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Article

Amritsar  

Patwant Singh

Sikh holy city in Punjab, northern India. Lying on a flat stretch of agricultural land between the rivers Beas and Ravi, close to the Pakistan border, Amritsar (Skt amrit sarowar, ‘pool of nectar’) is the location of the Harmandir, the holiest of Sikh shrines at the heart of the Darbar Sahib temple complex, also referred to as the Golden Temple (see also Indian subcontinent: Iconography and subject-matter and §III, 7(ii)(a), fig.). It was the third Sikh guru, Amar Das (1552–74), who was first drawn to the area by the peace and tranquillity of its forested terrain and the pool where the Harmandir was later built. His successor, Guru Ram Das (1574–81), bought the pool and the surrounding land. Some historians believe that the Mughal emperor Akbar (reg 1556–1605) offered the land as a gift, but that Ram Das declined in keeping with the Sikh tradition of self-reliance (...

Article

Andree, A(dolphus) W(illiam)  

Ismeth Raheem

(b Jaffna, Ceylon [now Sri Lanka], Sept 26, 1869; d Colombo, July 2, 1910).

Ceylonese photographer. His family had practised photography for three generations. His grandfather, Adolphus Wilhelmus Andree (b 1799), was one of the early pioneers of daguerreotypy in Ceylon, and his father, Adolphus William Andree, had a flourishing photographic business between the 1860s and 1880s with studios in the capital Colombo and the provincial towns of Jaffna, Galle and Matara. At 18, he was already working as an apprentice in the studio of an American photographer at Chatham Street, Colombo, using the ferrotype process (see Photography §I). By 1893 he had established the Hopetown Studio, Slave Island, Colombo, which within a decade was one of the most fashionable and best-equipped in the country. Andree earned several awards at the Exposition Universelle, Paris, in 1900 and at the World’s Fair in St Louis, MO, in 1904. In 1901 the government appointed him as one of its official photographers to cover the visit to Ceylon of the Duke and Duchess of York....

Article

Arcega, Michael  

Miwako Tezuka

(b Manila, Aug 19, 1973).

American installation artist of Filipino birth. Arcega was born in Manila and immigrated to the US when he was ten years old. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from San Francisco Art Institute and, in 2009, earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stanford University, California. While Arcega has worked with a variety of media, including sculpture and installation, he mainly focuses on language and creates visual and linguistic puns and satires that expose various social and political conflicts and problems resulting from globalization.

A tongue-in-cheek approach as an effective conceptual strategy has been used by a number of artists since Marcel Duchamp. In Arcega’s case, however, it relates more closely to the “format of jokes” that plays on unintended cultural misunderstandings between native English speakers and those for whom English is a second language. Ultimately, Arcega’s humor exposes the dark side of reality with frequent references to political and social issues. His installation ...

Article

Baker, Sir Herbert  

Gavin Stamp

(b Cobham, Kent, June 9, 1862; d Cobham, Feb 4, 1946).

English architect and writer, also active in South Africa and India. He was articled to a cousin, Arthur Baker, a former assistant of George Gilbert Scott I, in 1879 and attended classes at the Architectural Association and Royal Academy Schools before joining the office of George & Peto in London (1882), where he first met and befriended Edwin Lutyens. Baker set up in independent practice in 1890 but moved to South Africa in 1892 to join his brother Lionel Baker. In Cape Town he met Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, who directed his attention to the traditional European Cape Dutch architecture of the province and asked him to rebuild his house Groote Schuur (1893, 1897), now the official residence of South Africa’s prime ministers. Applying the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement to local conditions, Baker produced a series of houses, both in the Cape Province and the Transvaal, which were instrumental in the revival of Cape Dutch architecture. In ...

Article

Bazaar  

Mohammad Gharipour

Bazaar, which is rooted in Middle Persian wāzār and Armenian vačaṟ, has acquired three different meanings: the market as a whole, a market day, and the marketplace. The bazaar as a place is an assemblage of workshops and stores where various goods and services are offered.

Primitive forms of shops and trade centres existed in early civilizations in the Near East, such as Sialk, Tepe in Kashan, Çatal Hüyük, Jerico, and Susa. After the 4th millennium BC, the population grew and villages gradually joined together to shape new cities, resulting in trade even with the remote areas as well as the acceleration of the population in towns. The advancement of trade and accumulation of wealth necessitated the creation of trade centres. Trade, and consequently marketplaces, worked as the main driving force in connecting separate civilizations, while fostering a division of labour, the diffusion of technological innovations, methods of intercultural communication, political and economic management, and techniques of farming and industrial production....

