Exam 3

Question 1

East India Company

Answer 1

o Colonial India
o Late 1500’s traders come to India. Queen Elizabeth 1 grants charter to East India Company in 1599.
o By 1800s British East India co had control over large parts of country. 1835 English declared official language of India

Question 2

Queen Victoria

Answer 2

o 1877 Queen Victoria assumed title of Empress of India and claims sovereignty over Indian states
o “Victoria and Abdul”

Question 3

Swadeshi movement

Answer 3

Promoted Indian independence and nationalism
o Bengal became the center of the movement around 1901-05
o Bengal eventually went under the leadership of Gandhi, India
o Gained independence from the Brit’s in 1947
o Means “self-suffiencient

Question 4

James Fergusson - “History of Indian and Eastern Architecture”

Answer 4

o Wrote history of Indian and eastern architecture
o First published in 1876 then revised in 1891
o Had believed that early Buddhist art was the pinnacle of Indian art, later declined
o He liked it because there was a Greek influence
o Gandhi incouraged boycotting English institutions and products

Question 5

John Ruskin

Answer 5

o He believed naturalism was the foundation for all art, strived to imitate nature

Question 6

Viceroy

Answer 6

o Envisioned New Delhi as the garden city
o Western architecture with an Indian motif

Question 7

Edwin Lutyens

Answer 7

o Made viceroy house drawing
o His plan was for series of classical buildings, ceremonial avenues, open spaces arranged with geometrical symmetry and a grand axis

Question 8

“Chhajja”

Answer 8

o Overhanging eaves of a roof

Question 9

Chhatri

Answer 9

o Small kiosk

Question 10

Company Painting

Answer 10

o Art produced by Indian artists to satisfy the tastes of British Patrons
o Painting and photography during the Raj
o Lady Mary Impey
o Shows us brief period between Mughal empire and British Raj. Artists still using imperial Mughal style of realism but not in the genre of decorative court art- but in genre of scientific study, administration recording. Result is art that is much less “personal”.

Question 11

Lady Mary Impey

Answer 11

o Commissioned Mughal trained indian artists to record indigenous animals and plants. Style in meticulously realistic in line with tastes of their patrons

Question 12

Madras famine of 1877 – 1878

Answer 12

o Perhaps the worst result of the British Raj was the direct and indirect deaths of scores of Indian people from starvation as a result of flawed agricultural policies, forced conversion of land from good cultivation to cash crop cultivation, excessive taxation and incompetence plus a level of indifference

Question 13

3 Stages of Architectural Evolution

Answer 13

1) Build exclusively in Neo-classical style
Employ an exclusive European Style
Revolts in 1857 against India company lead to British establishing viceroy. For Brits it was first battle for independence.
2) Build in Indo-Saracenic style (Neo-classical or Gothic Revival with added Indic - mostly Mughal/Islamic elements)
Incorporate Indic elements into either Neo-Classical or Gothic Revival Style: “Indo-Saracenic Style”
For Brits the revolt reinforces their beliefs on their right to rule India
Indic elements are mostly Mughal
Begin to incorporate Islamic elements in archectural design
3) Monumental Classical style with Indic elements
Line motif symbol to represent British rule as well as a connection to the Ashoka era

Question 14

Company painting – How much do artists “adjust” style to suit Western tastes?

Answer 14

o There isn’t much difference that they changed besides mainly the background, it is a little less poetic but the flora and the fauna was depicted in the same way.

