Seeing the Divine: Pahari Painting of North India
At The Met Fifth Avenue
December 22, 2018–July 28, 2019
Focusing on early painting styles that emerged in the regional courts of the Punjab hills of North India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this exhibition examines innovative ways of depicting the Hindu gods. By juxtaposing devotional images with emotionally charged narrative moments, the paintings provided fresh means for royal patrons to forge a personal connection to the divine through devotion (bhakti). Highlights include an early nineteenth-century temple banner that has never been shown publicly.
"Staggering colors and hallucinatory visions" —The New York Times
"Eye-popping. . . . striking. . . . elicit[s] . . . admiration" —The Wall Street Journal
The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation.
Enjoy a Facebook video of "Evoking the Gods: Indian Painting of the Pahari Hills," a talk by exhibition curator Kurt Behrendt in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium (March 27, 2018)
Exhibition curator Kurt Behrendt shows how the Pahari painters developed an artistic technique to make the Hindu gods appear before the eyes of their patrons.
Read about the unusual creative process of the Pahari painters in "Layers of Memory," a blog post on Now at The Met.
In this Now at The Met article, exhibition curator Kurt Behrendt shares insights into a bold seventeenth-century painting of Bhadrakali, a benevolent tantric divinity.
Attributed to the Master of the Early Rasamanjari. Devi, in the form of Bhadrakali, ca. 1660–70. Folio from a dispersed "Tantric Devi" series. India, Punjab Hills, kingdom of Basohli. Opaque watercolor, gold, silver, and beetle-wing cases on paper, 7 x 6 9/16 in. (17.8 x 16.7 cm). Promised Gift of Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections, 2015
