Author: Krishna Chaitanya
Publisher: Abhinav Publications
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: 460
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8170173108
Description
With 54 color and 166 halftone illustration, this work is the fifth and final volume in series of Indian painting. The fourth volume had closed with the exhaustion of the Rajput schools bringing the story up to the end of the eighteenth century.
A stereotype of current art history is the assumption that the nineteenth century saw almost a total decline of the arts in India. The volume presents ample data to show that, at the level of folk culture, the visual arts continued to flourish with very little loss of vigor. It has many further paradoxes to reveal. The revival of classical art in the first decades of the twentieth century was in spite of its loud claims made by the many 'Progressive' groups in their manifestos at the time of Independence were swiftly forgotten; art became formalist and took to imitating the fashions of the west.
This volume has traced numerous fascinating ways in which genes in the gene pool of tradition have modulated and mutated to modernism. While, in order to be art, aesthetic and formal criteria have to be fulfilled, in order to be great art, some alliance to great human ends has to be forged. The evaluation of art has kept this consistently in mind and it has revealed modern Indian art to be as spiritual, though in its stranger way, as the traditional.
Contents
Chapter 1
A TWILIT LANDSCAPE
Painting in the Sikh Epoch
The Later Rajput Period
The Maratha Epoch
Painting in Tanjore
Painting in Karnataka
Chapter 2
A BRIGHTER PANORAMA
Tribal Painting
Paintings for Bardic Recitals
Tantra
Symbolic Art in Folk Ritual Art of Calligraphy
Pichhavais and Orissan Pats
Kalamkari
Madhubani Paintings
Chapter 3
CHALLENGES AND RESPONSE
Company Painting
Kalighat Painting
Popular Painting to Pop Art
Ravi Varma
Chapter 4
REVIVALIST PAINTING
Havell and Revivalist Doctrine
Abanindranath and Revivalist Practice
Revivalism in Retrospect
Chapter 5
THE PIONEERS OF MODERNISM
Jamini Roy
Amrita Shergil
Gaganendranath
Rabindranath Tagore
Three Painters of Shantiniketan
Chapter 6
CURTAIN-RISE ON CONTEMPORARY SCENE
A Vision and its Fading
Mastering the Instrumentalities
New Sprouts from Old Roots
Chapter 7
ART AND AMBIENCE
Retreat and Encounter
Ambient Nature The World of Men
Chapter 8
APOCALYPSE AND REDEMPTION
Art and Life
Apocalyptic Images
Redemptive Gleams
Index