-Alarmel Valli, dancer, choreographer and Padma Bhushan awardee.
This book is inarguably the definitive and a truly authoritative work on the literary and artistic representation of the body, and combines rare Indian literature with the most stunning visual documentation of the body ever.
Over time, the artistic representation of the body developed its own iconography. Drawing from the canonical Shilpa Shastras, where the idealized body becomes more corporeal, it goes on to attain a classical perfection in the Gupta Age, when the sensuous and the sacred came together. Dr Pande traces the shifting patterns of the representation of the body through 5,000 years of history.
from the ancient to the contemporary. Body Sutra also gives an extraordinary insight into India's pluralistic and diverse culture.
This masterful treatise beautifully weaves together poetry, prose, well-researched text and over two hundred stunning images. With almost each page like a work of art, the book is definitely a collector's item.
Body Sutra is a book that will be talked about for decades.
Some of her prominent books are Ardhanarishvara, the Androgyne: Probing the Gender Within; The New Age Kamasutra for Women; and Shringara: The Many faces of Indian Beauty.
Dr Pande is currently the consultant art advisor and curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi.
In my doctoral research, I came across numerous representations of the Indian body in literature and artistic manifestations through the centuries. The commissioning of this book on the Indian body is in some ways, the natural fruition of my doctoral work, which interrogates the androgynous image of Shiva Ardhanarishvara wherein the primordial god, Shiva, appears in a perfect representation of half-man and half-woman.
I could not think of a more appropriate title for the book than Body Sutra as this book would be the most defining book on the unfolding of the Indian body in art and literature. A sutra is any short rule. Moriz Winternitz calls it 'a theorem condensed in a few words: Of course, the subject is open to much discourse and debate, and has a huge reservoir of unending interpretations. Since I am tracing the evolution of the Indian body from antiquity to present times, the word 'sutra' is most appropriate.
In Body Sutra, I have traced the shifting patterns of representation of the body in Indian art and literature through the survey of over two hundred, eclectically chosen key images which provide an insight into the pluralistic culture of the country.
In the contemporary section, I have made a conscious effort to include photographers who are pushing the envelope of creativity in their specific spaces. Here, I have limited myself to painting and photography.
But he felt no delight... He wished for a second. He was so large as man and wife together. He then made this Self to fall into two (pat), and thence arose husband (pati) and wife (patni).
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