ABSTRACT
Modernism, as an aesthetic movement, has been a consistently contested subject in art historical discourses, especially with regard to the Asian region. Historically, the writings on the development of modernism have been embedded in the social, cultural, and political contexts of Europe and America. However, recent scholarship has presented the possibility of multiple interpretations of modernism. Further pursuing this awareness of plurality and alterity, this paper utilizes the ideology of universalism, as advocated by Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature (1913), to identify commonalities, including their intersecting paths at Santiniketan, a school founded by Tagore, as well as stylistic kinships, in the artistic oeuvres of four modern Asian artists – Nandalal Bose (India), Rusli (Indonesia), Bagyi Aung Soe (Myanmar), and Fua Haribhitak (Thailand). Addressing, in particular, selected artworks by the four artists developed between the 1950s and 1980s, the discussion aims to establish a cross-cultural dialogue that may be used to read Asian modernism as a singular yet limitless entity.
