History of Arts

This article emphasis on comparing Ahalya's episode in the ancient epic Rāmāyaņa written by two authors. The first is from the Balakanda written in Sanskrit by Valmiki which is popular mainly in northern part of India while the second from the Palakantam of Iramavataram popular in southern part written by Kampan in Tamil. The comparison is made on the basis of the beauty of the surrounding, characters, their behaviour and other details depicted in these texts. An emphasis is also made on comparing the particular episode line by line in order to understand different dimensions plotted by two different authors depending on situation, place and society from where these authors belonged.

Revolt of 1857 was a rebellion in India which ran from May 1857 to July
1859 against the rule of East India Company. The revolt is still known by
different names, including Sepoy Mutiny, the Rebellion of 1857, the
Revolt of 1857, Great Rebellion, Indian Insurrection etc. There are many
books written on British authority in India and one such book is “Delhi
between two empires 1803-1931: Society, Government and Urban
Growth” by Narayani Gupta. The main objective of this paper is to
review “Delhi between two empires 1803-1931” by Narayani Gupta.
However this paper will be reviewing only the first-three chapters of this
book since my special interest lies in 1857. An effort has been made to
plot unbiased as well as chapter-wise information about what Gupta is
focusing throughout these chapters. Nevertheless, an attempt has also
been made on understanding and conceptualizing ideas that has been put forth by Gupta. By the end of this essay I’m able to endeavor explicit
conclusion including my own personally opinion concerning what author
has consolidated within these chapters.

This article emphasis on evaluating the idea of Emperor Aśoka especially from Pillar Edict Seven. The comparison is made on the basis of the context, ideas and emotions that are depicted on the pillar. An emphasis is also made on comparing the edict line by line in order to understand different dimensions plotted by the Emperor depending on situation, place and society. It is very clear that inscriptions of Aśoka play a vital role in illuminating ancient history. This paper is primary aimed to provide a concise but comprehensive manner of understanding about the ideas of Emperor Aśoka in erecting pillar edict seven. Nevertheless, this paper is supposed to be a descriptive analysis and also my own understanding of pillar edict seven.

Jotirao Phule born in 1827 into a family of gardener (mali) caste in Maharashtra. A caste which eventually had a very distinct position in the Maharashtrian society that particularly in that point of time because of the fact that these members lived closely by cultivation and selling fruits and flowers and thus, was largely concerned with rural cultivation and also with a large market in the urban. Jotirao Phule's selected writings tends to be very useful in understanding the cultural and social milieu of 19th century. The caste system continued to be a belief that human beings are organized in a hierarchy ordained by divine indulgence which is one of the more abandoned and challenging areas of India social history. Phule seems to endure as one of the few prevailing and significant voice that particularly transformed the history of Dalit discourses in India. Jotirao Phule's writing precisely in Ghulamgiri (Slavery), Shetkaryacha Asud (Cultivator's Whipcord), Jati (Caste) and Dharma (Religion) played a vital role in terms of intellectual and academic output that worked as a voice of marginalized people in the society during the 19th century. Phule's writing is very much restricted to a kind of anti-Brahmanical in nature. His understanding of the social structure during the 19th century was a sort of anti-Brahmanical in nature and further suggesting how influential were Brahmans during that particular retro. This paper will precisely focus on looking into the social implications and the extrapolations focused by the Phule over the underprivileged sections and his replication on the problems of caste. At the same time also focuses on understanding how Phule treated class-based discernment and how education as suggested by Phule a key factor in permitting class-based discrimination during the 19th century.

This chapter will focus in giving a structural and descriptive analysis on the idea of sketching out some of the important aspects of the Bipin Chandra Pal which others have not touched so far. Despite the availability of numerous literary sources about Bipin Chandra Pal, but the requirement has been long felt for expressing a brief and precise understanding about Pal’s personal life, his explicit ideology about nationalism and swaraj and an improved depiction on his idea of passive resistance. This chapter aims to provide a better understanding of Pal’s sociological and philosophical ideas which were connected throughout the India’s struggle for independence. It is a point of great satisfaction that this chapter contains several primary archival speeches and documents that serves as an adjunct that supplement to this topic. A reader can expect a cluster of information ranging from personal life of Bipin Chandra Pal, about his idea and behaviour towards British government, his very first notion of nationalism and swaraj, his concept of passive resistance, his socio-philosophical idea on the Empire and his indispensable role in swadeshi movement. Last but not the least; it also includes several other interesting information which will to a larger extend appeal to the common readers as well.

