Indian Art is the visual art produced on the Indian subcontinent from about the 3rd millennium BC to modern times. To viewers schooled in the Western tradition, Indian art may seem overly ornate and sensuous; appreciation of its refinement comes only gradually, as a rule. Voluptuous feeling is given unusually free expression in Indian culture. A strong sense of design is also characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern as well as in its traditional forms.
The vast scope of the art of India intertwines with the cultural history, religions and philosophies which place art production and patronage in social and cultural contexts.
Indian art can be classified into specific periods each reflecting particular religious, political and cultural developments.
- Ancient period (3900 BCE-1200 CE)
- Islamic ascendancy (1192-1757)
- Colonial period (1757–1947)
- Independence and the postcolonial period (Post-1947)
Read more about Indian Art: Temple and Sculpture-art, Bronze Sculpture, Indian Fresco, Miniature Painting, Jewelry, Folk and Tribal Art, Art in The British Period, Contemporary Art
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“This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up affair, which had stood there several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on the west.... Altogether it was about as savage a sight as was ever witnessed, and I was carried back at once three hundred years.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)