South Asian Art

This is a slightly revised version of my doctoral thesis, in which I have attempted to assemble all the available evidence on the genesis and early development of the directional guardians in Indian culture (mainly Brahmanical / Hindu). The term "Ancient India" should not hide the fact that this group of minor deities continues to occupy an important place in Indic religious practices.

Das Thema dieser Sektion »Verformen, Umformen und Übermalen« spielt oft im Kontakt zwischen verschiedenen religiösen Traditionen eine Rolle, beispielsweise, wenn Heiligtümer einer bestehenden Religion umgebaut werden zu Sakralräumen eines neuen Glaubens. Aber auch im Kleinen -und manchmal aus ganz pragmatischen Gründen -findet eine Umformung von Artefakten der einen Religion zu Artefakten der anderen Religion statt. In der Ausstellung ist beispielsweise ein Kreuz zu sehen, das aus einem jüdischen Grabstein gearbeitet wurde (siehe Abb. S. 167). In diesem vertiefenden Beitrag wird jedoch ein Beispiel aus einer anderen Kontaktsituation erörtert: Jener zwischen buddhistischen und brahmanischen (einer hinduistischen) Traditionen. Im Hinduismus, genauer gesagt in der hinduistischen Richtung des Sivaismus, spielt die Verehrung des Siva Linga, eines symbolhaften Phallus, in dem sich der hinduistische Gott Siva verkörpert, eine wichtige Rolle. Die Ausstellung zeigt neben einem historischen Linga siehe Abb. S. 213) auch eine zeitgenössische Adaption dieses Motivs mit der Arbeit von Berlinde de Bruyckere (siehe Abb. S. 211). Die Veränderung oder Umarbeitung religiöser Objekte steht meist in Verbindung mit einem Wandel von Ritualen oder Glaubensvorstellungen. Dabei wird eine Weiterverwendung von solchen Objekten ermöglicht, die über einen langen Zeitraum in Benutzung waren und für die Gläubigen daher möglicherweise von großem Wert sind. Seltener geht mit der Umformung religiöser Bildwerke auch eine Umwidmung des religiösen Kontextes oder ein Religionswechsel einher. Ein solches Objekt aus dem indischen Altertum, das ursprünglich wohl in buddhistischem Kontext hergestellt wurde und zu einem unbekannten Zeitpunkt in ein brahmanisches (also im weiteren Sinne hinduistisches) Motiv umgearbeitet wurde, soll hier exemplarisch vorgestellt werden. Das Berliner Museum für Indische Kunst zeigte von Herbst 2003 bis Frühjahr 2004 eine Sonderausstellung mit dem Titel Anmut und Askese. Frühe Skulpturen aus Indien. Unter den Exponaten befand sich ein Relieffragment aus dem Government Museum in Mathura, das als »Verehrung des Sivalinga durch Skythen« angesprochen wird. 1 Eine intensive Betrachtung des Exponats führte damals jedoch zu der Erkenntnis, das Relief hinsichtlich seines religiösen Kontextes neu beurteilt werden muss. 2

In the framework of religious phenomena, proselytism could be considered as the core element of all religions apart from cultural environment or political authority. In a few words, we can say that religion is bound for spreading true knowledge (teaching or doctrine), conveying moral and ethical values to the communities accordingly with the teachings (precept), and, by these means, guarantee eternal salvation to true believers (redemption). Therefore, images have always had an instrumental role in the transmission of religious knowledge, either in the context of spiritual edification of priests, monks, brahmans, mullahs, and daoshi, either in the framework of spiritual education of devotees. As such, in its wider sense, religious art integrates multiple layers on meaning or a conflation of meanings, and different modes of visual narrative as well. Although religious art in the context of cultural exchange between Asia and the West or within different regions and Asian cultures have been target of substantial studies discussing the flow of beliefs, material culture and artistic, only a handful of these studies have presented a structural analysis toward the natural, conventional or intrinsic meaning of religious art across Asia, the different modes of visual narrative evolving the conflation of spiritual meanings mirrored in different beliefs, demonstrating the balance between the structure (nature) of religion and the agency of religious groups or individual proselytizers in the shaping of a collective and universal visual culture. The novelty of this workshop addresses the processes of conflation of meaning and artistic alterity through the representation of sacred narratives in Asia using as the key element the perception of the one to the (visual) culture of the other, when confronted with something apparently unknown but simultaneously recognizable. The workshop is focused in the perspective toward the structural analysis of a set of universal laws that represent the cross-cultural nature of the patterns of religious behavior (archetypes) and how different cultures present different visual renderings of these "pure

