Article
Review of: Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550-1850 by Sugata Ray
H-Asia, H-Net Reviews
(2020)
Abstract
Sugata Ray’s brilliant book, Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, proposes new questions for the discipline of art history. Using concepts and methods taken from material culture studies as well as from art history, Ray proposes reciprocal relations among the earth’s changing environment, ecological transformations brought about by the ways humans have lived upon the land and sea, and “theology, art practice, and an aesthetics of the natural world” (p. 20). As a case study, Ray has chosen the region of Braj in north India, first, because of repeated, disastrous droughts and famines in north India that seem to have been particularly severe from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, and second, because in the same period Gaudiya Vaishnavas made the whole region of Braj a sacred landscape.
Keywords
- Geoaesthetics,
- Sugata Ray
Disciplines
Publication Date
March, 2020
Citation Information
Sugata Ray,. Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550-1850. H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. March, 2020. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54359