Indian art and architecture

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.

The chapter has been published in the book, History of Bangladesh, Sultanate and Mughal Periods (c. 1200 to 1800 CE),  Vol 1, Political History edited by Abdul Momin Chowdhury. It is a chapter on the urban process took place in the Nawabi capital of Murshidabad during the late Mughal period. The extant edifices played a pivotal role in tracing the urbanisation of the flourishing city of Murshidabad. A map has also been plotted for an in depth study of how the city  gradually developed.

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.

The essay explains the urgency of the need to reconsider cognitive categories in the definition, classification and hierarchisation of arts; to rebuild the crumbling bridges between life and arts, culture and development; and, to read the beginnings of human response to nature forwards into a sustainable relationship between culture and nature.

The Kalachuris , more than any other mediaeval Central Indian dynasty, made unique, and atleast the most extensive contribution to the shaping of mediaeval Central Indian art.They survived the longest in known history, from the 6th to the 13th century A.D. In what is now eastern Madhya Pradesh or Chhattisgarh, they survived till 1740 A.D. This article brings the evidence of sculptures, specially sculptures of Mother Goddesses from the Kalachuri school together from widely scattered sites and establishes their chronological succession through rigorous stylistic comparisons of epigraphically dated image groups. It also provides a historiographical analysis of the history of scholarly thinking on the distinctive stylistic identity of Kalachuri art, vis a vis other schools of art from the sixth to eleventh century A.D. It also elicits the Pasupata, Mattamayura philosophy from the priestly, sacerdotal associations of this art.

The city of Chandigarh, India, has received considerable interest since its design and construction in the early 1950s, mainly due to Le Corbusier’s involvement in the scheme. More recent work has begun to critically examine the planning of the city and its components and to challenge the misconception of Le Corbusier as the sole author. This paper is concerned with the first portion of the city to be constructed, Sector-22, designed by the British architect Jane Drew, along with housing designs by her husband- collaborator Maxwell Fry (Pierre Jeanneret’s equally important work is beyond the scope of this paper). It considers the influences behind their planning and the housing-type design, with particular focus on the notions of ‘neighbourhood planning’. The paper argues that Fry’s work with Thomas Adams from the 1920s is of particular importance to the Sector-22 layout, which was further informed by Drew’s studies published immediately after the Second World War. Finally, their housing plans are considered, along with the contributions of their Indian colleagues – an important group who have largely been ignored in previous academic studies of the city.

Devi Prasad (1921–2011), India’s pioneering artist-potter, visionary educationist
and pacifist, joined Santiniketan, India’s premier art school in 1938 when
founder Rabindranath Tagore was still involved with the institution. At Nandalal
Bose’s suggestion and following a correspondence with Gandhi in 1944 he
joined Sevagram, Gandhi’s ashram, as Art Teacher, where he taught for nearly
twenty years. His political consciousness saw him participate actively in the
Quit India Movement in 1942 and in social reforms such as Vinoba Bhave’s
Bhoodan — the land gift movement of the 1940s and 1950s.

Apart from the making of his personal history and his times, this book leads
us to why the creative act of making art itself takes on such a fundamental
philosophical significance in his life — an ideal derived directly from his
absorption of Gandhi’s principles. The purpose of art and life as they came to
be realised by him, needed a change in the very approach people have toward
work, which could only be achieved through a new philosophy of education.

This book argues for an aesthetic basis for India’s freedom movement whereby
the Arts and Crafts Movement’s pioneers like John Ruskin, William Morris,
Charles Ashbee and William Lethaby impacted the writings and work of
Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy as seen
in the ideology of ‘Swadeshi’ — India’s rallying cry for Freedom and the artistic
milieu of Santiniketan. Devi Prasad’s story, then, exemplifies the importance
of the Arts and Crafts Movement in shaping the nature of Modernism in India.