Article

Beato family  

Italo Zannier

British photographers of Italian origin. Antonio Beato (b ?the Veneto, c. 1830; d Luxor, 1903) and his brother Felice [Felix] Beato (b ?the Veneto, c. 1830; d Mandalay, after 1904) were for many years thought to be one person with two names, Antonio and Felice, and only recently has the mystery been solved of the almost contemporaneous presence of a Beato in two different (and often very distant) places. The misunderstanding arose from the fact that both their names (Antonio Felice Beato) appear on several photographs. A closer inquiry brought to light a letter written by Antonio and published in the French paper, Moniteur de la photographie (1 June 1886), in which he explains that he is not the producer of the exotic photographs recently exhibited in London, mention of which had been made in the Moniteur of 10 March; the photographer was instead ‘[his] brother Monsieur Felice Beato of Japan’....

Article

Begg, John  

Philip Davies

(b Bo’ness, 1866; d Edinburgh, Feb 23, 1937).

Scottish architect, active in India. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and Royal Academy Schools. At the RIBA he was a Silver Medallist (1894). After a period articled to Hippolyte Blanc (1844–1917), he worked with Alfred Waterhouse and R. W. Edis before going to South Africa as architect to the Real Estate Corporation. In 1901 he became Consulting Architect to the Government of Bombay, before succeeding James Ransome (1865–1944) as Consulting Architect to the Government of India in 1908, the first to be employed outside the ranks of the Public Works Department engineers. He remained in this post until 1921.

He was proficient in a wide variety of styles. He designed barracks and housing for the new cantonment at Delhi and devised a standardized design for the Post and Telegraph departments, of which the Nagpur Post Office and Agra Post Office (1913...

Article

Birdwood, George  

S. J. Vernoit

(Christopher Molesworth)

(b Belgaum, India, Dec 8, 1832; d Ealing, England, June 28, 1917).

English historian of Indian art and culture. After growing up in India, he was sent to Britain at the age of seven to be educated, first in Plymouth, then at the Dollar Academy, Dollar, after which he studied medicine at Edinburgh University. In 1854 he joined the medical staff of the East India Company in Bombay and later held professorships of anatomy and physiology, and of botany and materia medica at the Grand Medical College there. His interest in Indian art developed when he became curator of the Government Central Museum in Bombay. He returned to Britain in 1868 suffering from ill-health and found employment as assistant to John Forbes Watson in arranging exhibits from India for the annual international exhibition held in London from 1871 to 1874. In 1874 he became curator at the India Museum in London. When its collections were transferred to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in ...

Article

Bourne, Samuel  

Arthur Ollman

(b Mucklestone, Staffs, 1834; d Nottingham, April 24, 1912).

English photographer. He photographed extensively in India between 1863 and 1869 and is known for the elegant compositional structure of his images and for the rugged conditions under which he worked. He began photographing in 1853 in the Midlands. A decade later he moved to India and established a photographic firm in Simla with Charles Shepherd. His legendary Himalayan expeditions in 1863, 1864 and 1866 produced hundreds of dramatic views (London, V&A). His architectural studies were widely sold; his mountain landscapes and ethnographic studies, few of which survive, sold less well. On returning to England in 1870 he left the partnership of Bourne and Shepherd and became a successful manufacturer, although continuing to work as a photographer and watercolour painter until his death.

Article

Brandes, Jan Laurens Andries  

H. I. R. Hinzler

(b Rotterdam, Jan 13, 1857; d Weltevreden [now Jakarta], June 26, 1905).

Dutch archaeologist. The son of a theologian, he was supposed to study theology but felt more attracted to Asiatic languages and studied Sanskrit, Malay and Old Javanese at Leiden University from 1879 to 1883. In 1884 he completed a thesis on linguistics. In 1884 Brandes was appointed civil servant in Indonesian languages in Batavia (now Jakarta). Between 1884 and 1898 he concentrated on Old Javanese inscriptions, manuscripts and literature. A visit to H. N. van der Tuuk in 1885 gave him much inspiration. Through the inscriptions Brandes discovered the ancient monuments, and he started to specialize in the role of ornamentation. In 1900 he was appointed head of the Borobudur Restoration committee, and in 1901 he became head of the Commission for Archaeological Survey in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). During a visit to Hanoi in 1902, he became aware of the Chinese influences in East Javanese art. He wrote important articles on the foreign origin of ornamentation in Javanese art and compiled monographs on two 13th-century East Javanese temples, Candi Jago (pubd ...

