Indian Miniature Painting: Manifestation of a Creative Mind

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Indian Miniature Painting: Manifestation of a creative Mind comes out with a new perception of Indian miniature art.  The book examines not merely its body but also its inherent soul, underlying unity, ethos it represents and factors that shaped it across the period from the seventh century onwards.  Here reveals a totally different approach-aesthetic as well as formal, and in both cases bold, investigating and analytical.  The significance of the conventional line is not subverted but while moving along the ‘conventional’ the book marks, and rather more emphatically, a subtle departure from it by exploring many new dimensions of the miniature painting not explored ever before, and by re-investigating also the ‘conventional’.  For conceptual clarity the book has been divided into two parts, one, re-looking into its material for its origin, growth provenance and regional and stylistic distinctions-more or less a conventional approach, and the other, discovering a number of fresh avenues leading to a fuller appreciation and understanding of the width and dimensions of Indian miniature painting.  It distinguishes, and perhaps for the first time, the term ‘style’ from the term ‘school’, the style used for rendering a narrative from the one dramatizing a theme or situation, the theme which has a narrative character from the one having dramatic thrust; as also different genres of miniature painting, a portrait from a theme based painting or from a painting of a grotesque form, a landscape from a pastoral or natural background occurring incidentally in a theme painting, and even one mode of landscape from the other.  The book perceives Indian Miniature painting using the same set of creative tools as uses literature.  It not only defines each one with great clarity but also identifies the role they play in creating a miniature.  It is amazingly delightful to see how transcending its lines, colours, anatomy and its entire visible world each miniature reveals a context different from what it has been considered revealing so far.  Not an element, fiction has in miniature painting a voluminous presence and decisive role, and, so has realism; and a majority of miniatures might be classified on the two lines.  A miniature painting does not render so much a divine form as its own image of the ‘Divine’, and, not so much the visible world as its own perception of it.  The book’s visual aspect is as strong.  Perhaps no other book on Indian miniature painting might claim to include such a huge number and wide range of visuals, majority of them being published in a work of this stature for the first time.  Each of the miniatures used in the book has contextual relevance.  The text-visual ratio and art books’ usual trend these days might lead one to consider it a coffee-table book.  Even if so, in the form of a coffee-table book here is a profound academic endeavour revealing years of researching and observation, and combining thus academics with coffee-tablism the book sets a new trend.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Daljeet

An eminent art scholar Dr. Daljeet, is the Curator in-charge of the Department of Painting, National Museum, New Delhi.  Several books, catalogues, portfolios and articles on Indian Art and Painting are to her credit.  She began her career as an archaeologist, and traveled in India and abroad extensively in connection with her studies and work.  Her prestigious volume on the Mughal and Deccani paintings from the collection of the National Museum, New Delhi, has been widely acclaimed by the scholars and art connoisseurs.  Her other noteworthy works are Shakuntala, Immortal Miniatures and Monuments of India.  Shakuntala and Monuments of India are authored jointly with Prof. P.C. Jain.  She was awarded jointly with Prof P.C. Jain Delhi State Award-Vishist Kriti Samman 2002-2003 for their book entitled "Krishna: Raga se Viraga Tak".  In 1999, she was commissioned by the Government of Punjab to set up a special exhibition on the Sikh Heritage at Anandpur Sahib in connection with the Tercentenary Celebrations of the Birth of the Khalsa.  The culmination of this has led to her book "The Sikh Heritage: A Search for Tatality" published in 2004. "Sri Harimandar Sahib: the Body Visible of the Invisible Supreme", In English and Gurmukhi, another recent work authored jointly with Prof. P.C. Jain, has been well received by art lovers in general and Sikh community in particular.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR P C Jain

P.C. Jain obtained his Master's degree in economics, History and Political Science from Agra University, and Ph.D. on the History of the Hindu Society in Pre-mutiny nineteenth century. He is a versatile genius and widely-read scholar. He is head of the Department of History in a P.G. College of the Rohilkhand University. Dr. Jain has contributed many articles to reputed journals. He has attended various state and national conferences on social sciences. He is widely travelled and has minutely studied the life and manners of the people of different places from a sociological as well as historical point of view. At present he is engaged in rewriting the regional and social history of the present state of Uttar Pradesh.

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Bibliographic information

Title
Indian Miniature Painting: Manifestation of a Creative Mind
Author
Edition
1st ed.
Publisher
ISBN
9788183852272
Length
288p., Plates; Figures; Bibliography; 31cm.
Subjects