Devi Prasad’s ideals in art and in political activism, shaped though they may
have been on Indian soil, led him to crisscross international borders. In 1962
he migrated to London to become Secretary General (later Chairman) of the
War Resisters’ International, perhaps the oldest Pacifist organisation in the
world in order to spread the Gandhian way of life internationally. Here his
artwork underwent another transformation, cognisant of the realities of Western
living. On his return to India in 1982, he began to work more concertedly on
pottery: developing a community of studio-potters, their studios, tools and
equipment. This book reveals, against a backdrop of Modern Indian history
and international peace movements, how the worlds of ‘design’, craftsmanship
and studio art were negotiated via a philosophical quest to bring about social
change.

This paper, published in the International Journal of Arts and Sciences Vol. 8(8), January 2016, is an exposition into findings related to the dwellings of Rabindranath Tagore, at Santiniketan in Bengal, India. Tagore, one of modern India's foremost cultural and literary figures, spent forty years (1901-41), most of his very prolific and creative adult life, in the houses he built here. As regards disciplinary approach, the investigations take an architectural perspective, revealing several ideologies and approaches of Tagore, based on historical context as well as personal philosophy. The paucity of Tagore's direct references to his houses in his writings makes it imperative to rely on in-situ analyses and written allusions about space and architecture. In doing so, the paper also attempts to realize the immense potential for understanding and appreciating Tagore's genius through his architectural creations, while placing these within contemporaneous endeavours of discovering an Indian and pan-Asian identity in the then colonised nation.

Bhairava is a wrathful form of Shiva, the destroyer of Kala (time), whose form inspires both fear and awe. Idols of Bhairavas are found across Shaivite and Shakta temples all over India, mostly as a Dwarpala. There also exist independent Bhairava temples, such as the famous Kal Bhairav temple of Ujjain and Kilkari Bhairav temple in Delhi. Here, we attempt to look at the form, meaning and iconography of Bhairava, through the sculpture displayed at the CSMVS sculpture gallery.

The iconographic production of the Tamil Nāyaka kingdoms, apart from the Vijayanagara influences and the heritage of the earlier dynasties who ruled in the area (e.g. the Pāṇḍyas and the Cōḷas), as well as to remoter traditions, both cultured and popular, seems to reflect peculiar trends, which we also find in the architecture: original and a very rich production, 5 monumentality and theatrical effects in the sculptures -for instance, the enormous monolithic statue of Nandin in front of the Bṛhadīśvara Temple in Tañjāvūrand the conspicuous use of painting, much more than before. Indeed, a number of Nāyaka temples were entirely covered in frescoes and polychrome stuccos were added within and without all sanctuaries. All this Tiziana Lorenzetti.indd 1 6/16/2019 4:25:09 AM

This book addresses a series of ‘confrontations’: occasions of dynamic exchange and interaction between historical agents and the social and material contexts that defined the lived and intellectual spaces in which they operated. Examining diverse bodies of evidence and modes of cultural production in early South Asia, the individual contributions explore how the lived spaces of writers and artists influenced their ideas and practices, and how texts, objects, and images shaped the identities of their makers and the boundaries of communities. While the legacy of cultural production in the Gupta Period is often categorized as canonical and thus suggests fixity of form and idea, this volume draws attention to the processes and contexts in which the ‘classical’ took shape and the subsequent reception and revision of its cultural forms.


The first half of the volume addresses the intersections of textual, material, and visual forms of cultural production by focusing on three primary modes of confrontation: the relation of inscribed texts to material media, the visual articulation of literary images, and, finally, the literary interpretation and reception of religious media. The second part of the volume focuses on confrontations both within and between intellectual communities. The articles address the dynamics between peripheral and dominant movements in the history of Indian philosophy.

This work sets out to explore the role played by Pierre Jeanneret in the design and construction of the city of Chandigarh between 1951-65. In the enormous task of anchoring the Chandigarh project Jeanneret played the role as faithful executioner of Le Corbusier’s visions both for the Capitol complex and the wider city.

