Conference on Asian Art at the University of Bonn, October 2011

Tue Jul 19 11:02:38 UTC 2011

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I would like to inform you about an international conference, entitled

In the Shadow of the Golden Age:
Art and Identity in Asia from Gandhara to the Modern Age

which my DFG-funded research team and my department are organising at The
University of Bonn from

13. - 15. October 2011.

Please find the provisional programme and a short conference description
below. Further information can be found on our webpage: www.aik.uni-bonn.de

For further information, please contact myself or Navina Sarma
(navina at uni-bonn.de). I will be circulating the final version of the
programme in late September.

Looking forward to seeing you in Bonn.

Julia Hegewald
Professor of Oriental Art History
University of Bonn

Provisional Programme
 Please note that this programme is still provisional and that changes in
the sequence of papers and in the timings may be made over the next few
months. The final programme will be available shortly before the start of
the conference.

Thursday 13th October 2011
16:00-17:00            Registration and tea

17:00-18:30            Keynote address: Partha Mitter
                                The Keynote Paper: the Role of History and
Memory in Modernity

19:00                        Conference dinner for participants

Friday 14th October 2011:
09:30-10:30            Registration

10:30-11:30            Susan L. Huntington
                                Buddhist Art Through a Modern Lens: A Case
of a Mistaken Scholarly
                                Trajectory

                                John C. Huntington
                                Bactro-Gandharan Art Beyond its Homeland

11:30-12:00            Coffee

12:00-13:00             Ciro Lo Mucio
                                The Legacy of Gandhara in Central Asian
Painting

                                Petra Rösch
                                 Illusionary Narratives: The Deconstruction
of the Tang Dynasty as the
                                “Golden Age” of Chan Buddhism in China.

13:00-14:30            Lunch

14:30-15:30            William A. Southworth
                                Iconoclasm and Temple Transformation at
Angkor from the 13th to 15th
                                Centuries

                                Tiziana Lorenzetti
                                Political and Social Dimension as Reflected
in the Medieval Sculptures of
                                South India: Confrontations, antagonism and
identity

15:30-16:00            Tea

16:00-17:00            Mallica Kumbera Landrus
                                Trans-Cultural Temples: Identity and
Practice in Goa

                                Sarah Shaw
                                Art and Narrative in Changing Conditions:
Southern Buddhist temple art as an
                                accommodation of the new and diverse

17:00-17:30            Drinks

17:30 - 18:30           Professorial Inaugural Lecture: Julia A. B. Hegewald
                                Golden Age or Kali-Yuga?: The Changing
Fortunes of Jaina Art and Identity
                                in Karnataka

19:00                       Conference dinner for participants

Saturday 15th October 2011:
09:30-10:30             Jennifer Howes
                                Indian Company Painting: 1780 to 1820

                                Eva-Maria Troelenberg
                                The „Golden Age“ and the Secession:
Approaches to Alterity in early 20th
                                Century World Art

10:30-11:00            Coffee

11:00-12:30            Parul Dave Muckerji
                                Who is afraid of Utopia? Contemporary Indian
Artists and Their Retakes on
                                “Golden” age

                                Nalini Balbir
                                Old Texts, New Images: Illustrating the
Śvetāmbara Jain Āgamas today

                                Christoph Emmrich
                                Loss, Damage, Repair and Prevention in the
Historiography of Newar Religious
                                Artefacts

12:30-14:00            Lunch

14:00-15:15            Regina Höfer
                                ‘Buddha at hotmail‘ - Contemporary Tibetan Art
goes Global

                                Daniel Redlinger (IOA, The University of
Bonn)
                                        Building for the brothers?
Indo-Islamic architectural citations in the recent
                                        architecture of South Arabia

                                Concluding session

15:15-15:45            Tea

15:45-18:00            Coach to Cologne and visit to Rautenstrauch-Joest
Museum

Conference Abstract:
In the Shadow of the Golden Age:
Art and Identity in Asia from Gandhara to the Modern Age

This international conference brings together specialists in the visual arts
and humanities working on material from a wide range of periods and regions
throughout Asia, the Islamic world and the Western diaspora. Instead of
concentrating on the so-called ‘high points’ and ‘golden ages’ of art, which
have so far stood generally at the centre of art-historical enquiries, this
symposium focuses on visual expressions of confrontation with the ‘other,’
struggle or isolation during times of change. These challenging but
artistically fertile periods were marked by intense efforts by communities
in search for new identities. Through their art and frequently through the
re-use of old symbols in new settings they succeeded in redefining
themselves so as to strengthen their religious, cultural or political
position. In the history of art, these less investigated phases raise
issues, which hold the promise of new significant contributions to the
subject.

What happened to Gandharan art after its main phase of flowering came to an
end in its traditional heartland? How does Hindu temple architecture react
to a majority Christian cultural environment in Goa? In which ways do new
rulers and religions, e.g. in medieval South India and at Angkor, relate to
the sacred places and icons of previous cultures and religious groups and
how do the disposed and dispossessed deal with their loss and react to the
new?
The confrontation with the ‘other’ has been particularly pronounced during
periods of colonisation throughout Asia. How did British colonial officials
and Indian artists commissioned by them represent the different facets of
the empire, how was world art exhibited and interpreted in the West and how
were (and are?) categories such as ‘masterpiece’ or ‘golden age’ employed to
classify and judge art?
A further particularly fertile area of enquiry is the modern age in which
many traditions (religious, regal or social) appear to be threatened by
globalisation and changes in value. The diverse examples of modern day
artistic expressions taken from Arabia, India, Nepal and Thailand to be
presented during this conference, however, suggest impressive acts of
survival and creative adaptation, which enable continuity and the endurance
of forms, meanings and practices under new disguises.

-- 
Prof. Dr. Julia A. B. Hegewald
Professor of Oriental Art History
Head of Department
Universität Bonn
Institut für Orient- und Asienwissenschaften (IOA)
Abteilung für Asiatische und Islamische Kunstgeschichte
Adenauerallee 10
D – 53113 Bonn
Germany

Email: julia.hegewald at uni-bonn.de
Tel. 0049-228-73 7213
Fax. 0049-228-73 4042

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