Traditional Arts of South Asia: Continuity in Contemporary Practice & Patronage. ISBN 9781872843322, London: Saffron Books, 2015. AUTHOR/EDITOR: Crispin Branfoot. OTHER CONTRIBUTORS:  Anna Dallapiccola;  Eiluned Edwards; Adam Hardy; Robin D Jones; Jyotindra Jain; Ismail Mohammad Khatri; Abigail McGowan; Kamil Khan Mumtaz; Samuel K  Parker; Sharada Srinivasan. SERIES EDITOR: Sajid Rizvi. WEBLINK: http://saffronbooks.com/shop/traditional-arts-of-south-asia-continuity-in-contemporary-practice-patronage/ | SUMMARY: This book examines the challenges of modernity to the development, understanding and practice of the traditional architecture, sculpture, textiles and paintings of South Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. LONG DESCRIPTION: South Asia is well known for its vibrant visual culture, with a rich artistic tradition that stretches back over two millennia. Traditional Arts of South Asia: Past Practice, Living Traditions examines the challenges of modernity to the development, understanding and practice of the traditional architecture, sculpture, textiles and paintings of South Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Included are studies of nineteenth century traditional arts in India and Sri Lanka in the context of the British Arts & Crafts Movement; the production and consumption of block-printed cloth and other textiles in western India; the impact of modern technology on the mass reproduction of Hindu imagery; tradition and innovation in the practice of bronze-casting and temple painting in south India; and the patronage and design of religious architecture, both Hindu and Islamic, in modern South Asia. The papers included are by a distinguished group of eleven scholars and practitioners of traditional arts from India, Pakistan, Britain and the United States.  ABOUT THE EDITOR: Crispin Branfoot is Senior Lecturer in South Asian art & archaeology at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of Gods on the Move: architecture and ritual in the south Indian temple (2007), co-author with Roger Taylor of the catalogue for an international exhibition Captain Linnaeus Tripe: photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860, and editor with Ruth Barnes of Pilgrimage: The Sacred Journey (2006). Books in preparation include, as editor, Portraiture in South Asia since the Mughals:  Art, History, Representation and with Archana Venkatesan, In Antal’s Garden: Art, Ornament and Devotion in Srivilliputtur.

Short paper abstract This paper explores vernacular uses and responses to photography in India through an analysis of a selection of artefacts produced at Nathdwara for Pushti Marg devotees. These works will challenge established notions of Indian photography which have been shaped by the study of the colonial archive.

In the enchanted world of Braj, the primary pilgrimage center in north India for worshippers of Krishna, each stone, river, and tree is considered sacred. In Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata Ray shows how this place-centered theology emerged in the wake of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), an epoch marked by climatic catastrophes across the globe. Using the frame of geoaesthetics, he compares early modern conceptions of the environment and current assumptions about nature and culture.
A groundbreaking contribution to the emerging field of eco–art history, the book examines architecture, paintings, photography, and prints created in Braj alongside theological treatises and devotional poetry to foreground seepages between the natural ecosystem and cultural production. The paintings of deified rivers, temples that emulate fragrant groves, and talismanic bleeding rocks that Ray discusses will captivate readers interested in environmental humanities and South Asian art history.