Jeanneret was an innovative bricoleur leaving a trail of his furniture and architecture across the city. The paper begins to explore the dynamics between Jeanneret as the anchor to Le Corbusier’s architectural acrobatics.One must  hold  up a Corb shaped filter to try and find Pierre in the half light behind the glare of Le Corbusier’s persona. Pierre quietly floats by on a car tire in the sea of architectural  literature fixated on Le Corbusier. Although there is currently little architectural writing directly focused on Pierre Jeanneret, he was never far from the thoughts of Charlotte Perriand or Le Corbusier, who respectively left to posterity an autobiography and copious archives of correspondence from which much can be deduced. This text aims to uncover something of the complex relationship between the Jeanneret cousins and the individuality of Pierre Jeanneret’s work.

Jeanneret’s career is a case of  hiding in plain sight,  his contribution to the success of Le Corbusier’s life time corpus  has largely been obscured by the passage of time, by his reserved personality and the endlessly propelled Le Corbusier’s mythology. Perriand, Xenakis and Wogensky also never managed to fully escape the Corbusian event horizon.Drawing on direct observation of the multitude of built work in Chandigarh executed by the cousins the text examines something of the humanity of both protagonists, and acts as is an introduction to their lost time zone.

The seventeenth century is regarded as the golden age of Mughal rule on the Indian subcontinent. Mughal painting and architecture drew on existing Islamic traditions, but augmented these by using elements that had seldom been seen before in Islamic art. In scarcely any other period in Islamic history have people adopted such a creative and playful approach to the prohibition of images. The unexplored and to a large degree unknown picture puzzles in the mosques of Wazir Khan and Dai Anga in Lahore are analysed and presented in this article for the very first time and together with extensive photographic material.

Published in 2000 to accompany Power and Desire, an exhibition drawn from the San Diego Museum of Art's collection of South Asian Paintings, this article looks at a selection of courtly paintings to analyse the gestures, postures, seating order and other elements of courtly disposition represented in the painting, to understand different notions of kingship operational in some Mughal, Deccani and Rajput courts.

Among the works acquired by the French military officer Jean-Baptiste Gentil (1726-99) during his tenure in India was a group of architectural studies known today as the Palais Indiens (1774). Painted on hand-fabricated graph paper, these large-format plans and elevations depict monuments from Delhi, Agra, and Faizabad, and are some of the first European-commissioned representations of Indian architecture. This essay explores several interrelated points concerning the studies. It argues that in the Palais Indiens, architecture functions as a category of historical inquiry and is used to forge connections between the Mughal past and the changing sociopolitical landscape of eighteenth-century India. It also demonstrates that the creators of the collection developed a new, heterogeneous visual language for the description of architecture, drawing on French and Indian representational conventions. The essay concludes by situating the Palais Indiens and Gentil in relation to later traditions of architectural representation in India as well as later collecting trends in Awadh.

This is an account of the stylistic development in Indian Sculpture and includes the early developments in Bharhut, Sanchi, Amravati and allied sites and later developments in what is classified as 'Gupta Art'. It offers chronological indicators and integrates the discussions of style, iconography, iconology and architecture, with a focus on Central India.

nil Relia, nato a Surat in Gujarat nel 1957, è oggi conosciuto in tutta l'India per la sua prestigiosa collezione di ritratti 1 . Il peculiare interesse per questo genere pittorico risale alla sua infanzia quando collezionava per diletto le etichette attaccate agli imballaggi che avvolgevano i rotoli di tessuto acquistati presso il bazar della cittadina ( 2 . Egli ricorda di come li staccava pazientemente per poi conservarli nei suoi libri di scuola. Scoprì soltanto più tardi che si trattava di litografie che rappresentavano i ritratti dei discendenti dei mercanti di stoffe del periodo coloniale. Questa iniziale curiosità si trasformò in grande passione che lo portò a raccogliere un'intera collezione che documenta A 1 L'autrice desidera ringraziare Anil Relia per l'intervista rilasciata a Febbraio 2017 nella sua residenza di Ahmedabad e per averle fatto pervenire le immagini digitali delle opere discusse in questo saggio. Un ringraziamento speciale va a tutta la sua famiglia per la cordiale ospitalità e generosità. 2 L'immagine è pubblicata anche in Relia (2014a: 137) in cui appare insieme ad altre etichette coeve. Relia (ibid.: 136) spiega che queste litografie contenevano iscrizioni in diverse lingue, tra cui hindi, gujarati, urdu e inglese, in base alle regioni in cui i tessuti venivano commercializzati.

