8.2 India and Southeast Asia

Many traditions in Southeast Asia shaped the secular art forms within the regions, each utilizing local styles.

The development of literati painting in Japan and China became a widely used genre for the educated elite. Literati paintings tend to illustrate landscape based subjects, often from a nonprofessional standpoint. These landscape depictions were sometimes juxtaposed or contrasted with poetry. The establishment of a social hierarchy also influenced the subject matter of the works as the resulting behavioral changes were often expressed, or captured, through architecture and art. Although, architecture primarily served for religious functions in these regions.

Regional painting styles, as well as poetic texts, were developed in India and, thus, characterized the art within the region. The artwork focused on exhibiting historical or mythical subjects, whereas the poetry documents often recorded court life.

Why did we decide to group India and Southeast Asia together, considering they're two geographically and culturally distinct areas 🧐? During this time period, the majority of people in both India and Southeast Asia practiced Hinduism and Buddhism (although there were also Jains, Muslims, and other religious groups), which is why they're placed together. Nowadays, those religions are still widely practiced in the area, except in Indonesia, where the majority of the population practices Islam 🕌

Buddhist architecture revolves around the stupa, a shrine that stores spiritual objects (reliquary) and is considered to be the living presence of the Buddha and other religious figures like nuns and monks. The number of stupas at each building depends by work and can range anywhere from one (as in the case of the Great Stupa) or 1,500 at Borobudur, which shows these buildings' diversity. Because you can't go inside of stupas, visitors pray by circumambulating (walking around 🚶) the structures in the direction of the Sun's movement ☀️, showing cosmology's importance in Buddhism. They are also hemispherical and shaped similarly to the Sun.

Buddhist architecture is also known for their carvings which can be seen on their toranas (gateways, seen below in the first image ⬇️) and on high-relief sculptures either on or surrounding the buildings.

In Christianity, a church is a place for a congregation to worship, but in Hinduism, temples are considered to be the home of a god or goddess 🏠, not a place for large groups of worshipers. Despite this, Hindu temples have small, intricate rooms inside for priests and people to individually visit. This attention to detail is also seen on the exterior of the Hindu architecture, mainly because of its corbelled gallery roofs (shown below ⬇️), which make the buildings look similar to a beehive. The outside of these temples are also covered with horror vacui sculptures (cramped figures with little empty space), usually of maithuna (divine couples), and some may have sculptures inside, as well.

When you first look at the painting below ⬇️, you may notice the wide array of colors used and its intricate patterns, which are two of the most common characteristics of Indian paintings. They are also crowded with motifs (in this case, geometric and floral ones), but not as cramped as the horror vacui seen in the architecture and sculptures of this unit. Some paintings, including Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings (which is the work below), were influenced by European art 🎨 and show the effect of cross-cultural interactions on works from India and Southeast Asia.

❓Visual and Contextual Analysis: What parts of this work may have been influenced by earlier European art movements, religion, and historical figures?