'A wonderfully imaginative addition to the growing body of literature on the Little Ice Age. Sugata Ray traces the influence of climatic variations on South Asian art, architecture, and devotional practices with extraordinary interpretive skill.'―Amitav Ghosh, Author, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

'The rocks, rivers, forests, plants, animals, and even the skies of the Mathura-Vrindavan region in north India come alive as historical agents acting alongside humans in Ray's pioneering and imaginative attempt to develop a geoaesthetic approach to the study of Hindu religious art and architecture over a period ranging from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. His impressive ability to connect events in the realm of aesthetics and religious devotion with the climatic impact of the Little Ice Age in South Asia, is bound to influence debates in art history in South Asia and beyond. A brilliant achievement.'―Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

'Sugata Ray's Climate Change and the Art of Devotion draws an unexpected and strikingly original connection between the catastrophic consequences of the Little Ice Age (c. 1550-1850) and the rise of a site-specific theology at the pilgrim centre of Braj in India. This scholarly, elegantly written art historical monograph that skillfully combines archival scholarship with theoretical sophistication, makes a powerful contribution to recent debates on the environmental crisis in the present Anthropocene epoch.'―Partha Mitter, author of The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-Garde – 1922-1947

'Sugata Ray’s important book represents a bold attempt to frame a new ecology of art and to engage with local ways of thinking that have not been previously been incorporated into scholarship. It should gain a wide audience.'—Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Frederick Marquand Professor, Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University

'A bold and ambitious project that takes on a sweeping range of issues across both the humanities and social sciences. Ray brings core Indian material into dialogue with current conversations about the relationship between the human and nonhuman, between materiality and immateriality, and climate change and visual culture. The book serves as a challenge to future scholars to expand the range of their own conversations.'―Tamara Sears, author of Worldly Gurus and Spiritual Kings: Architecture and Asceticism in Medieval India

https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295745374/climate-change-and-the-art-of-devotion/

This report summarizes the challenges and recommendations for Canada's healthcare system in the areas of mental health, sexual health, and chronic disease health for South Asian communities in Toronto, Canada. This report captures the views of multiple stakeholders (community members, healthcare service providers, health researchers etc...), which has been recommended as one of the best ways of conducting research to aid the health policy process (Exworthy, 2008).

We have attempted to provide a voice for South Asian communities in Toronto by writing this report. As was mentioned by our participants, it is important for South Asian communities to be involved in the creation of health policy and the administration of health services in Canada. We are an integral part of the community and we need to provide our input.

We hope this report can be used by policy makers and healthcare service providers to better tailor policy and healthcare services to be inclusive of South Asian communities.

“Cloud Gate” encompasses a space that is both material and spiritual at a level beyond the immediate comprehension of the viewer. Kapoor talks of this experience as being “a direct attribute of the sublime”, a description he made of another massive work, “Marsyas”, which was constructed at the Tate a year earlier. While it is impossible for the viewer to grasp the entirety of “Marsyas”, he experiences the “modern sublime” as a comprehensive whole when he stands in front of “Cloud Gate”. On its surface the viewer sees the reflection of the phallic skyline, the clouds above and himself; as if the sky, earth and the human soul have been conjoined in a transcendent communion. This experience takes place due to the placement of the sculpture in front of the towering buildings that run across Chicago’s skyline. These attributes associated with “Cloud Gate” make it the most profound manifestation of a highly evolved contemporary icon that Kapoor has created by constantly questioning and discovering the symbolism of traditional Shaivaite iconography throughout his career.

[Introductory essay in:] "Sikh Heritage: Ethos and Relics" by Bhayee Sikandar Singh and Roopinder Singh. (New Delhi: Rupa)

    This book's two authors have worked in a unique partnership that transcended their individual accomplishments. Bhayee Sikandar Singh is co-editor of the magazine Nishaan. His position within the cultural life of the Punjab gives him unprecedented access. His upbringing, training and interest give him a unique insight into the subject that he has tackled in this book.
    Roopinder Singh is deputy editor of the 131-year-old daily newspaper, The Tribune, which is the largest circulated English newspaper in North India. A respected editor, scholar, journalist and an accomplished photographer, he is author of many books, including a critically-acclaimed volume on the founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak Dev.
    Together, they worked for five years and combined their different kinds of expertise to write with profound authority and eloquence. As a result of this successful teamwork the general reader--even those readers with little awareness of Sikh traditions-will surely feel the powerful appeal of being led along the very same paths trodden by the founding Gurus of Sikhism.
    The immediacy and presence of history is all around us as we read this book, particularly because history inheres within the Sikh 'relics' or heirloom heritage objects from throughout the Punjab and beyond, in ways that few, if any other, authors could more authentically describe.
    As the authors note, many of the families who own the heirloom artefacts most directly associated with the earliest founders of the Sikh faith have made them available for publication here for the first time, for which historians and the public owe a debt of gratitude to these families, to the authors and to the many others who have helped bring this book to print.

