This book explores conceptions of Indian architecture and how the historical buildings of the subcontinent have been conceived and described. Investigating the design philosophies of architects and styles of analysis by architectural historians, the book explores how systems of design and ideas about aesthetics have governed both the construction of buildings in India and their subsequent interpretation. How did the political directives of the British colonial period shape the manner in which pioneer archaeologists wrote the histories of India's buildings? How might such accounts conflict with indigenous ones, or with historical aesthetics? How might paintings of buildings by British and Indian artists suggest different ways of understanding their subjects? In what ways must we revise our conceptions of space and time to understand the narrative art which adorns India's most ancient monuments? These are among the questions addressed by the contributors to the volume.
This book explores conceptions of Indian architecture and how the historical buildings of the subcontinent have been conceived and described. Investigating the design philosophies of architects and styles of analysis by architectural historians, the book explores how systems of design and ideas about aesthetics have governed both the construction of buildings in India and their subsequent interpretation. How did the political directives of the British colonial period shape the manner in which pioneer archaeologists wrote the histories of India's buildings? How might such accounts conflict with indigenous ones, or with historical aesthetics? How might paintings of buildings by British and Indian artists suggest different ways of understanding their subjects? In what ways must we revise our conceptions of space and time to understand the narrative art which adorns India's most ancient monuments? These are among the questions addressed by the contributors to the volume.
This text explores how systems of design and ideas about aesthetics have governed both the construction of buildings in India and their subsequent interpretation.
The book examines the interactions between Britain and India during the Raj in relation to issues of empire and visual culture. It explores the impact of the Anglo-Indian colonial encounter on the arts and aesthetic traditions of both cultures. Presenting a unique overview that ranges from painting, print-making and photography to architecture, exhibitions and Indian crafts, the book considers the art of urban elites and princely states alongside popular arts. The book highlights the key role of art in forging British colonial ideology. It offers accessible discussions of issues such as Orientalism and (post)colonialism and presents current approaches to questions of British art and empire. It is structured around visual examples which include early nineteenth-century British views of India, Indian negotiations of Western aesthetics represented by Company painting, Kalighat art, and the rise of Indian national art. It covers the display of Indian crafts both in India and at international exhibitions in Britain, as well as the place of India in the British Arts and Crafts movement. The role of the market and items of fashion such as the Kashmir shawl are also discussed, along with the role of photography in representing the colony and questions around national and imperial architecture. The book is aimed at students but will also be relevant to members of the general public with an interest in questions of art, visual culture and empire in relation to Britain and British India.
To commemorate the centenary of artist Sukumar Bose (1912–1986), this book attempts to take an incisive look at the artist, his works and the context of his art production in South and Southeast Asia. Bose’s art varied from the traditional to the decorative and ornamental, with a hint of the Oriental flavour. His work demonstrated traces of the Bengal School styles of Abanindranath Tagore and AR Chugtai. Be it figurative, landscape or abstract, Bose’s art synthesized the decorative elements of Indo-Persian miniatures with Chinese and Japanese techniques. In this context, his vision and passion were inspired by traditional art forms, including Ajanta, Rajput and Mughal miniatures. His incisive observations of life, people and cultures, during colonial and postcolonial India and his later sojourn into Southeast Asia, emerge as both a contested yet seamless narrative of history and hope in his art. This book is the first of its kind to document and give a critical overview of Sukumar Bose.
In our age of globalization and multiculturalism, it has never been more important to understand and appreciate all cultures across the world. The four volumes take a step forward in this endeavour by presenting concise information on those regions least well-known to students across Europe: the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The volumes convey what daily life is like for people in these selected regions. Entries will aid readers in understanding the importance of cultural sociology, to appreciate the effects of cultural forces around the world, and to learn the history of countries and cultures within these important regions. Key Features -Topics are explored within historical context, in three broad historical periods: prehistory to 1250, 1250 to 1920 and 1920 to the present. -One volume each is devoted to the regions of the Middle East and Africa and then one volume to East and Southeast Asia and a final volume to West, Central and South Asia. The volumes include extensive use of photographs and maps to explain cultural and geographic content. -Each volume has its own volume editor with expertise in that particular region. Key Themes Arts, Culture and Science People, Society and Dynasties Religion and Law Family and Daily Life Conflicts and Wars Politics and Government Health and Education Economy, Trade and Industry National Geography and History.
