Room F209, F Block, Otago Polytechnic, Forth Street, Dunedin: 5:30 pm–7:00 pm
Painted Visions of Propriety: Raja Ravi Varma and the Feminine Ideal in Indian Visual Culture
Radhika Raghav, University of Otago
Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906) Damayanti and the Swan, (c.1880s), oil on canvas.
In nineteenth-century India, against the backdrop of colonial industrialisation and rising Hindu nationalism, a new set of images was finding its way into the visual realm—lithographic prints by artist Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906). The colourful prints were reproductions of Varma’s hugely popular academic-style oil paintings of the Vedic heroines depicted as virtuous consorts of the mythical Hindu ancestors. Thereafter, Varma’s female models were sustained across industrial arts, including cinema, and shaped the visual prototype of ideal (Hindu) femininity. This seminar frames the iconographical development and commercial distribution of the canonical heroines painted by Varma vis-à-vis the question of a woman’s beauty and duty in modern India. Furthermore, it sheds light on how Varma’s female model continues to enjoy supremacy over other modes of womanhood in the visual culture of twenty-first century India.
Radhika Raghav currently teaches in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Otago, Dunedin. She holds a PhD in Visual Studies and a master’s degree in Art History. Her research interests revolve around the representations of gender and sexuality in South Asian popular culture and media.
Dunedin School of Art and University of Otago (Languages and Cultures)
