Table of Contents of the Book 'New Insights of Into Sikh Art' By Kavita Singh

Introduction to the Book 'New Insights Into Sikh Art' By Kavita Singh

Sikh art is usually identified with the glittering court of Ranjit Singh at Lahore. Assuming that the achievements of Lahore are well known, this book looks further afield, at other courts and other noncourtly settings for art, seeking out fascinating and important aspects of Sikh art and cultural heritage that have not often been studied before. Presenting original research on fresh areas, the articles offer new perspectives on the subject.

A major contribution of this volume is its focus on sacred objects and sites which derived not from the art-activity of a royal court, but developed under the direction of the Gurus themselves, or through the collective patronage of a community looking to fulfill its sacred needs. Beginning with an essay that explains important theological developments within Sikhism, the book moves on to study the building projects commissioned by two Gurus: the saintly Guru Arjan, and his warrior son Guru Hargobind. Their personalities encapsulate the double saint-soldier ideal within Sikhism, and their building projects reflects the changing character of the Guruship.  Another important paper studies a range of manuscript of the holy book itself, the Adi Granth Sahib. Here we see the evolving format and style of decoration of Adi Granth manuscript, and it is explained in terms of major cultural shifts in the Panjab from the 17th-19th centuries.

The two essays in this volume that deal with courtly arts both focus on painting at Patiala. One looks at the grand royal frescos in the palace, whose iconographic programme reflects ideals of kingship and is meant to amplify the goodness and the glory of the kings. The other essays looks at the "personal notes" made by the same painters who made the murals - quickly executed and stunningly immediate portrait-sketches of people from the bazaar. The murals and the sketches are both of high quality, and both are unusual and hardly known, suggesting other wonders waiting to be discovered at other Sikh courts.

Finally, the book looks towards the present and the future with essays on the images of and by Sikhs in the modern and contemporary world. This includes the image of Sikhs in photography, from early portraits to today's fashion images; the attempts of early-modern Panjab artists to give form to the Sikh ethos and history; and the grandiose project for the Khalsa Heritage Complex at Anandpur Sahib, that is now under construction and when complete, will probably form the Sikh community's definitive image of itself.

CONTRIBUTORS

Kavita Singh, the guest editor of this volume, is Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Apart from Sikh art, her research interests include the history of museums in India, and Indian painting.

Pashaura Singh holds the Sikh Studies Position at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. He has authored The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority (OUP, 2000)

Gurmeet S. Rai is a Delhi-based conservation architect and director of CRCI (Cultural Resource Conservation Initiative), which is dedicated to documenting, researching, and conserving the architectural heritage of Panjab. The projects undertaken more recently in 2002-03 by CRCI include preparing a conservation plan for Qila Mubarak in Patiala and preparation of the dossier for nominating Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar as a World Heritage Site to Unesco.

Jeevan Singh Deol is Research Fellow in Indian History at St John's College, University of Cambridge. He has published articles in books and academic journals on Sikh history, Sikh art, Panjabi literature, and the Adi Granth.

B. N. Goswamy, a leading authority on Indian art, was till recently Professor of Art History at Panjab University, Chandigarh. He has written extensively, and is the author of several books on paintings from the Pahari schools. In the area of Sikh paintings, his principal works, apart from several essays, are Painters at the Sikh Court (Wiesbaden, 1975), and Piety and Splendour: Sikh Heritage in Art (New Delhi, 2000). Professor Goswamy has been responsible for major exhibitions on Indian art in India and abroad, and has been Visiting Professor at several universities.

Divia Patel is Curator in the South and South-East Asian Section at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and is responsible for contemporary art, popular culture, and 19th-century photography of India. She curated the exhibition Cinema India: The Art of Bollywood at the V&A in 2002, and is co-author of Cinema India: The visual Culture of the Hindi Cinema.

Urmi Kessar recently retired as Chairperson and Professor of Art History at the Department of Fine Arts, Panjab University, Chandigarh. Her Ph.D. thesis was on Social Content in Modern Indian Painting. She continues to be interested in the interface between social context and the resultant artefact. She has contributed several articles to scholarly books and journals, and is currently preparing a dictionary of modern Indian painting.

Anne-Colombe Launois (Sat Kaur) studied History of Art and Museology at the Ecole du Louvre, Paris. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. on the murals of Qila Mubarak, Patiala. She teaches a course in the arts of Indic Asia at the Musee Guimet and was an intern at the V&A's exhibition The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms in London in 1999.