The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works, 1100–1900

The art of the Indian subcontinent is not as well known in the United States as it should be. Perhaps it is the complex religious base of the work, or that India's trade and colonial ties led to Europe rather than America. Two very different volumes offer an appreciation of Indian art that can deepen our knowledge and provide glimpses of the cultures and artists that created colorful and richly detailed paintings and sculpture.Puja and Piety is a lushly illustrated catalog of an exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art that includes 150 Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist artworks and provides four long essays explaining the various religions, setting the artworks within their cultural frameworks. There are no examples of Muslim or tribal art. The focus of the essays is on puja, the practice of veneration with offerings as the three religions use it to inspire art. An introduction by art historian and curator Pal opens the volume, with art experts' carefully written, accessible essays that are copiously illustrated with photographs of temples and ceremonies in India.The Spirit of Indian Painting is more devoted to text than illustration. The 101 paintings are printed well, but the matte paper and their small size are suboptimal. That said, the text is wonderful. Goswamy (emeritus, art history, Panjab Univ.; Essence of Indian Art) weaves a brilliant analysis of each painting into a tale of personalities of painter and patron, time and place, and of emotional reaction evoked by thin layers of pigment. Although there are links within schools of painting, each essay stands by itself, and the book can be opened anywhere and read with ease.