Oriental Art

(Arts of Eastern World)

• The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe.

• The term "Orient" derives from the Latin word oriens meaning "east" (lit.

• For British orientlists it meant different countries of Asia

• Orient as opposed to Occident (West)

• Term has been critiqued a lot as it was used as a derogatory term

Concept of Orientalism

• Orientalism is a term used especially in art for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists

• Orientalism" is widely used in art, to refer to the works of the many 19th century artists, who specialized in "Oriental" subjects, often drawing on their travels to North Africa and Western Asia. .

• In 1978, the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said published his influential and controversial book, Orientalism,

• he used the term to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the East, shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries

• Orientalism drew on concept on exotic

• But still the term Oriental art is used to designate arts and literature of the Eastern world

• Difference between Oriental and Orientalism

Chinese silk painting

• Indian painting

Indus Valley Art I• The Indus Valley is one of the world's earliest urban

civilizations, along with its contemporaries, Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt

• Date: 3300 BCE to 1500 BCE

• The civilization is noted for its cities built of bricks, roadside drainage system, and multistoried houses.

• So planned cities

• Two main cities unearthed – Harappa– Mohenjodaro

• Main sites

• Apart from these recent ones unearthed at

• Dholavira (Gujarat)

• Kalibangan are also important

• The mature phase of Indus Valley Civilization is known as the Harappan Civilization, as the first of its cities to be unearthed was located at Harappa, excavated in the 1920s in what was at the time the Punjab province of British India (now in Pakistan).

• Excavation of Harappan sites have been ongoing since 1920, with important breakthroughs occurring as recently as 1999.

• To date, over 1,052 cities and settlements have been found in both present day India and Pakistan

• Among the settlements were the major urban centres of Harappa, Lothal, Mohenjo-daro (UNESCO World Heritage Site), Dholavira, Kalibanga, and Rakhigarhi.

• Though it seems to have been a very well advanced society we know little about it because the script has not yet been deciphered (cannot be read)

• So a lot of mystery about various facets of the civilization from its origin to extinction

• Harappa city was discovered in 1856 by General Alexander Cunningham accidently while working on a plan of a railway line

• He also discovered some seals in the area

• It was half a century later, in 1912, that more Harappan seals were discovered by J. Fleet, prompting an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall in 1921–22 and resulting in the discovery of the civilization at Harappa by Sir John Marshall, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats, and at Mohenjo-daro by Rakhal Das Banerjee E. J. H. MacKay, and Sir John Marshall.

Mohenjodaro excavated site

Plan for Indus valley cities