From the very earliest times, a range of stylistic possibilities was open to Indian painters. Divine Visions, Earthly Pleasures highlights many appealing styles and trends found in this rich tradition. The Indian artist constantly plays with various, even conflicting approaches, such as realism and abstraction, often within a single work. Perhaps confusing at first, upon closer inspection this layering of artistic conventions can be subtle and sophisticated. The play of line and color, sometimes strikingly juxtaposed, illustrates a virtuosity not often found in other artistic traditions. The Indian artist uses a variety of conventions to create space, as well, often employing a number of different visual points of view in a single work. The architecture can recede into space in one part of a painting and appear as flat, two-dimensional space in another.

My East is Your West (2015) and After Midnight (2015), two recent exhibitions of modern and contemporary South Asian art in Venice and New York, present an important opportunity to reflect on the changing relationship between museological spaces, curatorial practices, and the production of nationalist historiographies in South Asia. Both exhibitions suggest a shift in alignment away from prevailing national frameworks for collecting and display in South Asia—those prominently canonized by national museums in India and Pakistan—and that historically have inscribed museological spaces in South Asia as an extension of the nation-state and its ideologies. My East is Your West and After Midnight build, more specifically, on a growing body of exhibitions of modern and contemporary South Asian art whose curatorial interventions rely on a new and rigorous engagement with partition history, which has seen the subcontinent violently divided along religious and communal lines multiple times throughout the twentieth century

'architetto Giacomo Mutti , scomparso nel 2013, era un grande appassionato dell'India ed un profondo conoscitore delle sue arti la cui idea di collezionismo era strettamente legata al desiderio di diffondere e trasmettere la millenaria cultura del subcontinente. Negli anni riuscì a raccogliere sapientemente numerosi oggetti di diversa provenienza e manifattura capaci di farci riflettere sulla vastità della produzione artistica indiana e sulla sua complessità. Il presente saggio, diviso in tre sezioni, vuole dapprima rendere omaggio all'architetto, un caro amico, per poi soffermarsi brevemente sulle mostre della sua preziosa ed L 1 L'autrice desidera ringraziare tutti coloro che hanno contribuito a questo saggio. Un grazie particolare a Filippo Mutti per la sua disponibilità e ospitalità a Brescia, Vanna Scolari per il suo invito a scrivere questo contributo, Robert Skelton e Joachim Bautze per aver discusso alcuni particolari della , Giampietro Massella per avermi fatto pervenire alcuni materiali scritti da Giacomo Mutti, Bruno Cavallaro per i suoi suggerimenti sulla prima bozza di questo articolo, Elisabetta Bresciani per alcune informazioni inerenti alle mostre della Collezione Mutti, Laura Giuliano e Giovanna Iacono per il loro incoraggiamento. Tutte le foto in questo articolo sono di Filippo Mutti.

ECSAS Vienna 2020.
Focusing on the devotional sect of Pushtimarg, this panel encourages a diversity of papers to stimulate new debates on the significance of the sect vis-à-vis its social histories, devotional practices, theologies, literatures, visual and performing arts from the 15 th century up to the present day.

A survey of visual forms in Pakistan which are based on intuition and cultural conditioning. The paper puts forward the possibility of forging an identity through these forms and identifies the educational curricula in Pakistan as an essential proponent of identity creation.

