Translating India: Art, Epistemology, and Mughal-French Exchange in the Late Eighteenth Century
Art History Colloquium
October 18, 2019
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Location
106 Henry Hall
Address
935 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
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The eighteenth century was a period of heightened contact between India and France, resulting in the circulation of images and ideas between the court of the Mughals and that of Versailles. The collection of Jean-Baptiste Gentil embodied these exchanges. An officer of the French East India Company, Gentil collaborated with Indian artists and translators to produce a fascinating collection of illustrated manuscripts. This talk will examine a key album from the Gentil collection, raising fundamental questions about art, globalization, cross-cultural collaboration, and the role of images in the process of translation. I interpret the collection in relation to multiple artistic and epistemic systems, from the manuscript workshops of north India to the earliest Orientalist libraries of France. I emphasize the reciprocity of exchanges at this time, challenging alike the notion of a monolithic Orientalism and a unilateral influence that channeled from west to east.
Chanchal Dadlani is Associate Professor of Art History at Wake Forest University. Her first book, From Stone to Paper: Architecture as History in the Late Mughal Empire (Yale University Press, 2018), received the SAH/Mellon Author Award and was shortlisted for the Kenshur Prize. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, Fulbright-Hays, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She has published in Art History, Ars Orientalis, and Artforum on Mughal art, exchanges between France and India, and the global reception of contemporary South Asian art.
This event is co-sponsored by UIC’s Global Asian Studies Program, Department of French and Francophone Studies, School of Literatures, Cultural Studies, and Linguistics, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Date posted
Oct 9, 2019
Date updated
Oct 9, 2019