Art history as it is largely practiced in Asia as well as in the West is a western invention. In India, works of art-sculptures, monuments, paintings-were first viewed under colonial rule as archaeological antiquities, later as architectural relics, and by the mid-20th century as works of art within an elaborate art-historical classification. Tied to these views were narratives in which the works figured, respectively, as sources from which to recover India's history, markers of a lost, antique civilization, and symbols of a nation's unique aesthetic, reflecting the progression from colonialism to nationalism. The nationalist canon continues to dominate the image of Indian art in India and abroad, and yet its uncritical acceptance of the discipline's western orthodoxies remains unquestioned, the original motives and means of creation unexplored. The book examines the role of art and art history from both an insider and outsider point of view, always revealing how the demands of nationalism have shaped the concept and meaning of art in India. The author shows how western custodianship of Indian "antiquities" structured a historical interpretation of art; how indigenous Bengali scholarship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries attempted to bring Indian art into the nationalist sphere; how the importance of art as a representation of national culture crystallized in the period after Independence; and how cultural and religious clashes in modern India have resulted in conflicting "histories" and interpretations of Indian art. In particular, the author uses the depiction of Hindu goddesses to elicit conflicting scenarios of condemnation and celebration, both of which have at their core the threat and lure of the female form, which has been constructed and narrativized in art history. Monuments, Objects, Histories is a critical survey of the practices of archaeology, art history, and museums in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India. The essays gathered here look at the processes of the production of lost pasts in modern India: pasts that come to be imagined around a growing corpus of monuments, archaeological relics, and art objects. They map the scholarly and institutional authority that emerged around such structures and artifacts, making of them not only the chosen objects of art and archaeology but also the prime signifiers of the nation's civilization and antiquity. The close imbrication of the "colonial" and the "national" in the making of India's archaeological and art historical pasts and their combined legacy for the postcolonial present form one of the key themes of the book. Monuments, Objects, Histories offers both an insider's and an outsider's perspective on the growth of these scholarly fields and their institutional apparatus, analyzing the ways they have constituted and recast their objects of study. The book moves from a period that saw the consolidation of western expertise and custodianship of India's "antiquities," to the projection over the twentieth century of varying regional, nativist, and national claims around the country's architectural and artistic inheritance, into a current period that has pitched these objects and fields within a highly contentious politics of nationhood. Monuments, Objects, Histories traces the framing of an official national canon of Indian art through these different periods, showing how the workings of disciplines and institutions have been tied to the pervasive authority of the nation. At the same time, it addresses the radical reconfiguration in recent times of the meaning and scope of the "national," leading to the kinds of exclusions and chauvinisms that lie at the root of the current endangerment of these disciplines and the monuments and art objects they encompass.
The role of the visual arts in the assertion of European colonial power has been the subject of much recent investigation and redefinition. This book takes as a ground for discussion the representation of Indian scenery and architecture by British artists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It includes the work of a diversity of
The eighteenth century was a time of profound upheaval when economic and political control of southern India passed from native kings to the East India Company. Hand-in-hand with the resultant conflicts and skirmishes, a process of cultural sharing was gaining ground which went on to manifest itself in the form of a flourishing imperial cultural in the nineteenth century.
This study questions current views that Muslims represented a secure point of reference for the British understanding of colonial Indian society. Through revisionary readings of a wide range of texts, it re-examines the basis of the British misperception of Muslim 'conspiracy' during the 'Mutiny'. Arguing that this belief stemmed from conflicts inherent to the secular ideology of the colonial state, it shows how in the ensuing years it produced representations ridden with paradox and requiring a form of descriptive segregation.
