A KEYSTONE OF 'MANUSCRIPT' PAINTING

The important manuscript of the history of Indian painting introduces cultural civilization and historical series. Ever since man hit the first scratch on the wall of the cave, he realized his art stability. In ancient times, man used to create different types of line drawings and figures from chadis or georimitti to express his feelings. Gradually the development of the script led to the work of writing on Bhikti paintings, inscriptions, copper plates, banquets. The manuscripts are also unique works of writing and illustration. भारतीय चित्रकला के इतिहास का महत्वपूर्ण पृष्ठ पाण्डुलिपि सांस्कृतिक सभ्यता और ऐतिहासिक श्रृखंला का परिचय देती है। जब से मनुष्य ने गुफा की दीवार पर पहली खरोंच मारी उसे अपनी कला स्थिरता का ज्ञान हुआ। प्राचीन काल में मनुष्य अपने मनोभावों की अभिव्यक्ति के लिए खड़िया अथवा गेरूमिट्टी से विभिन्न प्रकार के रेखा चित्रों एवं आकृतियों की रचना किया करता था। धीरे-धीरे लिपि का विकास होने पर भिक्ति चित्रों षिलालेखों, ताम्रपत्रों, भोजपत्रांे पर लेखन का कार्य किया गया। पाण्डुलिपियां भी लेखन व चित्रण की अनुपम कृति है।

The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting

This book constitutes the first exploration of artistic self-reflection in Islamic art. In the absence of a tradition of self-portraiture, how could artists signal their presence within a painting? Centred on late Timurid manuscript painting (ca. 1470-1500), this book reveals that pictures could function as the painter’s delegate, charged with the task of centring and defining artistic work, even as they did not represent the artist’s likeness. Influenced by the culture of the majlis, an institutional gathering devoted to intricate literary performances and debates, late Timurid painters used a number of strategies to shift manuscript painting from an illustrative device to a self-reflective object, designed to highlight the artist’s imagination and manual dexterity. These strategies include visual abundance, linear precision, the incorporation of inscriptions addressing aspects of the painting and the artist’s signature. Focusing on one of the most iconic manuscripts of the Persianate tradition, the Cairo Bustan made in late Timurid Herat and bearing the signatures of the painter Bihzad, this book explores Persian manuscript painting as a medium for artistic performance and self-representation, a process by which artistic authority was shaped and discussed. In addition, each chapter explores a different theme: how painters challenged the conventions of royal representation (chapter 1); the role of writing in painting, its relation to ekphrasis and the context of the majlis (chapter 2); image, mimesis and potential world (Chapter 3); the line and its calligraphic quality (Chapter 4); signature (Chapter 5); the mobility of manuscripts (epilogue).

Calligraphic Line

In late Timurid manuscript painting, the area devoted to the illustration of the story narrated in the manuscript shrank dramatically, while a multitude of non-illustrative forms proliferated. Painting became filled with figures and motifs that bore no apparent relationship to the surrounding text. This chapter argues that visual abundance destabilized illustration in order to reference taswir, the process of image making. Aspects of composition and technique such as the painting’s even surface and its grid-like composition further lauded the artist’s creative power. This chapter also shows that painting became a metamedium, designed to interrogate the ontological boundaries of painting and to define its relationship, not to the world as we see it but to God’s creation, to the ideal forms and concepts from which reality was created. As such painting represented potential, rather than actual, worlds.

Painting about Painting

This book constitutes the first exploration of artistic self-reflection in Islamic art. In the absence of a tradition of self-portraiture, how could artists signal their presence within a painting? Centred on late Timurid manuscript painting (ca. 1470-1500), this book reveals that pictures could function as the painter’s delegate, charged with the task of centring and defining artistic work, even as they did not represent the artist’s likeness. Influenced by the culture of the majlis, an institutional gathering devoted to intricate literary performances and debates, late Timurid painters used a number of strategies to shift manuscript painting from an illustrative device to a self-reflective object, designed to highlight the artist’s imagination and manual dexterity. These strategies include visual abundance, linear precision, the incorporation of inscriptions addressing aspects of the painting and the artist’s signature. Focusing on one of the most iconic manuscripts of the Persianate tradition, the Cairo Bustan made in late Timurid Herat and bearing the signatures of the painter Bihzad, this book explores Persian manuscript painting as a medium for artistic performance and self-representation, a process by which artistic authority was shaped and discussed. In addition, each chapter explores a different theme: how painters challenged the conventions of royal representation (chapter 1); the role of writing in painting, its relation to ekphrasis and the context of the majlis (chapter 2); image, mimesis and potential world (chapter 3); the line and its calligraphic quality (chapter 4); signature (chapter 5); the mobility of manuscripts (epilogue).

AGENCY, ALTERITY, APPROPRIATION: POSTCLASSIC LOWLAND MAYA USES AND MODIFICATIONS OF THE “MIXTECA-PUEBLA” OR “INTERNATIONAL” STYLE

Maya participation in the Postclassic Mixteca-Puebla or International Style has long been recognized in murals and manuscript painting. Recent explanations for Maya adoptions/modifications of this central Mexican style have shifted from invasion or “influence” to emphasize the active and selective participation of the Maya. I examine two examples, the solar murals of Mayapan and Flores Stela 4, to elucidate how they reflect Maya uses of the Mexican Other in service of local political and religious power. I argue that these works represent a Late Postclassic continuation of a long Maya tradition of using central Mexican forms and iconography as exotic ideological “prestige goods” reinforcing the legitimacy of local elites. They cannot be understood apart from the previous history of interactions between the Maya and central Mexico, particularly in the Early Postclassic, and some of the “Mexican” elements in these examples may derive from Maya-Mexican interactions during this earlier time.For Eloise Quiñones Keber, and in memory of H.B. Nicholson