Painted songs
Subtitle: continuity and change in Indian folk art
By: Thomas Kaiser ; [translation German-English, Joan Clough]
Contributors: Universität Zürich. Völkerkundemuseum; Clough, Joan; Moschke, Karina
Publisher: Arnoldsche Art Publishers; Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich; Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt GmbH
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Stuttgart; Zurich
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9783897903661
Subjects: Folk art; Exhibitions; Indic Scrolls; Indic Painting; Juang (Indic people); Patas (Art); Indic Narrative painting; Indic Illumination of books and manuscripts; Universität Zürich. Völkerkundemuseum; Universität Zürich
Other titles: Continuity and change in Indian folk art
Description: For over 2000 years and until just a few decades ago artists traveled throughout India, using painted picture scrolls to spread stories from the great Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as a wealth of stories about regional Gods and heroes and moral tales, amongst the mostly illiterate rural population. These artists were the creators and bearers of an art form which spread from India across China to Japan, and westward to the Mediterranean region. In the hands of the painters and singers, the picture scrolls became a portable cinema, projection screens for mythical knowledge and an incentive to listen to the songs whilst looking at the scrolls. Political changes, technical innovation and social turmoil in the twentieth century ushered in profound changes to oral art forms. As their tradition lost significance, the Indian scroll-painting artists also lost their public and their income. Two Bengali picture-scroll traditions still defy adverse conditions; however, whereas the 'patua' rose to the challenge, the 'jadopatia' failed and their tradition is in terminal decline.
Notes: Exhibition catalog.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Heaven and earth; title: Indian pictures and picture scrolls; title: Asian picture scroll traditions; title: The jadopatia; title: The patua; title: Tradition and change; title: Scroll paintings. The picture scroll as object ; Sins, death and hell ; The Santal creation myth ; Gods and legends ; Recent changes.