Conversations

B.N. Goswamy, distinguished art historian, is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the Panjab University, Chandigarh. His work covers a wide range and is regarded, especially in Indian painting, as having influenced much thinking. He has been the recipient of many honours, including the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship, the Rietberg Award for Outstanding Research in Art History, the JDR III Fellowship, the Mellon Senior Fellowship and, from the President of India, the Padma Shri (1998) and the Padma Bhushan (2008). Apart from the Panjab University, Professor Goswamy has taught, as Visiting Professor, at major universities across the world, including Heidelberg, Pennsylvania, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, Austin and Zurich. He has been responsible for significant exhibitions of Indian art at international venues, including Paris, San Francisco, Zurich, New Delhi, San Diego and New York. He is the author of over 25 books on Indian art and culture, including: Pahari Painting: The Family as the Basis of Style (1968); Painters at the Sikh Court (1975); A Place Apart: Paintings from Kutch (with A.L. Dallapiccola; 1983); The Essence of Indian Art (1986); Wonders of a Golden Age: Painting at the Court of the Great Mughals (with E. Fischer; 1987); Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (with E. Fischer; 1992); Indian Costumes in the Calico Museum of Textiles (1993); Nainsukh of Guler: A Great Indian Painter from a Small Hill State (1997); and Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting (with C. Smith; 2005); and, more recently, The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works (2014 and 2016); Manaku of Guler: Another Great Indian painter from a Small Hill State (2017); Oxford Readings in Indian Art (2018); and The Great Mysore Bhagavata (2019).

'A brilliant compilation ... Essential reading.' ---William Dalrymple

'A string of gems'---Maria Aurora Couto

'Insightful, witty, uplifting'---Eberhard Fischer

B.N. Goswamy, one of the most eminent art historians of our times, in this book opens a window to a wide range of subjects: all on or around the arts, which have immense potential to form aesthetic sensibility. From Ananda Coomaraswamy to the Art of Calligraphy, The Meaning of Silence to Farid-ud-din Attar's great Sufi parable of the Conference of the Birds, among others, Goswamy invites the general, but generally interested and literate, readers to enter, through these pieces, the field of the arts and savour its pleasures: to take from them what they can, learn something fresh¾or view with freshness¾and expand their minds.

Definitive, engaging, and comprehensive, Conversations promises to be a truly accessible primer on art in India and South Asia.

'A brilliant compilation of pieces by India's most literate and imaginative art historian. Goswamy brings to his writings the soul of a poet and the heart of a rasika. Essential reading.''With a seasoned eye and deft hand, B.N. Goswamy picks up gems of art from his vast, personal storehouse of memory to unravel their magical import. The long and intimate association he has had with scriptures as well as secular literatures affords him a matchless ability to summon poetry of utter beauty from Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi or Urdu that makes his writing, and the work being relished, luminous. Revisiting favourite works of art, his probing eye enters the heart of a painting as it scans its corners or margins to finally detect and reveal hidden secrets concealed in tiny details, leaving the viewer wonderstruck, and bathed in delight.''In this book, imbued with erudition and enchantment, Professor Goswamy's poetics unveil the immanent meaning of image and word.''A string of gems: these pieces dazzle, amuse, educate and stimulate all our senses with depth and variety. History, philosophy, metaphysics, art, literature, a world that is multicultural and spiritual in the truest sense.'