LEADER 07023nam 22007214a 450 001 9910777004803321 005 20210616222600.0 010 $a1-281-89429-X 010 $a9786613792471 010 $a0-231-50351-2 024 7 $a10.7312/guha12998 035 $a(CKB)1000000000445346 035 $a(EBL)909247 035 $a(OCoLC)213305115 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000205350 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11954504 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000205350 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10193015 035 $a(PQKB)11614748 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC909247 035 $a(DE-B1597)458907 035 $a(OCoLC)979909727 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780231503518 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL909247 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10183496 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL379247 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000445346 100 $a20031027d2004 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurnn#---|u||u 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aMonuments, objects, histories$b[electronic resource] $einstitutions of art in colonial and postcolonial India /$fTapati Guha-Thakurta 210 $aNew York $cColumbia University Press$dc2004 215 $a1 online resource (431 p.) 225 1 $aCultures of history 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 0 $a0-231-12998-X 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [373]-391) and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tCONTENTS --$tLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS --$tACKNOWLEDGMENTS --$tINTRODUCTION --$tPART I: The Colonial Past --$t1. The empire and its antiquities: Two pioneers and their scholarly fields --$t2. The museum in the colony: Collecting, conserving, classifying --$tPART II: Regional Frames --$t3. Interlocuting texts and monuments: The coming of age of the "native" scholar --$t4. Between the nation and the region: The locations of a Bengali archaeologist --$t5. Wresting the nation's prerogative: Art history and nationalism in Bengal --$tPART III: National Claims --$t6. The demands of independence: From a national exhibition to a national museum --$t7. "For the greater glory of Indian art": Travels and tray ails of a Yashi --$tPART IV: The Embattled Present --$t8. Art history and the nude: On art, obscenity, and sexuality in contemporary India --$t9. Archaeology and the monument: On two contentious sites of faith and history --$tNotes --$tBibliography --$tIndex 330 $aArt 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 India's history, markers of a lost, antique civilization, and symbols of a nation's 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 discipline's 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. Monuments, Objects, Histories is a critical survey of the practices of archaeology, art history, and museums in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India. The essays gathered here look at the processes of the production of lost pasts in modern India: pasts that come to be imagined around a growing corpus of monuments, archaeological relics, and art objects. They map the scholarly and institutional authority that emerged around such structures and artifacts, making of them not only the chosen objects of art and archaeology but also the prime signifiers of the nation's civilization and antiquity. The close imbrication of the "colonial" and the "national" in the making of India's archaeological and art historical pasts and their combined legacy for the postcolonial present form one of the key themes of the book. Monuments, Objects, Histories offers both an insider's and an outsider's perspective on the growth of these scholarly fields and their institutional apparatus, analyzing the ways they have constituted and recast their objects of study. The book moves from a period that saw the consolidation of western expertise and custodianship of India's "antiquities," to the projection over the twentieth century of varying regional, nativist, and national claims around the country's architectural and artistic inheritance, into a current period that has pitched these objects and fields within a highly contentious politics of nationhood. Monuments, Objects, Histories traces the framing of an official national canon of Indian art through these different periods, showing how the workings of disciplines and institutions have been tied to the pervasive authority of the nation. At the same time, it addresses the radical reconfiguration in recent times of the meaning and scope of the "national," leading to the kinds of exclusions and chauvinisms that lie at the root of the current endangerment of these disciplines and the monuments and art objects they encompass. 410 0$aCultures of history. 606 $aNationalism and art$zIndia$xHistory$y19th century 606 $aNationalism and art$zIndia$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aArt$xHistoriography 606 $aArchaeology$xResearch$zIndia$xHistory 606 $aArt, Indic 607 $aIndia$xColonial influence 615 0$aNationalism and art$xHistory 615 0$aNationalism and art$xHistory 615 0$aArt$xHistoriography. 615 0$aArchaeology$xResearch$xHistory. 615 0$aArt, Indic. 676 $a701/.03/0954 700 $aGuha-Thakurta$b Tapati$01480010 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910777004803321 996 $aMonuments, objects, histories$93696465 997 $aUNINA