A scientific inquiry of vernacular space invariably encounters obstacles of its own making. An analysis based on breaking down and isolating each property misses the totality of lived space. This paper compares two cities in India built in two different time periods in the Rajasthan region in western India. The more recent city, Jaipur, built by Sawai Jai Singh II in 1727, is marked by an intention to rationalise traditional space in order to reproduce it.  Through an understanding of the differences between Jaipur and its predecessor Jodhpur, the paper attempts to unravel the essence of traditional urbanity in western India. The paper posits that this is a space that refutes the instruments of a Cartesian inquiry or an analysis intent on ‘breaking down’ components of the whole.  It proposes another method that belongs equally to the etymology of the word ‘analysis’: a loosening of the cords that tie the parts together, to understand the lived totality of the city.

The Past as Present: Pedagogical Practices in Architecture at the Bombay School of Art
by
Mustansir Dalvi

Published by Sir JJ College of Architecture & The Urban Design Research Institute
2016
ISBN : 978-93-81444-13-9

ABSTRACT
From the last decade of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, architectural pedagogy in the School of Art, Bombay was dominated by documentation, decoration and design. Architects in the city in a single half century would move from Post-Renaissance Neo-Classicism, to the Neo-Gothic, to the Indo-Saracenic, to Edwardian Baroque Neo-Classicism once again, before settling on the Style Moderne.

The preservation of the Indian craft tradition, which was one of the cornerstones for starting the School of Art would crisscross with issues of Style, leading to an eclectic learning. The reliance on precedence, whether Indian or Western generated the understanding of first principles- from whence these traditions of architecture emerged. This was accomplished was through observation, documentation through measurement and drawing of buildings on site, and later adaptation.

The curriculum of Architecture prescribed the copying of existing architectural details and the documentation of extant architecture of note, prior to making designs that were relevant for the day. Published portfolios of architecture like the Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details by Swinton Jacob (1890), The Design Development of Indian Architecture by Claude Batley (1934) and Bannister Fletcher’s canonical A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method (10th edition, 1921) amongst others formed a significant resource for architectural learning.

We trace the influences of documentation, decoration and design on architectural pedagogy and architectural
practices in India in the late 19th and early 20th century at the Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay. In these pages are the many original drawings made by the students of the school, prints from the portfolios of Jacob, Batley and Fletcher and glass ‘magic lantern’ slides that explore this interaction. As a testimony to the diverse stands of aesthetic understanding and practice, we present a representative portfolio of drawings made by noted modernist architect Achyut Kanvinde during his years as a student of the Sir JJ School of Art, which, placed between the dichotomy of tradition and modernism, provides a glimpse into design churnings prevalent at the cusp of Indian independence.

This thesis critically surveys heritage management in present day India and the legislative apparatus that underpins it. Keeping within the Indian context, the research seeks to verify the suitability of the strategies that are upheld by the institutional and legislative setup of architectural conservation practices for present day India. This appraisal would be based on the premise that preservation, as it is currently understood in India, is a product of modernity and in India’s case the direct import of the Western construct of these disciplines during the colonial period. This is made evident from the history and origins of the interest in Indian antiquity as well as the development of the formalized discipline of archaeology and antiquity management.


