The Grace of Four Moons: Dress, Adornment, and the Art of the Body in Modern India

Description

Because clothing, food, and shelter are basic human needs, they provide excellent entries to cultural values and individual aesthetics. Everyone gets dressed every day, but body art has not received the attention it deserves as the most common and universal of material expressions of culture. The Grace of Four Moons aims to document the clothing decisions made by ordinary people in their everyday lives. Based on fieldwork conducted primarily in the city of Banaras, India, Pravina Shukla conceptualizes and realizes a total model for the study of body art—understood as all aesthetic modifications and supplementations to the body. Shukla urges the study of the entire process of body art, from the assembly of raw materials and the manufacture of objects, through their sale and the interactions between merchants and consumers, to the consumer's use of objects in creating personal decoration. Content: Contents Acknowledgments Part 1. Introduction 1. Body Art in Banaras 2. Getting Ready 3. Gaze, Sacred and Secular Part 2. Production and Commerce 4. Shopping for Clothes 5. Weaving Saris 6. Making Jewelry 7. Kanhaiya Lal 8. Shopping along the Vishvanath Gali 9. Assembling Bangle Sets Part 3. Personal Adornment 10. Nina Khanchandani 11. Neelam Chaturvedi 12. Mukta Tripathi Part 4. Body Art in the Lifecycle 13. After the Wedding 14. Before the Wedding 15. The Wedding Part 5. Conclusion 16. The Study of Body Art Glossary Notes Bibliography Index