India by design : colonial history and cultural display / Saloni Mathur.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mathur, Saloni.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Orientalism in art.

History.

India--In art.

India.

East Indians in art.

Art, Victorian.

Art, Indic.

Orientalism in art--England--History--19th century.

Orientalism in art--England--History--20th century.

England.

Physical Description:

xi, 219 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2007]

Summary:

"India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display "maps for the first time a series of historical events--from the Raj in the mid-nineteenth century up to the present day--through which India was made fashionable to Western audiences within the popular cultural arenas of the imperial metropole. Situated at the convergence of discussions in anthropology, art history, museum studies, and postcolonial criticism, this dynamic study investigates with vivid historical detail how Indian objects, bodies, images, and narratives circulated through metropolitan space and acquired meaning in an emergent nineteenth-century consumer economy. Through an examination of India as represented in department stores, museums, exhibitions, painting, and picture postcards of the era, the book carefully confronts the problems and politics of postcolonial display and offers an original and provocative account of the implications of colonial practices for visual production in our contemporary world.

Contents:

Introduction. Colonial Patterns, Indian Styles 1

1 The Indian Village in Victorian Space: The Department Store and the Cult of the Craftsman 27

2 "To Visit the Queen": On Display at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 52

3 The Discrepant Portraiture of Empire: Oil Painting in a Global Field 80

4 Collecting Colonial Postcards: Gender and the Visual Archive 109

5 A Parable of Postcolonial Return: Museums and the Discourse of Restitution 133

Epilogue. Historical Afterimages 165.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-209) and index.

ISBN:

9780520234178

0520234170

9780520252318

0520252314

OCLC:

76481430