Despite the fact that India has been independent from colonial British rule for sixty one years, the legislation that continue to underpin the heritage management policies of India have remained unrevised for fifty of those years with the exception of a few minor amendments. The current active piece of legislation is in fact a slight variation on the one laid down by the British more than a century ago. Consequently, India’s prevalent heritage management policies are not only outdated, but also contextually unsuitable since it originates from a non-indigenous and particularly colonial mode of thinking.


The research primarily focuses on the practices of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the formal institution concerned with upholding the legislation concerning heritage. Using case studies the contextual suitability of the prevalent preservation policies have been analyzed through the successes and failures of the ASI in the cases under consideration. The argument is extended to the conceptual notions of time and the past as signified by the current preservation laws and studying them in contrast with alternative approaches to those notions. It is concluded that present day heritage management practices in India have reinterpreted the past, removing it from active participation in the present and made it into the revered but uncomfortable ‘other’, always to be negotiated as opposed to being incorporated or appropriated.


In response to these findings, an alternative for this current structure of heritage management in India has been proposed as part of the conclusion. To supplement this proposal, recommendations have been made for administrative and legislative modifications that would take place through reorganization of the existing institutional infrastructure. Time lapse has been built into the proposal to incorporate the short term and long term goals. The goal for this thesis is that that it could be useful as a starting point for a more in-depth proposal that can be implemented and is not confined to being an academic exploration alone.

Punjab Arts Council building at Chandigarh in the exposed brick face is an exemplar of enduring grandeur. After 33 years of its construction, the building still retains its original elegance and looks as charming as it ever was. Credit for this goes to its architect Dr SS Bhatti who chose brick as main building material to enrich the bold and geometrical facades.

In this review criticism is offered against the incorrect attribution of imitation of Graeco-Roman classicism, derivative character, inferior conception and execution, to Indian pillar order and architecture. A demonstration is given of the antiquated philosophical roots of such characterization in pseudo-Christian theology and obsolete trends of art criticism.

Since time immemorial, the people of India have always adored wood as a suitable plastic medium in their daily-life. The easy availability and ready tractability of the material was greatly used by the artists and craftsmen of this subcontinent, both in their architectural and sculptural endeavors. Unfortunately, the perishable nature of wood – intrigued by the hot and humid climate of the region – didn't allow the earlier specimens to survive till date. However, plenty of other resources testify the antiquity of woodcarving activities within the panorama of Indian art. i It's a long traditional ancestry, beginning from the days of Indus Valley, which has evolved through the ages to remain alive even today. In this process, the age-old passion of the Indian folk has always been manifested in multiple forms of visual expression – both secular and religious – that include the tradition of making divine images as well. Since quite an early time, though not identified yet, these religious idols have been made of wood ii ; while clay, stone, metal and other mediums were also of frequent use.

On 11 Nov. 2017, under the auspices of the Indian Embassy in Rome, ISAS, the Institute of South Asian Studies & ISMEO – International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies, brought together Indologists and art historians from all over the world, including a senior scientist who, in his youth, had participated in India’s freedom struggle. The event was held in one of the most prestigious Renaissance Libraries in Rome.
The papers and themes that emerged in the course of the day, on what drove India then, what she strove for, what are her emergent challenges now, are now collected together in a handy full-colour laid paper volume of some 200 pages.