Article

Buabusaya, Chitr Prakit  

Thai, 20th century, male.

Active also active in Japan.

Born 1911, in Bangkok.

Painter. Landscapes.

Chitr Prakit Buabusaya trained in 1941 at the fine arts academy in Tokyo, where he mastered the impressionist technique. Many of his major works were destroyed in the bombing of Tokyo and the artist was only able to save works of small dimensions. He was the first Thai artist to work in a purely French impressionist style....

Article

Burgess, James  

S. J. Vernoit

(b Kirkmahoe, Dumfriesshire [now Dumfries & Galloway], Aug 14, 1832; d Edinburgh, Oct 3, 1916).

Scottish art historian, active in India. He was educated in Dumfries, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and he went to India in 1855 as professor of mathematics at Doveton College, Calcutta. In 1861 he became head of the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Parsee Benevolent Institution, Bombay, and here, in his spare time, he began his architectural and archaeological studies. In the years 1868 to 1873 he was secretary of the Bombay Geographical Society, and in 1872 he founded the journal Indian Antiquary, which he edited until 1884. He was appointed Archaeological Surveyor and Reporter to Government for Western India in 1874, and Southern India was added to his brief in 1881. As a result, over a period of 30 years he wrote a variety of important reports. He was promoted to Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1886 and took up residence in Calcutta. In this position he restructured archaeological enquiry in India and initiated the ...

Article

Chinnery, George  

Patrick Conner

(b London, Jan 7, 1774; d Macao, May 30, 1852).

English painter. Although long rumoured to be Irish, Chinnery was brought up in London, where he showed a precocious talent as a portrait painter in the traditions of Romney and Cosway. His grandfather, the calligrapher William Chinnery sr, was the author of Writing and Drawing Made Easy, Amusing and Instructive (London, 1750); his father, William jr, was also a writing master, and exhibited portraits at the Free Society of Artists. George entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1792, and by 1795 had exhibited 20 portraits at the Academy.

In 1796 Chinnery moved to Dublin. There he married his landlord’s daughter, Marianne Vigne, who gave birth to his two legitimate children. He was active in the Royal Dublin Society and in 1798 was Secretary and Treasurer of its Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture. He experimented in several styles and media, to considerable critical acclaim; in July 1801 he received a silver palette ‘in Testimony of his Exertions in promoting the Fine Arts in Ireland’ … from ‘the Artists of Dublin’....

Article

Chisholm, Robert Fellowes  

Philip Davies

(b London, Jan 11, 1840; d Southsea, Hants, May 28, 1915).

English architect, active in India. One of the most versatile architects to work in British India, he practised briefly in Calcutta before arriving in 1865 in Madras, where he became the first head of the School of Industrial Art. An ardent advocate of the Indian revival in arts and crafts, he designed in a variety of styles, using Italianate for the Lawrence Asylum (1865; altered), Ootacamund, Gothic Revival for the Post & Telegraph Office (1875–84), Madras, and eclectic Indo-Saracenic for the Senate House (1874–9), University of Madras, with four corner towers crowned by onion domes. He also designed the Presidency College (1865) for the university and alterations to the Board of Revenue Offices (1870), formerly Chepauk Palace (see also Madras, §1). In 1881 he moved to Baroda (now Vadodara), where he took over the design of the colossal Laxmi Vilas Palace, begun by ...

Article

Cunningham, Sir Alexander  

E. Errington

(b London, Jan 23, 1814; d London, Nov 28, 1893).

British archaeologist, numismatist and engineer. He obtained an Indian cadetship in 1828 through the patronage of Sir Walter Scott and received his commission as Second Lieutenant, Bengal Engineers, in 1831. After training at Addiscombe and Chatham, he was sent to India in 1833. Friendship with James Prinsep encouraged an immediate interest in Indian antiquities and led to his excavation of the Sarnath stupa (1835–6). After three years with the Sappers at Calcutta, Delhi and Benares (Varanasi), he was appointed an aide-de-camp (1836–40) to Lord Auckland. A geographical mission (July–September 1839) to trace the sources of the Punjab rivers in Kashmir provided access to the antiquities of the region. While Executive Engineer to Muhammad ‛Ali Shah, the ruler of Avadh (1840–42), he discovered the Buddhist site of Sankasya (Sankisa).

As a field engineer, he saw action during the Bundelkund rebellion (1842), at Punniar (...

Article

Damrong Rajanubhab, Prince  

M. C. Subhadradis Diskul

[Prince Disvarakumarn]

(b Bangkok, Jun 21, 1862; d Bangkok, Dec 1, 1943).

