Exam 3 Flashcards
East India Company
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
Queen Victoria
o 1877 Queen Victoria assumed title of Empress of India and claims sovereignty over Indian states
o “Victoria and Abdul”
Swadeshi movement
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
James Fergusson - “History of Indian and Eastern Architecture”
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
John Ruskin
o He believed naturalism was the foundation for all art, strived to imitate nature
Viceroy
o Envisioned New Delhi as the garden city
o Western architecture with an Indian motif
Edwin Lutyens
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
“Chhajja”
o Overhanging eaves of a roof
Chhatri
o Small kiosk
Company Painting
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”.
Lady Mary Impey
o Commissioned Mughal trained indian artists to record indigenous animals and plants. Style in meticulously realistic in line with tastes of their patrons
Madras famine of 1877 – 1878
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
3 Stages of Architectural Evolution
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
Company painting – How much do artists “adjust” style to suit Western tastes?
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.
The Bengal School
o Sher-Gil believed the Bengal School had become slavish imitation of western art or an “empty formula”
Ravi Varma
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
Abanindranath Tagore
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
Gaganendranath Tagore
Some Indian artists dialogue with European movements like cubism
Used his art to allude to narratives meant to be evocative
Kakuzo Okakura
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
Amrita Sher-Gil
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?
o Some have questioned how genuine Amrita Sheriff-Gil’s concern for the poor was?
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.
Meera Mukherjee:
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
o “Ashoka at Kalinga”
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
Dhorka
o Bastar tribe
o Lost wax casting technique