When the twenty-three year old Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler used his modest capital to open his first gallery on 28 rue Vignon in 1907, he approached his new profession as art dealer with a degree of ideological commitment to the art of his time that was heretofore unprecedented. This commitment, underpinned by his managerial skill and business acumen, led him to formulate a marketing strategy that engendered a new kind of art dealing that extended beyond the commercial realm. Kahnweiler was instrumental in not only disseminating but also fostering the creation of French avant-garde art and particularly that of one of its greatest practitioners, Pablo Picasso. Remarkable for its noncommercial characteristics, this strategy involved isolating his artists from the pervading Parisian art culture, providing them with financial security, and circulating their art and ideas to an international market.
As one of the most influential players in the creation, promulgation, and canonicalization of modern art, it is difficult to separate Kahnweiler the young and passionate dealer from Kahnweiler the myth. He himself has contributed to the latter through his writings, interviews, and sustained presence in the market. Yet by limiting the scope of one’s study to his activities from 1907 to 1914, one can more readily parse out the distinctive features of his practice and the incentives that drove this strategy from the very start. This essay further narrows its analysis of Kahnweiler by specifically examining his ideological and marketing approach through the lens of Michael Baxandall’s method of inferential criticism as applied in his seminal text, Patterns of Intention. Baxandall evaluates the nuanced relationship between culture, the art market, and the artist as a means of retracing the nature of the artistic intention invested in the creation of a purposeful object and the social circumstances that conditioned it. By contextualizing Kahnweiler within the art world of early twentieth-century Paris and among its major players and their activities, one can apply Baxandall’s analysis of the period and his overarching methodology in order to trace Kahnweiler’s pattern of intention.

Published in the book 'Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art | The Making of a Modern Indian Art World' (2016), this essay is part of my ongoing research on exhibition histories of South Asia 'Around Exhibitions: Circles of Engagement'.

The essay pursues the curatorial imaginary of Ebrahim Alkazi, theatre practitioner and patron of art, through exhibitions that were actualised, while also looking at other meta-exhibitions and their recurrences in varied forms, as much their missing versions. It reads exhibitions in their tentativeness, in their potential to fall out from the historical narrative or get easily lost without trace, and in their entanglements with their own time that gives them the currency for determining that is yet to come. This essay is, then, a poetic descant to histories of exhibitions. The first section focuses on an exhibition that barely took place, setting up cues for the trajectory taken by Alkazi. In the second section, I highlight parallel exhibitions from the 1970s in New Delhi involving the Lalit Kala Akademi and several artist groups that offer us a broad context to understand Alkazi's curatorial initiatives. And the last section discusses the exhibition history of the Art Heritage gallery, and examines the theatrical aspects of exhibition space in concert with its inherent potential for restaging certain acts.

Hiran Minar is yet another masterpiece of mughal architecture. Unique in design, pattern and setting, the monument adds a glorious chapter to the mughals, their love for building edifices of great strength and grandeur of noble simplicity and elegance. Hiran Minar is a hunting retreat built by Emperor Jahangir to the northwest of Lahore. It was constructed in memory of an antelope named Mansraj that was beloved by the emperor. The memorial tower stands 30 meters high and is 10 meters wide at its base. Around the perimeter are 214 holes that are believed to have been used as supports for the severed heads of animal trophies taken by the emperor.

Tarihi boyunca orduya büyük önem veren, hatta bazı dönemler militarist yaklaşımlar benimsemiş Japonya, 1946 tarihinden sonra anayasal pasifizm dönemine girmiş ve ABD ile sıkı ilişkiler geliştirerek askeri güvenliğini tamamen ABD'ye bırakmıştır. Öte yandan gerçekleştirdiği ekonomik atılımlarla, ekonomik anlamda önemli bir güç haline gelmeyi başarmıştır. Ancak Soğuk Savaş sonrası değişen konjonktür, bölgesel bir güç olarak konumunu sağlamlaştırmak isteyen Japonya'nın askeri olarak güçlenmesi gerektiğini ortaya koymuştur. Bu bilinçle hareket eden Japonya'nın bugün artık sadece bir yumuşak güç olduğunu söylemek mümkün değildir.