The introductory essay by Adriano Rossi, President of ISMEO – International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies, deals with the figure of the great Italian scholar Giuseppe Tucci (1894 – 1984).  Throughout his lifetime,  Tucci was a living bridge between Italian and South-Asian cultures. He not only taught Italian Language, Art and Literature in a number of prestigious Indian universities, but he was also one of twentieth century’s major Orientalist —Indologist, archaeologist, explorer, eminent expert in Tibetan culture and Buddhist Studies. In 1933 Tucci, along with the philosopher Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944), founded, l’Istituto per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (the Institute for Middle and Far East), IsMEO, of which the new ISMEO would represent an ideal continuation.
However, what’s especially worth noting in Rossi’s paper is that the figure of Tucci, treated both from scholarly and human points of view with reference to his own writings, comes out here in all its stark objectivity; therefore, this essay does justice to Tucci against some recent misrepresentations of his  figure and  constitutes a landmark for anyone who wishes to delve deeper into this stalwart Italian Orientalist.
Y. K. S. Murthy, one of the most respected and knowledgeable members of the Indian community in Italy, has written a quite unique essay, speaking as a freedom fighter himself and as one of the last remaining witnesses to the months immediately before and after India’s Independence. His refreshing testimony represents the view of a generation that took part in the dramatic events of that time.
Stella Sandahl’s incisive article focuses on the problems and the challenges that arose, after independence, in establishing Hindī as the official language of the Union,  in accordance with the Indian constitution. As a matter of fact, in spite of the central government’s all-out efforts to propagate Hindī at the national level, as of today, it is still not part of the linguistic background of all Indians. Sandahl identifies several reasons for this state of affairs, amongst which was the intent to draw the vocabulary of Hindī primarily from Sanskrit, with the consequence that many of the new Sanskritized Hindī words have not entered the public domain. By depicting, on the contrary, the almost complete success that Pakistan has had in imposing Urdū since 1947, she makes interesting observations, building up to the final thought-provoking assertion that, in popular parlance, there actually exists a de facto ‘spoken Hindi’ understood by most Indians throughout the country, yet distant from, if not at variance with, the Sanskritised Hindī.
Mario Prayer analyses the administrative organisation of independent India, particularly the structure known as the Panchayati Raj (a system of grassroots government by ‘committees of five’) acting as intersection-nodes between peripheral localities, the state and the Centre. It’s a subject of great relevance in the administrative sector of the post-independence era, since the Panchayats Raj, the single largest body of democratically elected local leaders in the world, represents one of the primary factors of political, social and economic cohesion of Indian society.
Sanjukta Das Gupta touches on a live and stirring field, namely the development and peculiar characteristics of feminist and ecological movements before and after Independence. Since colonial times, such movements have fought both for social justice along Gandhian lines— against patriarchal oppression — and the ecological sustainability. Das Gupta maintains that independent India, contrary to the past, has witnessed an ever-increasing participation of subaltern and marginalized women at the grass-roots level, who have been drawing upon their own experiences and organizational capacities in their struggle against social discrimination. They have been in the forefront of the land-rights movement; particularly worthy of note was the 1970s’ ‘Chipko andolan’ (from chipko, to cling, and andolan, campaign, in Hindi). The images of women in the Himalayan forests with their arms around majestic trees, defying the illegal fellers by demanding to be cut down with them — attracted worldwide attention. 
The highly engaging contributions by Julia Hegewald and Giuseppe Flora, analyse the post-independence ferments from social and artistic points of view, the latter being of no-secondary importance, since it is mostly through visual arts that Independent India presents itself to a national and international audience. Hegewald’s paper builds on two interlinked themes, corresponding to two different approaches to architecture and urban planning taken soon after Independence: continuity with the colonial past and new departures. The latter trend was well realised in the layout of Chandigarh, the new capital city of Punjab, where the modernism of Le Corbusier, promoted by Nehru, India’s first prime minister, was a fitting statement of an independent, modern and progressive state. The two themes are treated in-depth and finely illustrated with several photos taken by the author herself, which highlight the major architectonic guidelines promoted in and by Independent India and, more importantly, the reasons underpinning such choices. 
    Flora’s article, illustrated by rare photos and pictures, underlines how Independent India became a pole of attraction for intellectuals and artists from all over the world. The new nation entered on its own right the twentieth century international cultural milieu. By the end of the 1960s India inspired the counterculture in the West. The ‘Indian craze’ of those years was partly due to the Beatles' Indian sojourn in February-March 1968. Of greater significance, anyway, had been the encounter of the Beat poets, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gary Snyder with a new generation of rebellious Indian poets and artists.
The Indo-Anglian writer Olaf shom Kirtimukh has traced the graphic evolution of India’s national flag, underlining what makes it so unique. He opines that while the flags of newly independent countries tend to illustrate events and values that forged their own recent past, the Indian banner upholds ideals that seem to be more relevant today than they were 70 years ago — not only to Indians but to all mankind. More so, having also had a long international career as an advertising copywriter, shom Kirtimukh has thrown new light on the interpretation of certain details appearing in the Indian tricolour as well as the preliminary experiments that led up to it. 
Lastly, starting with the historicisation of the ancient Indian classical dances, Tiziana Lorenzetti’s paper deals with changes occurred in the colonial and post-colonial period, when the ancient performing art was transformed – through the agency of international contacts – into new dance forms. The core of the essay  investigates how, by what processes and devices, the new dance styles (although an intercultural product) came to be representative of Indian traditional cultural-artistic heritage, becoming a key aspect in the making of Independent India’s identity and imagery.