How have folk art practices and contemporary art articulated the notion of design vis-à-vis craft  in the public spaces of Bihar and how state machinery devices to strengthen the notion of Bihar's Pride(Bihari Asmita), while linking such emergence with regional renaissance.

Thus, this paper explores the emergence of two distinct art collectives from Santiniketan, Bengal and Kerala—The Realists (1985-2000) and The Radical Painters and Sculptors Association (1985-1989)—that almost ran parallel to each other during the period of 1980s, and both were influenced by Expressionism in their art practice.

Further, it investigates how these two art collectives saw a convergence, at first, in their understanding of society through Marxist perspectives (the idea of proletariat was critical) and secondly, in terms of their choice of representing the life world of everyday more specifically peasant, worker, common man, etc.

Inherent in their art practice was a vigorous critique of mainstream art practices which they marked out as conception of the elite nearly for the purposes of consumption. The emergence of these two collectives is from the point of view of their harnessing of expressionist idioms to convey their critique, and register protest through their art. Also rendering of expressionist vocabulary would deal with the conscious conveying of emotions explored by the artists who draw upon expressionist impulses and reconfigure as ‘Expressivity’ (also called ‘Expressionist staging’).

Dealing with the contemporary question of identity politics in India based on caste, the essay engages with the affective realm that determines the postulation of visual practices of Dalits in "public/popular art", which has been neglected. On one hand, 'Dalit visual culture' has been overlooked (perhaps due to artistic or cultural parameters of purity and pollution) by upper-caste elites from established categories of highbrow cultural production in India. But, on the other hand, the idea of 'culture' has been played out vigorously as an essential marker which at least symbolically enables Dalits to proclaim their pedagogical wealth in artifact, history and politics within an extremely hierarchized and caste-ridden society. Implicitly, this paper therefore explores how an expanded economy of affect has provided meaning to the Dalit world to expound a cultural significance and articulations through the images that embody their social stigma, misery, humiliation, etc., as well as values inherent in their mission and protest. There's nothing wrong in being grateful to great men…but there are limits to grate-fulness…in politics, bhakti, or hero-worship, is a sure road to degradation and eventual dictatorship.

How Savi Sawarkar, a Dalit artist renders a series of drawings and paintings that largely speak of caste oppression, and of a site that constitutes hardship, pain, and infliction on the bodies of marginalized sections including Dalit labourers and destitute.
Sawarkar depicts an unsettling phenomenon of urban life which is constantly kept out from the harmonious gaze of city life. Sawarkar art has been exposing the stigma of routine labour and invariable labourers who come to the city from different parts of rural villages and regions.

Sawarkar belongs to Maharashtra, a state that experienced an asymmetrical process of early urbanization and a rise of Dalit politics. Rampant caste-system does not allow Sawarkar to get rid of his horrific memories of caste oppressions that ingrained in his idiosyncrasy since he was a child. Thus, he uses his aesthetic as a pedagogy which he explicated in his number of exhibitions, one such as ‘Voice as Voiceless’ (2010).

The traumatic images produced by Sawarkar and his undergraduate students echoed a sense of burning themes of our times quite categorically, and they equally perturb the viewers to introspect the atrocities on the downtrodden in a ‘secular-liberal nation’.
Sawarkar's students from the art institutions were taken outside the classrooms, modules and institutional precincts, in which they were rather exposed to the brutal realities of the streets in the peak of city winter. This pedagogic experiment turned out to be a (mis)adventure for them as they started documenting the life worlds of the poor laborers and their families like ethnographers who were dwelling on bare street in meagre
resources such as food, clothing and other facilities.

The pedagogical endeavours of Sawarkar has drawn young students to precisely portray the urban reality beyond the comfort zone that rarely anyone bothers to register in today’s art and media seriously.

