Understanding Indian Art

The present volume generates a liaison between the past and present. It reveals a dignified unity in Indian art which regulates its future. An appraisal of the art of India since ancient times with a case study of S.P. Verma’s innovations and experiments, is a novel introduction to an ingenious artist?a very controlled creative painter and one of the India’s senior scholars of Mughal painting. The book illumines the values and concerns that shaped attitudes to creative activity and provides an accessible unfolding of valuable Indian traditions. It entrusts the real ferment of contemporary art in India which seems to lie in its diversity and vitality. Here worthiness of art works is interpreted in terms of an aesthetic and ingenuity. Verma’s collage-cum-graphic art generates a distinct feasible technique with atypical mode of communication which imprints his addition to the contemporaneous art. Indian art embedded with respect for spirituality is infused with ideas and abstractions. Modern Indian art, too, is occupied with it, and Verma is not an exception to it. The present book illuminated with 160 plates in colour and black-and-white is a sumptuous work of art?an endowment for all of us. The textual outlines conserve the essential contours of the historical evolution of Indian art and familiarize the reader with the masterpieces of the heritage which have been illustrated to the maximum extent possible. The selection of illustrations, like the richest cream at the top of the milk, is the intense essence of their culture, to be savoured slowly and completely. Everyone can enjoy their virtuosity and naturalism; but the more one learns about India, the more nourshing the paintings. In this book, Ghosh has tried to open wide the Indian door. The volume will be of great value to anyone who wishes to understand the composite cultural history of India?a matter of immediate importance. This book is significant for the wide appeal it commands?it will not only interest students of cultural studies, but also art historians and connoisseurs of art, as well as by anyone interested in Indian art.