This revised and enlarged edition of The Arts of India has over 150 impressive gravure and full-color illustrations. These include various important objects and monuments not usually seen in general surveys to supplement the many essential art milestones that this book features. It is also unique in beginning its visual survey with relics of India's stone age and in concluding the book with works from the nation's great folk tradition and selected paintings by modern artists....

Over the last five thousand years, Indian artists have developed a wide range of unique and decorative artistic styles. This rich collection of copyright-free designs and motifs draws on that heritage to provide today's artists and designers with a stimulating and practical archive of usable material.In this volume are designs adapted from seals, dolls, and toys of the Harappa culture; punch-marked coins and pottery from South India; Ajanta and Bagh murals; Muslim monuments; Buddhis...

Stretching from the ancient Chinese capital of Xian across the expanses of Central Asia to Rome, the Silk Road was, for 1,500 years, a vibrant network of arteries that carried the lifeblood of nations across the world. Along a multitude of routes everything was exchanged: exotic goods, art, knowledge, religion, philosophy, disease and war. From the East came silk, precious stones, tea, jade, paper, porcelain, spices and cotton; from the West, horses, weapons, wool and linen, aromatics, ent...

This book explains and illustrates as many varieties of Ming ceramics as possible. The text is based primarily on information obtained from Chinese sources and the occasional notes made by Europeans who visited China in Ming times. To these, Mr. Hobson has added his own penetrating deductions, made after careful study of well-authenticated specimens and of observation by earlier scholars. His presentation is not only clear and precise but also incontestably authoritative and at the same ti...

This book aims at combating the Hostility Theory which claims that the Christians in the pagan Roman Empire had no images and rejected them as idolatrous. Did the early Christians, during the first three centuries, 33–313, have images in their churches or places of worship and homes? If they did not, was that because they thought that all images were idols or close to being idols? Did they think that making and having images of Old Testament people and events as well as of Jesus, the apost...

This volume contains writings on the 'Royal Period' (1626-1700), as distinguished from the 'Peshwa Period' of Maratha history, and added a long life of Malik Ambar (from original Persian sources) and biographies of four eminent Marathi historical research-pioneers, Rajwade, Sane, Khare and Parasnis. The materials have come from Persian manuscripts (patiently gathered during a life-time), newly discovered Rajasthani despatches, Portuguese documents, French books, English factory records, and M...

Influenced by the German use of paratroopers early in World War Two, General Sir Robert Cassels, the Commander-in-Chief India, ordered the formation of an airborne cadre in October 1940.Thus marked the origins of India's first élite units. Pakistan can trace the origins of its own army airborne to the common parentage of British-raised forces. Following the partition from India in August 1947, it raised its own Special Service Group, with individually specialised c...

“The Devil holds the strings which move us!” (Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, 1857.) Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer… the Devil has many names and faces, all of which have always served artists as a source of inspiration. Often commissioned by religious leaders as images of fear or veneration, depending on the society, representations of the underworld served to instruct believers and lead them along the path of righteousness. For other artists, such as Hieronymus Bosch, they provided a...

With over 630 striking color photos and illustrations, this Chinese art guide focuses on the rich tapestry of symbolism which makes up the basis of traditional Chinese art.Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery includes detailed commentary and historical background information for the images that continuously reappear in the arts of China, including specific plants and animals, religious beings, mortals and inanimate objects. The book thoroughly...

Pour apprécier l'icône orthodoxe, il faut comprendre plusieurs éléments à la fois : l'histoire, la théologie, l'objet d'art, les artistes. D'abord, l'histoire : l'iconographie s'est développée à travers de longs siècles, atteignant de nobles cimes, puis des abîmes de décadence. Ensuite, la théologie : les icônes proposent une vision du salut de l'homme et de la transfiguration de la création. Troisièmement, l'objet d'art lui-même : avant tout, une icône est une « chose » matérielle créée p...

The Arts of Thailand examines the stunning visual history of Art in Thailand.Blending a multiplicity of cultural influences with their own artistic genius, the Thai people have created some of the world's finest art. In this definitive introduction to Thai art, author Steve Van Beek takes a wide-ranging look at how these diverse forces were fused into a wealth of art forms which are uniquely Thai. As a means to a fuller understanding of Thai culture, he ex...

Images can be studied in many ways--as symbols, displays of artistic genius, adjuncts to texts, or naturally occurring phenomena like reflections and dreams. Each of these approaches is justified by the nature of the image in question as well as the way viewers engage with it. But images are often something more when they perform in ways that exhibit a capacity to act independent of human will. Images come alive--they move us to action, calm us, reveal the power of the divine, change the w...