With emphasis on the tribes in North America, uses the art and artifacts of various Indian cultures to illustrate events affecting their history from earliest times through 1973.
Enduring Splendor focuses on the rich and diverse silver jewelry traditions of India’s Thar Desert region, stretching across the western states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. These traditions are considered against the background of the five-thousand-year history of jewelry making across the vast Indian Subcontinent. Drawing on recent field research carried out in the city of Jaisalmer, a thriving center of contemporary jewelry production, Enduring Splendor explores for the first time the life and wo...
The Artist Speaks
One of Singapore’s most prominent performance artists, Lee Wen produced a body of provocative, thought-provoking and sharply satirical works over three decades. Despite Singapore’s decade- long proscription of funding for performance art, Lee Wen was indefatigable, pioneering the art form with searing expressive intensity. He confronted identity politics and issues of race, society and culture through a wide-ranging series of expansive, experimental performances. Presented in this title are writ...
A Reference Guide to North and South Asian Buddhist Art
by Gabrielle Dantz
This volume explores the constitutive role played by space in the performance of Kutiyattam. The only surviving form of Sanskrit theatre, Kutiyattam is distinctive in terms of its performance conventions and its unique culture of extensive elaboration and interpretation. Drawing upon the concepts of phenomenology on the processes of perception, particularly on the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, it analyses the role of space in the communicative structures of...
Batik - in which a wax-resist is applied before dyeing to form a pattern in negative - has a very special place in the world of textiles. Practised from China to India to West Africa, it finds its most supreme expression in Indonesia, where the Javanese word batik gave it its name. No other cloth in Asia, perhaps in the whole world, contains so much symbolism and so many meanings, expressed in the philosophy of its marvellous colours and designs, and in the way it is made, folded and worn. R...
A complete survey of Indonesian contemporary art. Indonesian Eye presents the most exciting works by emerging Indonesian artists in the most exhaustive way and comprehensively discusses their distinguishing characteristics differentiated from other contemporary art in Asia and the Western world. As an illustrated study, the book features seventy five up and coming artists and five essays to explain vibrant and dynamic art scene in Indonesia as an undiscovered jewel of Asian contemporary arts. Fo...
In this magnificent, lavishly illustrated book, renowned art historian B. N. Goswamy opens readers' eyes to the wonders of Indian painting, and shows them new ways of seeing art. An illuminating introductory essay, `A Layered World', explains the themes and emotions that inspired famous painters, the values and influences that shaped their work, and the unique ways in which they depicted Time and Space. It describes, too, the different regional styles, the relationship between patrons and painte...
This book examines folk theatres of North India as a unique performative structure, a counter stream to the postulations of Sanskrit and Western realistic theatre. In focusing on their historical, social and cultural imprints, it explores how these theatres challenge the linearity of cultural history and subvert cultural hegemony. The book looks at diverse forms of theatre such as svangs, nautanki, tamasha, all with conventions like open performative space, free mingling of spectators and actors...
Modern Asian Art is a seminal publication focusing on the modern art of Japan, China, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Clark offers a unique viewpoint, debunking the idea of a single 'modern Asian art' and of a one-way flow of influence from West to East, presenting instead a complex ebb and flow of information and transformation, where many diverse modernisms interact. Through a series of empirical micro-histories the book proceeds to look closely at the conditions for art practice in each countr...
Increasingly, as boundaries are being dissolved and interactive realities are becoming evident, the cultures of India and Pakistan are beginning to draw attention. Within the larger exchange of music, cinema and other cultural forms, the contemporary art of the two countries in all its vibrancy begins to have a fascinating new identity. There are many similarities that the art of the two countries share because of their common history. At the same time, divergences also lead to new directions th...
The Panorama of Jaipur Paintings (Contours of Indian art & architecture, #1)
by Gita Pratap
**WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE**'A splendid book.' Literary Review'A modern masterpiece.' New York Journal of BooksFinding the Raga is Amit Chaudhuri's revelatory exploration of North Indian classical music: an ancient, evolving tradition whose principles and practises will alter the reader's notion of what music might - and can - be. Through essay, memoir and cultural study, Chaudhuri dwells on the music's most distinctive and mysterious characteristics, resulting in a gift of a book fo...
Relates to the former rulers of parts of southern Rajasthan and portions of Gujarat.