अशोक भौमिक 'भारतीय कला इतिहास की  सब से महत्वपूर्ण रचना' सिंधुघाटी से मिली नर्तकी की मूर्ति से लेकर आज तक की चित्रकला और मूर्तिकला के इतिहास  से बेशुमार उदाहरण पेश करते हैं .  अश्लीलता का आरोप झेल रहे  हुसैन के  अनेक चर्चित चित्रों से इनमें से अनेक की समांतरता दिखाते हुए वे हुसैन के अभारतीय या भारतविरोधी होने के प्रचार को ही ध्वस्त नहीं करते , यह भी दिखा पाते  हैं कि ऐसे आरोप लगाने वाले को न भारतीयता की कोई समझ है , न कला की . वास्तव में अनावृत कलात्मक रेखांकनों में नग्नता देख पाना केवल  ''साहित्य -संगीत -कला -विहीनं / साक्षात पशु पुच्छविषाणहीनं 'लोगों के लिए ही संभव है .

L’immagine della caverna ha rivestito una importanza fondamentale nelle rappresentazioni mitico-simboliche di molte civiltà antiche (sia orientali che occidentali),  caricandosi di numerose valenze che offrono diversi livelli di lettura.
Il presente articolo, sviluppando alcune comparazioni storico-religiose fra diversi contesti culturali  ‒dal  mondo greco-romano a quello iranico e indiano ‒ analizza alcuni aspetti fondamentali del simbolo. In particolare, è esaminato un concetto-cardine che racchiude gran parte delle valenze polisemiche del simbolo, essendone il punto di partenza e di arrivo. È questa l’idea che, riecheggiando nella filosofia, nella religione e nell’arte delle culture considerate, specialmente quella indiana, identifica la caverna come l’alveo della Madre Terra dove si attua l’eterno processo del divenire cosmico. Un ‘divenire’ che non si realizza solo sul piano materiale, ma anche su quello spirituale poiché la grotta è soprattutto uno spazio simbolico palingenetico ed escatologico.

Link to tour recordings:http://tours.columbiamuseum.org/tour/zGK7xjfYgxXNRnBXm

I was engaged by the Columbia Museum of Art to provide discussions on five works of art for the Multimedia TAP Tour of the exhibition, Visions from India: 21st-century Art from the Pizzuti Collection at the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina from October 17, 2020 – January 10, 2021. The TAP multimedia tour features in-depth discussions with experts from both inside and outside the art world.

Works Discussed: 104 | Avinash Veeraraghavan, Fracture 3, 2016; 105 | Mithu Sen, Bahai Peacock, 2006; 106 | Anju Doditya, The Clown Prince, 2008; 108 | KP Reji, To Move the Mountain, 2008; 109 | Subodh Gupta, Untitled (Sushi Conveyor Belt), 2008.