Thai statesman, historian, and educational administrator. The son of King Mongkut (Rama IV, reg 1851–1868), he attained the rank of Major-General in the Military Operations Department before becoming (1890) Minister of Public Instruction, then (1892–1915) Minister of the Interior under his half-brother Chulalongkorn (Rama V, reg 1868–1910), and, later, Vajiravudh (Rama VI, reg 1910–1925). In this capacity Prince Damrong restructured Thailand’s provincial administration, reorganized the civil service, and harnessed the kingdom’s resources (notably provincial taxation, forests, and mines) to the interests of the state. He was Chairman (1915–1932) of the Capital (now National) Library and was appointed Founder-Chairman of the Royal Academy in 1926. The National Museum, Bangkok, came into being under his guidance. A member of the Supreme Council of State from 1926 until 1932, when Thailand changed from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy, he moved to Penang in 1933 but returned to Bangkok in ...

Article

Danh, Binh  

Miwako Tezuka

(b Kien Giang, Vietnam, Oct 9, 1977).

American photographer of Vietnamese birth. Danh’s family fled Vietnam as refugees when he was two years old and eventually immigrated to the USA in the early 1980s. In 2004 he received Master of Fine Arts from Stanford University, California. Danh worked with photography to excavate, revive, and preserve forgotten stories in history, particularly those of manmade atrocities such as the Vietnam War.

Photographic images of disasters, tragedies, and figures associated with them have also been the focus of works by such artists as Andy Warhol and Christian Boltanski. Both of these artists use the power of photography to arrest the moment that triggers affective interpretation of pain and sorrow of the subjects of their work. However, Danh’s scientific experiments regarding the process of photography led him to develop a technique that he called “chlorophyll printing.” Danh took photographs found in old magazines and historical archives, created negatives out of them, placed them over still-growing plant leaves, and then exposed them to sunlight (for several days or weeks) in order to activate photosynthesis. As the leaf gradually changes color, parts that are not blocked from the sunlight by the overlying negatives remain leafy-green, causing an image to emerge in shapes of what had been captured in the original photographs. The leaf can then be encased in resin to preserve the image. For example, in his series ...

Article

Dater, Judy  

Donna Stein

(b Hollywood, CA, June 21, 1941).

American photographer, educator, and author. She attended the University of California Los Angeles (1959–62), where she studied drawing and painting. She completed her education at San Francisco State University (BA 1963, MA 1966) where she studied with Jack Welpott (1923–2007), whom she married (1971–7). Dater’s perceptive portraits of women and men and challenging photographs of the nude secured her international reputation.

Her earliest self-portraits date from 1963, using her own image to consider issues of gender, sexuality and the female role in society as well as the hidden side of herself. In 1980, she took the first of 10 trips throughout the Southwest, creating a series of black-and-white self-portraits in the landscape. She also photographed herself in color creating staged tableaus, not unlike Cindy Sherman’s fictional archetypes that satirize iconic roles thrust upon women by society.

Dater has explored the interpretive portrait genre from the beginning of her career to the present. Living and working in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco during the 1960s, she was stimulated by feminism and other counter-culture movements (...

Article

Emerson, Sir William  

Betzy Dinesen

(b Whetstone, London, Dec 3, 1843; d Shanklin, Isle of Wight, Dec 26, 1924).

English architect. He trained first under William Habershon (1818–92) and Alfred Pite (1832–1911) and then under William Burges. He went to India in 1864 with Burges’s drawings for a new building for the School of Art in Bombay, but in the event they were too expensive to use. His own family connections secured him work in India, where he designed the Crawford Markets (1865–71), Bombay. His church (1870–73) at Girgaum, near Bombay, is in a French Gothic style. His other work in India in this period includes Allahabad Cathedral (1871–1929), in a Gothic Revival style, and Muir College (1872–8), also in Allahabad, combining Gothic and Saracenic elements. On his return to England he won the first competition (later abandoned) for Liverpool Cathedral in 1886 and designed the church of SS Mary and James (1887), Brighton, the Clarence Wing (...

Article

Esquillo, Alfredo  

Filipino, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1972, in Las Piñas City, Manila, Philippines.

Painter, sculptor. Religious subjects, socio-political themes.

Folk art, symbolism.

Anting-Anting Group.

Alfredo Esquillo Jr. graduated from the University of Santo Tomas College of Fine Arts in 1993. He first gained recognition when he won first prize in the ASEAN Art Awards in ...