Question 15

The Bengal School

Answer 15

o Sher-Gil believed the Bengal School had become slavish imitation of western art or an “empty formula”

Question 16

Ravi Varma

Answer 16

He embraced both westernization and the role of the artist as a professional
He embraced oil painting in the realist conventions of academic art
Embraced the tradition of history painting
His view was popular rising, Hindu thoughts and Indian history and helping restore the dignity of his peoples history.
Paintings of beautiful Indian women
Idealized composite based on his travels through India

Question 17

Abanindranath Tagore

Answer 17

Rejected oil painting
Goal was to create in indigenous Indian style
He believed the western convention used by varma, had romanticized and ultimately denigrated the people of India.
Authenticity was most important to him
Believed a key issue was colonialism
Incorporated Japanese elements
Used watercolor instead of oil

Question 18

Gaganendranath Tagore

Answer 18

Some Indian artists dialogue with European movements like cubism
Used his art to allude to narratives meant to be evocative

Question 19

Kakuzo Okakura

Answer 19

Agreed with Tagore that both cultures should contrast Asian spiritualism with western materialism
Nationalist identity was tied to belief in connection to spirituality
At the time japan was 80% Buddhist, a religion was born in India

Question 20

Amrita Sher-Gil

Answer 20

Dialogue with Gauguin’s primitivism and Van Gogh / Paula Modersohn Becker
o Amrita was leveraging her own perceived “exoticism”. Also she was aware of inherent racism and limits of her reimagining herself in Gauguin’s “sexual imagination”
o Gaugauin was not being totally honest in his depictions of Tahiti. Gauguin denounced the practice of racial mixture.

o Sher-Gil was placing herself here in the guise of “exotic sexual feminine other” while undermining traditional relationships between:masculine vs. feminine/ European civilized male vs. primitive female
o Portrays herself perhaps in early stages of pregnancy.Men can “portray” fertility- only women can embody it. May be hinting at her lived experience and her abortions. Pose/ expression may reflect sadness/ emptiness she felt
o Is her work lacking in claim to be a social claim to India? Are they just formal excercises or do they capture genuine sympathy?

Question 21

o Some have questioned how genuine Amrita Sheriff-Gil’s concern for the poor was?

Answer 21

o Many paintings are similar to Picasso in technique
o She can from a wealthy family and wasn’t afraid to show it. In her later years she spend the majority of her time at her family’s estate(the rural poor of India) says something about her human sympathies
o She believed at least in the possibility of synthesis between formalism and a genuine emotional connection to her subjects
o Poses/ expressions “isolate” them but formal devices connects them. Suggests that the poetry has “alienated” them but they are connects as a community so that the children can be protected.

Question 22

Meera Mukherjee:

Answer 22

o Her art deals with the nature of Indian identity in the context of encroaching modernism but attached to cultural traditions
o Studied in Europe. Trained as a painter but turns into a sculpture
o Rejects most of her modern training and explores India’s past folk traditions following a primitivist instinct.
o Begins using traditional technique of Dhokra from the Bastar tribe- a variation of lost wax casting technique

Question 23

o “Ashoka at Kalinga”

Answer 23

o Abstract figure combined with intricate surface decoration of Bastar Scultpture
o Contemporary and traditional at the same time. Also claims her technique offers a deeper spiritual connection
o Ashoka was Mauryan emperor who adopted Buddhism
o Subjects are the common people

Question 24

Dhorka

Answer 24

o Bastar tribe
o Lost wax casting technique

Question 25

Bharti Kher:

Answer 25

o Plays in the realm between the west and India.
o Born in England and moved to New Delhi in 1992. Her art is a reflection of displaced identity
he camera, she claims gave her a “third eye” to see with. In the end these mustaches became “sexualités” and began to evoke the female genitalia

Question 26

o Bindi Themes:

Answer 26

o Cultural Misinterpretation
o Social Structures or Construction
o Personal Identity
o “In-betweeness” or hybridity

Question 27

Bharti Kher’s signature motif is the bindi- forehead decoration that has a number of religions and cultural meanings

Answer 27

o Northern India- red dot- signifies she is married
o Some women wear sindoor (red powder out under the hairline) at the hairline to signify marriage but still wear the bindi as a fashion accessory
o When a women is widowed the women stop wearing the bindi and sindoor
o Can also be a symbol a femininity or fertility
o Related back to the Buddha urna
riginally believed tilaks were worn by “knowledge holders” only, priests, idols
o Khmer suggests bindis are still used as a way of fashioning one’s identity

