Indian Painting: The Lesser-Known Traditions

India has an astonishingly rich variety of painting traditions. While miniature painting schools became virtually extinct with the decline of aristocratic patronage, a number of local vernacular idioms still survive and continue to develop, adjusting to social and political changes. The present collection of papers is the volume of the proceedings of the conference Indian Painting: The Lesser-Known Traditions, held in Houston in 2008. The aim of the conference was to highlight these lesser-known artistic expressions grouped, until the recent past, under the heading of ’folk art’. These artistic expressions are now beginning to be recognized as of pivotal importance for an understanding of the social setting in which they have evolved. The essays concentrate on the following geographical areas: Assam, Bengal, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The timespan covered by the works discussed by the contributors ranges from the late seventeenth century to the present day.