[audiobook] Worship across the Racial Divide: Religious Music and the Multiracial Congregation by Gerardo Marti at Arts-Photography

Description

Art history as it is largely practiced in Asia as well as in the West is a western invention. In India; works of art-sculptures; monuments; paintings-were first viewed under colonial rule as archaeological antiquities; later as architectural relics; and by the mid-20th century as works of art within an elaborate art-historical classification. Tied to these views were narratives in which the works figured; respectively; as sources from which to recover Indias history; markers of a lost; antique civilization; and symbols of a nations unique aesthetic; reflecting the progression from colonialism to nationalism. The nationalist canon continues to dominate the image of Indian art in India and abroad; and yet its uncritical acceptance of the disciplines western orthodoxies remains unquestioned; the original motives and means of creation unexplored. The book examines the role of art and art history from both an insider and outsider point of view; always revealing how the demands of nationalism have shaped the concept and meaning of art in India. The author shows how western custodianship of Indian "antiquities" structured a historical interpretation of art; how indigenous Bengali scholarship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries attempted to bring Indian art into the nationalist sphere; how the importance of art as a representation of national culture crystallized in the period after Independence; and how cultural and religious clashes in modern India have resulted in conflicting "histories" and interpretations of Indian art. In particular; the author uses the depiction of Hindu goddesses to elicit conflicting scenarios of condemnation and celebration; both of which have at their core the threat and lure of the female form; which has been constructed and narrativized in art history. -- Vidya Dehejia; Columbia University