Skip navigation

University College Dublin Logo
SEARCH UCD

Advanced Search
 
 
 

UCD Events

Title:

Conversations on Art in Ireland - lecture series

Date:

08 April 2008 and 10 April 2008

Venue:

Theatre N in the Newman Building

Organiser: UCD School of Art History & Cultural Policy
Time: 4:00pm (08 April 2008), 3:00pm (10 April 2008)
Contact: Carla Briggs
Audience: All Welcome

Conversations on Art in Ireland - lecture series

Stella Kramrisch Curator of South Asian Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Darielle Mason will deliver two lectures on Rajput Painting, a style of Indian painting that evolved from the 16th century in the various Hindu kingdoms of North India, as part of the Conversations on Art in Ireland lecture series organised by the UCD School of Art History & Cultural Policy.

These lectures form part of a new course at the UCD School of Art History & Cultural Policy entitled Courts & Court Culture of Europe & Asia.  The lectures are open to all and will take place on 08 April 2008 (4:00pm) and on 10 April 2008 (3.00pm) in Theatre N in the Newman Building.

The next lectures in the series will be delivered by Arindam Dutta, Associate Professor of Architectural History at MIT, on the Hindu iconography in Harry Clarke's stained-glass window, The Eve of St Agnes, on
21 April and 23 April.

Organised by the UCD School of Art History & Cultural Policy, Conversations on Art in Ireland is a new lecture series delivered by visiting art historians.

 

Examples of Rajput Painting

The Poet Bihari Offers Homage to Radha and Krishna

The Poet Bihari Offers Homage to Radha and Krishna

Attributed to the master Pahari painter Nainsukh, this is the opening page of the Satasai, a devotional poem by the seventeenth-century writer Bihari. The verse invokes the deities Radha and Krishna, who sit on a jeweled throne. In front of them, a white-robed man bows slightly to the couple. His striped, cloth satchel may hold either the writing tools of a poet or a painter's brushes and pigments. The man is Bihari, honoring his divine inspiration at the beginning of his text. But he is also Nainsukh, whose features included a mustache and
a long neck. Thus, in this subtle masterpiece, Krishna and Radha are both deities and royal patrons, while the man with the satchel is both a devotee and a supplicant artist, both the long-dead poet and the living painter.

 

The Demon Samvara Kidnaps Krishna's Infant Son, Pradyumna

The Demon Samvara Kidnaps Krishna's Infant Son, Pradyumna

After winning the battle for Mathura, Krishna takes the beautiful Rukmini as his queen-but Krishna's adventures are far from over. Soon Rukmini gives birth to a baby boy named Pradyumna. A prophecy has foretold that when the child grows to manhood he will kill the demon Samvara. Samvara learns of the birth and flies to Krishna's palace.

The rest of this episode tells of Pradyumna's rescue, his secret rearing inside the demon's palace, and his eventual fulfillment of the prophecy. This painting shows the moment after the abduction. Rukmini, still in the cloth headband worn during delivery, sits among the stunned palace women as Samvara soars through the air holding Pradyumna

 

Shiva and Parvati at Night (The Immortal Marriage)

Shiva and Parvati at Night (The Immortal Marriage)

In the Himalayan wilderness, the ash-covered god Shiva and his wife, Parvati, rest on the skin of a Bengal tiger, the largest of the cat family and once a favorite for royal hunts. Peacefully curled in sleep is a king cobra, which the god usually wears as a necklace. In the trees above perches a male North Indian ring-necked parrot, with its bright green body, white-circled eye, curving red beak, and black and pink neck rings.

At the bottom left sleeps Shiva's vahana (vehicle), the divine bull named Nandi (Rejoicing). Nandi, who is Shiva's foremost devotee and whose image fronts the sancta of all Shiva's temples, is invariably depicted as a white zebu bull. Zebu, or Brahman, cattle are indigenous to India and by far the most common type of domestic animal. Characterized by a prominent fatty hump between the shoulders and a large dewlap, they are considered sacred by Hindus across India.

>> More News and Events
<< Back to Home

Conversations on Art in Ireland - lecture series