Lecture by Dipti Khera, Assistant Professor of Art History, New York University, hosted by COSAS
The idea of pleasure as a pivotal tenet of ideal kingship and the practice of pleasure by courtly communities to formulate and deepen personal and political bonds gains momentum in eighteenth-century South Asia. Paintings, palaces, poetry, and performance create images of pleasures that are easily read as portraits of decadence and triviality of Indian rajas. An inquiry into the dynamic communities formed around associated spaces, images, and texts that sought to create jagvilās, a “world of pleasure,” in the renowned Jagnivas lake-palace at the Rajput court of Udaipur opens our minds to new interpretations and neglected vantage points and archives. The intertwining of pleasure and power, and of the joys of Gods and the delights of Men entices us to ask how we might constitute an art history of pleasure in South Asia. The painted worlds of complete satiation and sensorial excess—friends and frenemies bonding in peculiarly affective ways over the enjoyment of architecture, gardens, music, and food—create images of convivial parties, while shaping in subtle and direct ways courtly connoisseurs, ethics, politics, and aesthetics.
Dates:
Wednesday, March 4, 2020 – 5:00pm
Foster 103