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Distributed for Zubaan Books

Woman’s Eye, Womans Hand

Making Art and Architecture in Modern India

Post-independence, a generation of Indian women entered career fields such as architecture and design that had previously been closed to them. These educated professionals emerged as a pronounced political force—becoming important patrons of art, architecture, and public space—and increasingly became seen as the arbiters of taste and key shapers of the built environment.
 
The essays in this volume address these developments and ask if these women produce art and architecture that specifically reflect a feminine perspective. They also explore how these women, otherwise invisible and largely excluded from public spaces, gained a voice in these male-dominated fields. A pathbreaking reassessment of the contribution of women artists and architects to the modern Indian landscape, Woman’s Eye, Woman’s Hand looks at these questions through both the frame of gender as well as through the frame of family lineage, with particular attention to the continuing importance of women’s patronage of the arts.

224 pages | 78 halftones | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2014

Architecture: Architecture--Criticism

Art: Art--General Studies

Women's Studies


View all books from Seagull Books

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements
 
Introduction
In the Presence of Women
D. Fairchild Ruggles
 
1. Reading Place through Patronage
Begum Samru’s Building Campaign in Early Ninteenth-century India
Alisa Eimen
 
2. Breaking the Rules
Purdah, Self-expression and the Patronage of Maharanis in Jaipur
Catherine B. Asher
 
3. The Buildings of the Begums of Bhopal
"Islamic" Architecture in a Nineteenth-century Indian Princely State
Barbara D. Metcalf
 
4. Memorial Parks to Begum Hazrat Mahan and Mayawati in Lucknow
Cultural Landscape and Political Ideologies
Amita Sinha
 
5. Making Women (In)Visible?
Homespun in the Nationalist Politics of Dress and Identity in Modern India, 1917-1935
Lisa Trivedi
 
6. Seen through a Screen
Doris Duke’s Patronage of South Asian Artists
Sharon Littlefield
 
7. Thinking through Pictures
A Kantian Reading of Amrita Sher-Gil’s Self-portrait as Tahitian
Pradeep A. Dhillon
 
8. Pravina Mehta
A Woman Architect in Post-independence India
Mary N. Woods
 
9. Shifting Boundaries and Creating Identities
Women Architects in India: 1960 Onward
Madhavi Desai
 
About the Editor and Contributors

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