Asanas and art in America A new exhibition that traces the depiction of yoga through the past few centuries is set to open at the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum complex

Asanas and art in America

A new exhibition that traces the depiction of yoga through the past few centuries is set to open at the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum complex

Archana Khare Ghose | TNN

    Did you know that the great inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931) made a film called Hindoo Fakir in 1902 which is widely regarded as the first movie ever produced by the West about India? The film’s protagonist displays a variety of tricks for the camera quite a few of which could be classified as yogic postures. This film will now find a place in one of the most prestigious exhibitions about India that opens in Washington DC in October next year, called Yoga: The Art of Transformation.
    The first major exhibition on the art of yoga and its depiction through various forms of art through centuries, it has been designed to mark 25 years of the Arthur M Sackler Gallery on the National Mall, Washington DC. The National Mall is home to the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum complex where the Arthur M Sackler Gallery complements the older Freer Gallery in serving as Smithsonian’s museums of Asian Art.
    The exhibition will feature more than 100 works on the theme, sourced from 25 museums and private collections in India, the US and Europe, according to Debra Diamond, associate curator, South and South East Asian Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M Sackler Gallery. “I’ve been working on it since 2008 and have been joined by many scholars on the project. It brings together works created between 3rd century CE and 20th century CE. Yoga is a household word the world over, but no one has looked at its visual culture holistically before; we think the exhibition will delight and inform broad audiences,” says Diamond.
    Besides Edison’s film, some other highlights of the exhibition are three monumental stone Yogini goddesses from a 10th century Chola temple and 10 folios from the first illustrated compilation of asanas made for Mughal emperor Akbar in 1602. Besides temple sculptures, illustrated manuscripts and court paintings, the selection will also feature ephemera, books, photographs, missionary postcards, magic posters, medical illustrations, iconographic manuals and early films.
    Diamond says she got hooked to the subject of yoga while she was researching for her earlier critically acclaimed 2008 exhibition, Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. “I became interested because I had questions about Jodhpur artworks that weren’t answered in the available literature. As I looked at more yoga-related objects from other places and periods, I saw that the scholarship on yoga’s history and meanings often seemed to contradict the evidence of material culture,” says Diamond.
    Garden and Cosmos helped in changing quite a bit the way Indian art was viewed in the US until then and Diamond feels that through exhibitions on Indian art, Freer-Sackler galleries have helped in raising awareness about art from the country. “Americans are much more sophisticated about India and Indian art today than they were twenty-five years ago.”
    Talking about yet another recent exhibition from India, Diamond says, “This past summer’s exhibition,
Worlds within Worlds: Imperial Paintings from India and Iran, looked at the relationship between Mughal and Persian paintings; it revealed what the Mughals borrowed from Persia and what was distinctly Indian. Many visitors were particularly interested in these historical inter-connections.” Besides historical exhibitions, the galleries have also begun showcasing contemporary art from India. Informs Diamond, “We have presented contemporary artists like Ravinder Reddy, Anish Kapoor and Simryn Gill. Ten years ago, audiences seemed to focus on the national origins of artists – now there is a more profound appreciation of contemporary Indian and Indian-origin artists as participants in a global conversation.”
    The Sackler gallery, set up by American physician, medical publisher and philanthropist Arthur M Sackler with a donation of 1000 works of Asian art, had opened weeks after the patron had passed away in May 1987. To mark its silver jubilee this year, the gallery was gifted $5 million by the founder’s widow, Dame Jillian Sackler.
    archana.khare@timesgroup.com 

A bronze Narasimha in a Yoga posture, circa 1250 CE