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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.
Excerpt from Supplementary Catalogue of the Archaeological Collection of the Indian Museum Dr. John Anderson's excellent 'Catalogue and Hand-book' of the Archaeological collections in the Indian Museum was published as far back as 1883, and, during the twenty-seven years that have elapsed since then, the Museum Galleries have been enriched by the acquisition of a large array of valuable sculptures and other antiquities. It is with these additions, numbering more than 3000 in all, that this supplement deals. It was the last work to be accomplished by the late Dr. Theodor Bloch before his untimely death in September, 1909, and was written by him at a time when his health and strength were fast failing and at a season of the year when the climate of Calcutta must have been peculiarly distressing to him. Yet, in spite of these adverse conditions, and in spite, too, of the haste in which the task was done, this short supplement has a special value for us, inasmuch as it embodies the opinions and ideas of one who had been closely associated with the Museum for over fourteen years, and who had come to be recognized as the first authority on the antiquities of Eastern India. It is for this reason that, in passing Dr. Bloch's manuscript through the Press, I have made it my aim to introduce as few corrections as possible, even though I believed that the author himself would not have been sparing of them, had he been able to revise the proofs. The only additions of any significance that I have made are those relating to the measurements and materials of the exhibits, the details of which have been supplied by my assistant, Babu Rakhal Das Banerji. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
This volume brings together a range of essays that offer a new perspective on the dynamic history of the museum as a cultural institution in South Asia. It traces the museum from its origin as a tool of colonialism and adoption as a vehicle of sovereignty in the nationalist period, till its role in the present, as it reflects the fissured identities of the post-colonial period.
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 volume addresses issues - the nature of truth, the conditions of objectivity, the sources of authority and the uses of evidence - which have been the focus of vigorous debate both within and beyond the historical profession in recent years. Avoiding the now well-rehearsed arguments over post-modernism, as well as those that pit social constructionists against foundationalists, these essays collectively offer what we believe is a fresh perspective on this debate. Drawn from a wide range of fields (including classical studies, the history ofscience, the histories of law and religion and the history of scholarly disciplines), the authors examine, through a series of test cases, the nature of proof and the techniques of persuasion in a variety of historical contexts. What makes a proof persuasive? How is assent to a particular position gained and maintained? What are the general conditions of belief, and how are they related to particular points of view? What role does evidence play in arguments and how does the rules change over space and time? Where do rhetoric and science converge, and what role does ethics play play in the deployment of either mode? What is the relationship between 'proof' and other sources of legitimacy and/or authority? The book addresses these and related questions.