The papers explores the visual language of art that Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) rendered in most of his oeuvres to oust the prevailing monotony of „revivalism‟ and „Indianness‟ in early modernism. The language is identified with German Expressionism which he possibly employed to transcend the divides of region, language, culture, and custom.
In so doing, Tagore was longing for a universal appeal in the praxis of art and, thus, his artistic expressions envisioned the universal human values that would imbibe the self-definition of cosmopolitanism.

This interview, conducted as part of a book project on Marx in Malayalam, is strongly contextual. The southern state of Kerala has the distinction of being the site for the rst elected Communist ministry in the world. This was in 1957. The subsequent dismissal of the Communists remains a stain on the otherwise progressive politics of then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Generations of political activists in Kerala have tested the full spectrum of radical politics including elected governments and extreme left-wing positions that call for direct (revolutionary) action. Kerala intellectuals and artists are familiar, if not steeped in Marxist thought; this is also true of Kerala's great peasant leaders and theoretical ideologues that have led the Party over decades. Where do I come in? I have no rst-hand acquaintance with Kerala culture, language or politics. I have a fair familiarity with the artists that have come from there who have emerged into the "national" scene and, to a smaller extent, I have some knowledge of the cinema and theater from Kerala. An avant-garde "contingent" of very young Kerala artists (Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association) emerged in the 1980s and "died" in the same decade with the deeply mourned suicide of their charismatic leader KP Krishnakumar, who was also an extraordinary sculptor. That electric moment and, now, since 2012, an involvement with the Kochi-Muziris Biennale have brought me marginally closer to the peninsular culture of this region. The Malabar Coast skirting

Jyoti is keenly interested in the interface of literature and art. She has presented papers at National as well as International conferences. She is committed to issues of gender and representation in literature, electronic media and visual arts. RAJESH PUNJ is an art critic and correspondent, with an academic background in European and American Art History and curating from Warwick University (UK), and Goldsmiths (UK) respectively, whilst actively aware of the international markets, including India and the Middle East. Committed to a longstanding interest in artist interviews as articles and catalogue essays. AMIT MUKHOPADHYAY is an Editor, Art Historian and Curator based in Kolkata. UMA PRAKASH is an Art Critic and Curator and is the India correspondent for the Hong Kong based magazine, Asian Art News, and World Sculpture News. She has been associated with the visual and performing arts in India and abroad. She has also curated several art exhibitions like Utsav in South Africa which featured combined "Gandhi through my Eyes" by Haku Shah "From Empire to Emporium" from Eicher Gallery New, and a local exhibition called "Gandhi Revisited" by South African artists. The biannual Gurgaon Utsav festival that presents theatre, music and dance has been co-founded and nurtured by her. RAHUL DEV is a Goethe Institute Research Fellow, documenta archiv, Kassel. GAURAV KUMAR is a professionally trained Commercial artist, Art Historian, Art writer, and Curator. He has worked as a Researcher at the National Museum Institute and has done several programs like the Village outreach program. He is also involved in several projects related to curation, art writing, and social media. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in History of Art covering Indian Modern Art. Besides this he's managing the Art & Deal magazine as a Deputy Editor and Curator at Art Konsult. His interests include art and aesthetics, which frequently converge with the worlds of cinema and society. MANASHRI PAI DUKLE is an Artist, Art Historian and an educator based in Goa. Her writings often revolve around the idea of rephrasing and structuring the lost history especially crossing the space in between philosophy and art. She also runs the Art DocuMentor project that aims to generate a dialogue around experimental and divergent art. SARASWATHY K BHATTATHIRI is an art historian, art writer, dancer, and pedagogue of visual art from Bangalore. She has been working as an assistant professor in the Department of Art History, College of Fine Arts, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, from a span of five years. Her body of work covers articles, essays, presentations, reviews, curatorial, and catalogue writings. SOMEDUTTA MALLIK is a curator and researcher currently pursuing a PhD programme at IIT Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. She received her post-graduation degree in Art History and Visual Studies from Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad, in 2017. Her present research interest lies in the handloom weaving traditions of India, craft history and embodied practices, the transmission of craft knowledge, and the blurred intersection of 'art' and 'craft'. She designed and curated several exhibitions as the curator of Dhi Artspace Gallery, Hyderabad. The 7th edition of the IPEP India portfolio, titled A Voice to a Voice (2019) was curated by her.