Studies in Asian Art (480-0-1)

Topic

Mughal to Modern

Instructors

Yuthika Sharma

Meeting Info

Kresge 4354 Art Hist. Sem. Rm.: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

South Asia's long 18th century was marked by the rapid fragmentation and violent end of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857), the concurrent rise of Britain's corporate arm, the East India Company followed by British crown rule, the Raj (1860-1947). At the core of this transformation from court to Company to the Raj were artists who were tasked with materializing a colonial vision of India, as they moved beyond the court to the city. This seminar brings parallel art histories of Late Mughal and British colonial and crown rule together to examine the complex modes of artistic experimentation in this period where artists built on the longstanding legacy of cosmopolitanism of Mughal court painting to bridge Mughal and Company tastes, participate in imperial art exhibitions, and service a marketplace for ‘industrial arts.' From British surveys of India's lands and people to the institutionalization of an ‘Indian' art, this seminar will study interactions between Indian artists and their European counterparts across the genres of painting, printmaking, and photography to examine the nature of modernity within a colonial paradigm.