Question 28

o Men wear a mark on the forehead called a Tilak, mostly used for religious ceremonies or accessories

Answer 28

Would be placed on the 6th charkra – the “Ajna”
The concept that human life exists in two parallel dimensions at the same time- one physical and the other non-physical ]the non-physical “subtle” body is connected to the psychological and emotional part of the mind

Question 29

o “The Girl with the Hairy Lip Said No”; combines two motifs (traditional bindi & the tea as a subject) — tea connecting both India and England (British Raj)

Answer 29

Disruption — being a product of both cultures
Tea — tied to a historical narrative globally (dating back to China as well)

Question 30

Tea- historical narrative

Answer 30

• Brought to Europe in the 17th century, popular with European audiences — then combined with another product (sugar) which made it more popular
• Sugar in the mass production only became possible after establishing sugar plantations using slave labor
• Interior of Boiling House (plantation) the demand for tea and sugar fuels the slave trade between the Americas and Africa
• The Opium(Tea) War (1839-42) the first one; the only place to buy tea in mass quantities was in China however China wasn’t interested in any products from England
• Brits had found something that China wanted (Opium Poppy Flowers) which was used for medicinal purposes early as the 7th century
• In the 17th century mixing opium with tobacco for smoking purposes greatly increased its popularity

Question 31

What does it mean to be a woman in India

Answer 31

woman being forced to marry into a family they don’t want to, the rituals and rule we use is like the bindi (can discard these rules and change them like you can take off and change the bindi)

Question 32

“Western Route to China”

Answer 32

bindis are symbol for migration, colonialism, and perhaps a warning
• It was sometimes about greed, money, global influence, power

Question 33

“The Hot Winds Blow From The West”

Answer 33

a radiator an invention of the Industrial Revolution; had collected the radiators for 6 years and stacked it up in a cube shape
• The simplicity of it brings attention to it
• The title hints that this is about Western globalization and the effects of scientific advancements
• Looks like the exposed ribs of dead animals — symbolic of domestic “comfort” in the West

Question 34

“Confess” 2009-10

Answer 34

takes a confessional and uses her signature bindis all over the inside of it

Question 35

• Vivian Sundaram (the nephew of Amrita Sher-Gil)

Answer 35

o “Re-Take of Amrita”; used the photographs that was done by his grandfather and made a collage with it
 The image is an invented scenario by mortgaging multiple photographs together meant to invoke a personal dialogue
 Draw inclusively of the photographs taken by Umrao

Question 36

o “The Sher-Gil Family”; central to his work is issue of family and how it shapes identity

Answer 36

 Amrita towards the front (working on the last painting she did — identified as a funeral place/seen as a premonition of her own death)
 Amrita’s sister (Indira) towards the left side of the painting beside the piano
 Amrita’s mother in the very back of the painting who had committed suicide seven years after Amrita’s death
 His grandfather (Umrao) who is in the very back towards the left behind the door in another room
 Isolates the figures to suggest their estrangement
 A painting in the very back as well that is based off another photograph
 Sundaram puts himself in the painting as well by putting him in the back as a child (his identity is a reflection of the family dynamic) — there is also a bullet hole in the reflection of him from where his grandmother had shot herself
 Hardest figure to read is Umrao; was described as “self-preoccupied” — places him intentionally away from the group

Question 37

o Umrao Singh; subjects himself, his family, or the bourgeois Indian family

Answer 37

 Many of his photographs are melancholy in mood — depicts himself as a philosopher/intellectual
 Doesn’t seem to be intimately involved with the everyday activites of raising a family — focused on documenting the family
 More photographs of Amrita rather than her sister Indira — seems to have taken a pleasure in her beauty; captures her in her naturel environment as he saw her
• Many images had fallen into the category of “snapshot”
 The actual title is called “Lovers”— talking about a relationship between the grandfather and daughter