las pinturas de Ajanta en Kolkata y Dresde a en torno a 1910 a través del concepto de traducción cultural, formulado por Dipesh Chakrabary en Provincializing Europe (2000). Este concepto sirve como una herramienta para investigar interacciones transculturales, la cual debe ser probada y concretada en procesos localizables. Así, el acto de dibujar es concebido como un proceso de traducción cultural en el que los artistas re-imaginaron motivos procedentes de Ajanta en sus propios contextos personales e históricos. En el presente análisis de las versiones modernas de una bailarina de las pinturas de Ajanta se subvierten categorías relativas al texto, como la concepción binaria de original y copia, y se evita una visión universalizadora y eurocéntrica de la modernidad artística. En su lugar, el concepto de traducción cultural permite arrojar luz al proceso transmedial, translocal y encadenado de transcripción de imágenes y vincularlo con cada uno de los contextos locales de Kolkata y Dresde, que a su vez se encontraban insertos en las rutas de circulación global condicionadas por las dinámicas del poder colonial.
This paper analyzes the reception of the Ajanta paintings in Kolkata and Dresden around 1910 by means of the concept of cultural translation following Dipesh Chakrabary’s formulation in Provincializing Europe (2000). This concept serves as an analytical tool for investigation of transcultural interactions that needs to be concretized and proofed in localizable processes. Therefore, the act of drawing is regarded as a cultural translation process through which the artists re-imagined motifs from Ajanta within their own personal and different historical contexts. This analysis of modern versions of a dancer from Ajanta avoids text-related categories such as a binary conception of original and copy, as well as an universalizing and Eurocentric vision of modernism. Instead, the concept of cultural translation sheds light on a transmedial, translocal and chained process of transcription and re-codification of images in relation to the artistic local contexts, which were inserted in the global circulation determined by the power dynamics of colonialism.
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