Reverse Glass Painting In India
Paper Type: 150 gsm Art paper (matt) | Size: 228 mm x 228 mm
All colour; 361 colour and 49 black and white photographs; 252 pages; Hardback
ISBN-10: 9385285343 | ISBN-13: 978-93-85285-34-9
1495 | 30 | 24
Has the project to usher in Modernity run its full course and is now ready to be replaced by something called Post-Modern? Re-examining the very idea of Modernity in architecture, and drawing from a number of diverse sources such as philosophy, social science, art and technology, Prof. Mehta argues that the normal historical progression of architectural thought and production suffered an epistemological break in mid-18th century, caused by the separation between architecture and engineering and resulted in increasing rationalization of architecture. Critical writings of several post-Renaissance scholars and academicians aided this process. Prof. Mehta refers to this as “Academic Architecture”. While the pre-Renaissance scholars were content to codify the practice of architecture, the new writings actively sought to construct an identity of architecture to align it with modern science and industry. The overwhelming need to validate architecture from the logico-mathematical perspective favored the cerebral over the existential qualities of architecture. Prof. Mehta asserts that alternatives to the rationalist and positivist narratives always existed in the West and also in several non-Western cultures but the very strong “foregrounding” of Rationalism confined them to the academia. His insightful analysis indicates that the contours of Post Rational architecture are already visible in the works of several contemporary architects.
Anna L. Dallapiccola
Author
Professor Anna L. Dallapiccola has a Ph.D in Indian Art History and a Habilitation
(D.Litt.) from University of Heidelberg, Germany. She was Professor of Indian
Art at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University from 1971 to 1995 and
then appointed as Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University in 1991. She
lectures at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. From 2000 to
2004 she was Visiting Professor at De Montfort University Leicester. Among her
latest publications are Catalogue of South Indian Paintings in the Collection of the British Museum (2010), The Great Platform at Vijayanagara (2010), Indian Painting: The Lesser Known Traditions (2011)
and Kalamkari Temple Hangings, a study
of the collection in the V&A (2015). She has at present two concurrent
research programmes in India, the first on the art of the Vijayanagara
successor states and the second on the Virabhadra temple at Lepakshi.