Where East Met West To Wondrous Effect
Standing in a side gallery of “India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, you get a visceral feel for just how daunting a task curators Stephen Markel and Tushara Bindu Gude took on. The only artifact here is a wall-size blow-up of a 1858 panoramic photograph by Italian-born Felice Beato. All we see is a cityscape of palaces and mosques punctuated by minarets and arched doorways, European-style triangular pediments and ionic columns, ribbed domes topped by Hindu-style ornamental umbrellas. The streets are deserted; the buildings, varying shades of gray.
In presenting the visual arts of Lucknow from the mid-1700s through the violent uprisings of 1857 and their aftermath, the show helps us reimagine the city in living color. This was a time when Lucknow was not only the capital of Awadh (or Oudh), but the cultural capital of north India. It overflowed with dance, poetry, calligraphy and music (all of which are discussed in the catalog), while a lively mix of European and Asian models gave rise to an efflorescence of the visual arts.
We ease into the crosscurrents of this art scene with a handful of 16th- and 17th- century Mughal miniatures. One features Nadir Shah, who might be credited with seeding Lucknow’s art scene: His 1739 raid on Delhi sent artists fleeing to Awadh and the patronage of local rulers and wealthy Europeans.