HA227: Indian Painting

Reading Guide for week of 8 October

T Oct.8 Rajput: Bikaner, Kishangar, Bundi, Kotah

Reading: Beach, 121-124; 160-168; 178-184; 219-220;

Th Oct.10 Punjab: Basohli, Kangra

Reading: Beach, 168-173; 190-207; 214-216;
Goswamy, “Pahari” (cp)

F Oct.11 (CANCELLED, but do the reading) Discussion: The Gaze, or
Who’s doing the Looking?

Reading: Aitken (cp); Garimella, (cp)

B.N. Goswamy, “Pahari Painting: The Family as the Basis of Style,” Marg, vol.XXI, no.4 (1969), pp.17-62 (glance over this just to have some understanding of the historical complexities and the way in which art historians can use documentary evidence [Goswamy is one of the premierescholars]; otherwise, it’s far too detailed to absorb unless you are doing a research paper on Kangra painting)

Molly Emma, Aitken, “Spectatorship and Femininity in Kangra Style Painting,” in Vidya Dehejia, ed., Representing the Body: gender issues in Indian art (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1997), pp.83-101 (examines the charged and gendered “nature of looking…and spectatorship” in some Pahari court paintings)

Annapurna Garimella, “A Handmaid’s Tale: Sakhis, Love, Devotion, and Poetry in Rajput Painting,” in Love in Asian art and culture (Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), pp.71-95 (read to understand the nuances of the female sakhi figure in some Kangra Gita Govinda and other related paintings; interesting and the important for a subtler interpretation and enjoyment of the paintings and the poetry they make visible)