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

  • Mathur, Saloni
Date:
[2007]
  • Books

About this work

Description

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.

Publication/Creation

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2007]

Physical description

xi, 219 pages : black and white illustrations, portraits, facsimiles ; 24 cm

Bibliographic information

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

Contents

Introduction : Colonial patterns, Indian styles -- The Indian village in Victorian space : the department store and the cult of the craftsman -- "To visit the Queen" : on display at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 -- The discrepant portraiture of empire : oil painting in a global field -- Collecting colonial postcards : gender and the visual archive -- A parable of postcolonial return : museums and the discourse of restitution -- Epilogue : Historical afterimages.

Languages

Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    ZHD.23.AA8-9
    Open shelves

Permanent link

Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9780520234178
  • 0520234170
  • 9780520252318
  • 0520252314