Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 258-266).

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

My dissertation explores the formative stages of European interest in, engagement with and consumption of Indian pictorial art over a period of one hundred and fifty years, from the mid-16th century up to the early 18th century. During this period, European cabinets of curiosities witnessed the arrival of increasing numbers of a previously unknown class of collectible: Indian paintings on paper. Interest in these paintings was spurred by a growing curiosity about the East, combined with a general re-orientation of the European system of knowledge towards a more “scientific” methodology of inquiry, which encouraged a revision of the stereotypes that had informed medieval European conceptions of India through engagement with original sources. The relevance of this phenomenon to the history of early modern exchanges between India and Europe can hardly be overstated. Yet, modern scholarship has tended to ignore it, focusing instead on the Indian fascination with and reception of European artistic forms and techniques. This dissertation seeks to develop a more exhaustive picture of the early modern artistic encounter between India and the West, one in which European consumption of Indian paintings is dutifully represented and India plays an active role in the emerging system of knowledge. The starting and central point of my investigation consists of the vast and diversified collection of Indian paintings gathered by a Venetian traveler to India, Niccolò Manucci (1638-ca. 1720), as a visual accompaniment to his travel account, the so-called Storia do Mogor. This collection, which has remained largely ignored, makes a crucial case-study for approaching issues relative to the nature of European interest in Indian paintings in early modernity, the contexts and modalities through which this interest was articulated, as well as its relevance to processes of knowledge making and identity construction that were prompted by European encounters with alterities. The first part of my study provides an in-depth analysis of Manucci’s collection performed through a careful examination of the paintings it comprises along with contemporary textual sources, including the original manuscripts of the Storia do Mogor. My analysis exposes the interrelatedness of Manucci’s collecting enterprise with his authorial project, as well as assessing its broader scope and intended aims. The second part of the dissertation situates this collecting enterprise within its broader historical context by examining other European collections of Indian paintings dating from the 16th and 17th centuries and characterized by comparable subject matter: portraits of historical and living personages associated with Indo-Muslim dynasties, depictions of native Indian peoples and socio-religious customs, and representations of deities of the Hindu pantheon. Besides delving into the specifics of these collections, I explore their dialogic relation to one another and to descriptive practices and interpretative discourses that gained shape in European travel writing and print culture. In doing so, I highlight their participation in broader cultural trends and their contribution to evolving European approaches towards the Orient. This corpus of largely neglected works offers precious insights into the complex dynamics of cross-cultural encounter, as well as exposing the pivotal role played by early modernity in shaping later trends in Indo-European artistic interactions. Offering a direct antecedent to “Company painting,” a 19th-century Indian pictorial genre for European consumption, these works call for a revision of traditional understandings of the latter as an artistic development prompted by the rise of British colonial interests and agendas, and invite a broader reassessment of a unique historical era – the early modern one – that is key to understanding the roots of institutionalized Orientalism.

This dissertation traces the life and afterlife of the short-lived, dismembered (and for several decades, disremembered) collection housed at the East India Company headquarters at Leadenhall Street in London—the India Museum. While much has been written on the amassing of objects and the building of colonial collections, little attention has been paid to the obverse act—dissolution. This study delves into the furor surrounding the India Museum’s fragmentation, examines its recharacterization during politically expedient moments, traces its legacies at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, and explores parallels between colonial and contemporary (mis)interpretations of the collection. Centering this dissertation on the afterlife rather than simply the inception of the India Museum reveals that the collection retained its identity as a unified body in the British imagination decades after its dispersal. Questioning at what point a museum ceases to exist and how dissolved collections continue to circulate, this dissertation seeks to challenge conventional understandings of museum histories and proposes a longue durée approach for interpreting and engaging with these narratives. The opening chapter, Expanding the Narrative, offers a new perspective on the institution by foregrounding visual representations and incorporating historically overlooked accounts. This inclusive, image-centric approach aims to contribute a previously unconsidered angle to scholarship on the Museum. The second chapter, “All the Queen’s Horses and All the Queen’s Men”: The Dispersal of the India Museum, examines the critical yet under-theorized moment of the Museum’s dissolution. It applies an analytical lens to the collection’s fragmentation, explores the varying motivations behind the distribution of objects, and contextualizes the dissolution within the broader milieu of nineteenth-century collections in Britain. The third chapter, From “Hugger-Mugger” to “Tangible Monument”: Collective Memory and the India Museum, suggests that the India Museum retained its identity as a distinct entity decades after its absorption into South Kensington. This study demonstrates how the notoriously heterogeneous East India Company collection was reimagined in the early twentieth century as far more comprehensive and stable than it had ever been in its lifetime, and was ultimately reframed as being of critical import to the imperial project. The final chapter, Lingering Legacies: The India Museum Collection Today, examines the present-day manifestations of the dispersed collection, primarily at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum. It evaluates how effectively these institutions engage with the colonial context of their acquisitions and explores the collection’s framing in physical and digital spaces, including through consideration of discrepancies between gallery narratives and digital representations. The epilogue, The Specter of Empire, reflects on the evolving diplomatic, legal, and ethical positions surrounding the repatriation of Indian antiquities. The charged nature of returning objects from the India Museum collection is discussed in light of the continual reformulations of the colonial past in the former metropole and colony. Against the backdrop of imperial amnesia, rising nationalist sentiment, and the reevaluation of the colonial past in Britain and India, this dissertation highlights the necessity for academically grounded examinations of colonial-era collecting practices. This study suggests that only through a comprehensive understanding of institutional histories and complex object biographies can the circulation, interpretation, and potential restitution of these contested artifacts be effectively navigated in the present day.

This dissertation develops a history of experimental art emerging in India in the final decades of the twentieth century. It addresses the turn to video, performance and mixed-media installation – conceptually driven, circulation friendly, critical artistic modes – by artists who share a generational consciousness, shaped in part by their class position and metropolitan location. My arguments are constructed through a historical and formal analysis of significant transformations in the works of two Bombay-based artists, Nalini Malani (b. 1946) and Rummana Hussain (1952- 1999), between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s. This post-Emergency period is marked by the spectacle, symbolism and horror of the Babri Masjid demolition (December 1992) and numerous instances of targeted violence against minority communities (1984, 1992-93, 2002). The coinciding legislative passage of economic liberalization (1991) also had far-reaching implications, including a decline in state dominance over culture and artistic patronage. I contend that these dramatic shifts in the market, media and art institutional landscape catalyzed the development of postmodernist art practices. As artists like Malani and Hussain confronted the limitations and failings of their postcolonial, cosmopolitan imaginaries, their artistic responses were driven by the affective and reflexive tendencies of despair and melancholia, enlivening radical praxis in the face of derailments and lost causes. My work problematizes the notion of rupture that has often been deployed in discussions of these artist’s trajectories, referring to the transition from conventional formats of oil painting and sculpture towards expanded media experiments⁠. This study examines both specific shifts and underlying continuities in the formal and conceptual registers of the practices in question, while situating theoretical debates around postmodernism, feminism, periodization and artistic generation in the context of India.