Gods in the Bazaar

"A virtuoso examination of the 'luminous banality' of calendar art. In mapping the moral economy of bazaar Hinduism, it provides a history of much of twentieth-century India and predicts much of what might happen in the present century."--Christopher Pinney, author of "Photos of the Gods": The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India "In this groundbreaking book, Kajri Jain analyzes the 'frames of value' surrounding the contemporary Indian genre of mass-produced prints often known as bazaar art, 'lurid, pungent, frequently tatty' colored images of gods displayed on calendars. Recognizing that the value of these printed images to their viewers far exceeds their literal material value or the value that we might be tempted to assigned to them in artistic terms, in a rich and vivid analysis based on firsthand research in the calendar-art industry, Jain deals with their many values--social, political, religious, aesthetic, historical, affective, and libidinal. Gods in the Bazaar makes a significant theoretical contribution to globalizing our notion of aesthetic experience; in the sensuous and sacred economies of calendar art, what appears to be lurid and tatty can also be moving, precious, and exciting. Jain's deft weaving of art history, aesthetics, anthropology, and the study of popular visual culture is a tour de force and deserves a wide readership among students of all image-making traditions around the world."--Whitney Davis, Professor of History and Theory of Ancient and Modern Art, University of California, Berkeley