Throughout history the Indian subcontinent has attracted wave after wave of traders, invaders, and empire builders. As a result this region has accrued a culture of astonishing diversity. Just how varied this culture is was vividly demonstrated in a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. INDIA! displayed six hundred years of Indian art, from 1300--the time of the great Muslim invasions--to 1900, when the subcontinent was largely under British rule.
The general American conception of Indian art is perhaps quite monolithic, but the Metropolitan's landmark show, which closed January 5, will probably be remembered for having significantly broadened, and to some extent redefined, the typical image of Indian art in the popular American imagination.
Six years in the making, INDIA! which became a central event in the 1985-1986 nationwide Festival of India, was an exhibition unlike any other previously assembled in the United States. Not only were all regions of the subcontinent represented, in itself an unusual undertaking, but the varied traditions of sacred, court, urban, folk, and tribal art were all included in a stunning display of over three hundred carefully chosen objects. The exhibition unfortunately will not travel.
In the entryway to the exhibit, three photographs of contemporary India introduced themes that permeate all Indian art: the centrality of the sacred and the spiritual, and the profound closeness to the body of nature. This unexpected bonding of the spiritual and the earthly gives Indian art unique power and vitality.
Upon crossing the threshold into the treasure-rooms of Indian art, fifteenth-century bronze statues of the Hindu god Shiva and his consort Parvati formed a second and more profound gateway to the heart of Indian culture. As Shiva is the god of creation and destruction, responsible for ending each age once it has run its cycle, his presence served as an appropriate introduction to a turbulent era of invasion and change.
The first display room was devoted to the Great Tradition--the classic Hindu style as it survived in southern India during the time of Muslim rule in the north. The bronze statues, vessels, ivories, painted miniatures, wall hangings, and weapons in this room dated from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries. An impressive variety of approaches was evident. Some works, for example, bore a faint imprint of Mughal influence--itself intermixed with Chinese and Hellenistic elements--while other works showed a startling kinship to ancient Mesopotamian styles. Nevertheless, one was struck by the prevailing homogeneity of Hindu subjects and interpretations throughout centuries of art.
The dominant characteristic of traditional Indian art and culture is its spirituality. Most traditional works of art were religiously motivated; even the pieces that were not explicitly created for devotional purposes partook of an intensely devout spirit. In a society where a complex caste system lent long-lasting stability, and in which priests formed the uppermost caste, art preserved to a marked degree ancient themes and styles. From these, seemingly endless strands of variations were spun, as revealed in the exhibit. Some styles were refined and formal, whereas others were robust and spontaneous in
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