Studies in Asian Art (480-0-1)

Topic

Empire Redux (1739-1857): Mughal Art & Spatiality

Instructors

Yuthika Sharma

Meeting Info

Kresge 4354 Art Hist. Sem. Rm.: Wed 1:00PM - 3:50PM

Overview of class

Empire Redux charts the rise of a native modernist vision that emerged in negotiation with, and in resistance to, European colonial imperatives of spatial, ethnographic, and material control of the late Mughal empire. At par with Iberian and the Ottoman empires, the Mughal empire had extended over much of Central and South Asia since its inception in the 16th century. However, South Asia's long 18th century was marked by the rapid decentralization of the late Mughal State, Iranian, and Afghan invasions, and its gradual colonial takeover by the British East India Company in a period seen as a crisis of the Mughal State. In this phase, marked by large-scale migration of artists and literati fleeing the capital Delhi to the regional provinces, only a fledgling group of artists remained who were positioned at the nexus of exchange of power and patronage from the Mughals to the British. The seminar analyzes a new set of politically operative works which sought to recover the spatial, embodied, and performative histories of Mughal rule in a normative colonial sphere. Through themes focusing on cartography, court painting, urbanism, portraiture, ethnography, and souvenirs, this seminar will formulate the preconditions of a paradigmatic ‘spatial and material turn' in 18th century artistic practice that not only upended the Company's provincializing and racializing approaches, but also reformulated the Mughal as de rigueur, recalibrating the parameters of colonial taste and consumption in Anglo-Mughal society.

Class Materials (Required)

Course readings will be available on Canvas.